Rousseau And The Modern State

First published in 1934, and revised and expanded in 1964, this book is the standard work on the political thought of Rousseau. It was acclaimed by English reviewers as ‘an excellently arranged, lucidly written, unbiased account of Rousseau’s political theory’, a ‘scholarly book, distinguished for lucidity both in thought and style’, and a ‘first-rate book in defence of the essential sanity of Rousseau’s thought’.

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After an old university friend and fellow archeologist's murdered, forensic archeologist Ruth Galloway travels to Lancashire to examine the bones he found, which reveal a shocking fact about King Arthur, and discovers a campus living in fear of a sinister right-wing group called the White Hand.

This substantially revised new edition of Rousseau: The Basic Political Writings features a brilliant new Introduction by David Wootton, a revision by Donald A. Cress of his own 1987 translation of Rousseau's most important political writings, and the addition of Cress' new translation of Rousseau's State of ?War. New footnotes, headnotes, and a chronology by David Wootton provide expert guidance to first-time readers of the texts.

A milestone of political science, Rousseau's 1762 work argues that all government is fundamentally flawed and that modern society is rife with inequality. He proposes an alternative system for the development of self-governing, self-disciplined citizens.

Long hailed as one of the most original, controversial, and influential works of modern political theory, Jean-Jacques Rousseau's On the Social Contract or Principles of Political Right (1762) sets out to address an apparently insoluble difficulty: how can we organize a political community so as to guarantee its members the complete physical and emotional freedom given to them by nature, while at the same time ensuring peaceful order and cooperation within the state. How can we "find a form of association which defends and protects with full communal force the person and the possessions of each member and in which each person, by uniting with all, nevertheless obeys only himself and remains as freeas before."Rousseau's solution to this problem offers a vision of a republican constitution in which the citizens are free because, as rational beings, they choose to live in a state where they all have an equal share in the sovereign power and are all equally subject to the laws established by the general will of all. No matter what the form of government, in order to be legitimate, it must be subject to the sovereignty of the people.On the Social Contract is justly famous as a collectivist response to the more individualistic liberalism of Hobbes and Locke. For Rousseau true freedom in the modern state can only be realized if the citizens, as rational individuals, subordinate their selfish personal desires to the laws enacted by the general will of all--citizens, he states in one of his best known and most paradoxical sayings "must be forced to be free." Only then can they realize their full potential as free moral beings.

"His most famous and influential work." --The Reader's Encyclopedia Long hailed as one of the most original, controversial, and influential works of modern political theory, Jean-Jacques Rousseau's On the Social Contract or Principles of Political Right (1762) sets out to address an apparently insoluble difficulty: how can we organize a political community so as to guarantee its members the complete physical and emotional freedom given to them by nature, while at the same time ensuring peaceful order and cooperation within the state. How can we "find a form of association which defends and protects with full communal force the person and the possessions of each member and in which each person, by uniting with all, nevertheless obeys only himself and remains as free as before." Rousseau's solution to this problem offers a vision of a republican constitution in which the citizens are free because, as rational beings, they choose to live in a state where they all have an equal share in the sovereign power and are all equally subject to the laws established by the general will of all. No matter what the form of government, in order to be legitimate, it must be subject to the sovereignty of the people. On Social Contract is justly famous as a collectivist response to the more individualistic liberalism of Hobbes and Locke. For Rousseau true freedom in the modern state can only be realized if the citizens, as rational individuals, subordinate their selfish personal desires to the laws enacted by the general will of all--citizens, he states in one of his best known and most paradoxical sayings "must be forced to be free." Only then can they realize their full potential as free moral beings.

The rise of modern science created a crisis for Western moral and political philosophy, which had theretofore relied either on Christian theology or Aristotelian natural teleology as guarantors of an objective standard for &"the good life.&" This book examines Rousseau's effort to show how and why, despite this challenge from science (which he himself intensified by equating our subhuman origins with our natural state), nature can remain a standard for human behavior. While recognizing an original goodness in human being in the state of nature, Rousseau knew this to be too low a standard and promoted the idea of &"the natural man living in the state of society,&" notably in Emile. Laurence Cooper shows how, for Rousseau, conscience&—understood as the &"love of order&"&—functions as the agent whereby simple savage sentiment is sublimated into a more refined &"civilized naturalness&" to which all people can aspire.