Rousseau - A Very Short Introduction

Together with Montesquieu, Hume, Smith, and Kant among his
contemporaries, Rousseau has exerted the most profound influence on
modern European intellectual history, perhaps even surpassing anyone
else of his day. No other eighteenth-century thinker contributed more
major writings in so wide a range of subjects and forms, nor wrote with
such sustained passion and eloquence. No one else managed through
both his works and his life to excite or disturb public imagination so
deeply. Almost alone among the seminal figures of the Enlightenment,
he subjected the main currents of the world he inhabited to the most
inspired censure, even while channelling their direction, and when
French Revolutionary leaders later seized their opportunity to ignite the
unity of political practice and theory, it was to his doctrines above all
that they professed their allegiance.

Contents
List of illustrations xiii
Abbreviations xvii
1 The life and times of a citizen of Geneva 1
2 Culture, music, and the corruption of morals 23
3 Human nature and civil society 44
4 Liberty, virtue, and citizenship 71
5 Religion, education, and sexuality 101
6 Vagabond reverie 131
Further reading 151
Index 161