Question of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (A Midland Book)

For almost two centuries the philosophy of Rousseau has perplexed its interpreters. The majority of his critics claimed to have found the "essence of Rousseau" in one or the other of his major works or in some of his scintillating epigrams, and therefore attacked him either for extreme views of individualism or collectivism, or for his alleged inconsistencies. His disciples contradicted each other as vigorously as his opponents; the Jacobins established the Reign of Terror in his name, the German romantics hailed him as a liberator, and Schiller pictured him as a martyr to wisdom. Ernst Cassirer's celebrated essay, "Das Problem Jean-Jacques Rousseau," accepts Rousseau's own contention of the integrity of his thought, and attempts to reveal its meaning by providing an understanding of his work as a whole. Cassirer achieves this by an empathic recreation of the "philosophical world" of Rousseau, a re-examination of his work in the light of his complex personality and of the age in which he lived. He illuminates the relation of Rousseau's fundamental conceptions to one another and to the rest of his thought - the relation of actual to potential reason, of perfectibility to the demand for a new society, of education to rationality, and of reason to freedom. "If the portrayal of Rousseau the emotional, self-contradictory totalitarian has generally given way to a more accurate estimate," states Peter Gay, "Cassirer's essay may claim a large share of the credit." (from the back cover)