Thinking with Rousseau

From Machiavelli to Schmitt

Helena Rosenblatt, Paul Schweigert

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781107105768
• eBook ISBN: 9781108515016
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political History & Theory
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Although indisputably one of the most important thinkers in the Western intellectual tradition, Rousseau's actual place within that tradition, and the legacy of his thought, remains hotly disputed. Thinking with Rousseau reconsiders his contribution to this tradition through a series of essays exploring the relationship between Rousseau and other 'great thinkers'. Ranging from 'Rousseau and Machiavelli' to 'Rousseau and Schmitt', this volume focuses on the kind of intricate work that intellectuals do when they read each other and grapple with one another's ideas. This approach is very helpful in explaining how old ideas are transformed and/or transmitted and new ones are generated. Rousseau himself was a master at appropriating the ideas of others, while simultaneously subverting them, and as the essays in this volume vividly demonstrate, the resulting ambivalences and paradoxes in his thought were creatively mined by others.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title page
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Abbreviations
• List of Contributors
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 Rousseau and Machiavelli: Two Interpretations of Republicanism
• Chapter 2 Rousseau and Montaigne: From Enthusiasm to Equanimity
• Chapter 3 Rousseau and Hobbes: The Hobbesianism of Rousseau
• Chapter 4 Rousseau and Montesquieu
• Chapter 5 Rousseau and Mendelssohn: “Enraptured Reason,” Rousseau’s Presence in Moses Mendelssohn’s Thought
• Chapter 6 Rousseau and Smith: On Sympathy as a First Principle
• Chapter 7 Rousseau and A.L. Thomas
• Chapter 8 Rousseau and d’Holbach: The Revolutionary Implications of la philosophie anti-Thérésienne
• Chapter 9 Rousseau and Diderot
• Chapter 10 Rousseau and Kant: Rousseau’s Kantian Legacy
• Chapter 11 Rousseau and Wollstonecraft: Solitary Walkers
• Chapter 12 Rousseau and Madame de Staël: A Surprising Dialogue
• Chapter 13 Rousseau and Proudhon: Human Nature, Property, and the Social Contract
• Chapter 14 Rousseau and Marx: On Human Fulfillment
• Chapter 15 Rousseau and Schmitt: Sovereigns and Dictators
• Bibliography
• Index