Rousseau's Theory of Freedom

Rousseau's Theory of Freedom

Author: Matthew Simpson

Publisher: Continuum

Published: 2006-04-10

Total Pages: 144

ISBN-13:

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Offers an interpretation of the theory of freedom in the Social Contract. The author gives a careful analysis of Rousseau's theory of the social pact, and then examines the kinds of freedom that it brings about, showing how Rousseau's individualist and collectivist aspects fit into a larger and logically coherent theory of human liberty.


Rousseau and Freedom

Rousseau and Freedom

Author: Christie McDonald

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2010-04-22

Total Pages: 327

ISBN-13: 1139486241

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Debates about freedom, an ideal continually contested, were first set out in their modern version by the eighteenth-century French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau. His ideas and analyses were taken up during the philosophical enlightenment, often invoked during the French Revolution, and still resonate in contemporary discussions of freedom. This volume, first published in 2010, examines Rousseau's many approaches to the concept of freedom, in the context of his thought on literature, religion, music, theater, women, the body, and the arts. Its expert contributors cross disciplinary frontiers to develop thought-provoking new angles on Rousseau's thought. By taking freedom as the guiding principle of their analysis, the essays form a cohesive account of Rousseau's writings.


Rousseau and German Idealism

Rousseau and German Idealism

Author: David James

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2013-08-08

Total Pages: 247

ISBN-13: 1107037859

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A systematic account of Rousseau's significance in relation to Kant's, Fichte's and Hegel's views on freedom, dependence and necessity.


Rousseau on Education, Freedom, and Judgment

Rousseau on Education, Freedom, and Judgment

Author: Denise Schaeffer

Publisher: Penn State Press

Published: 2014-01-02

Total Pages: 370

ISBN-13: 0271064471

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In Rousseau on Education, Freedom, and Judgment, Denise Schaeffer challenges the common view of Rousseau as primarily concerned with conditioning citizens’ passions in order to promote republican virtue and unreflective patriotism. Schaeffer argues that, to the contrary, Rousseau’s central concern is the problem of judgment and how to foster it on both the individual and political level in order to create the conditions for genuine self-rule. Offering a detailed commentary on Rousseau’s major work on education, Emile, and a wide-ranging analysis of the relationship between Emile and several of Rousseau’s other works, Schaeffer explores Rousseau’s understanding of what good judgment is, how it is learned, and why it is central to the achievement and preservation of human freedom. The model of Rousseauian citizenship that emerges from Schaeffer’s analysis is more dynamic and self-critical than is often recognized. This book demonstrates the importance of Rousseau’s contribution to our understanding of the faculty of judgment, and, more broadly, invites a critical reevaluation of Rousseau’s understanding of education, citizenship, and both individual and collective freedom.


Rousseau's Theory of Freedom

Rousseau's Theory of Freedom

Author: Matthew Simpson

Publisher: A&C Black

Published: 2006-03-08

Total Pages: 137

ISBN-13: 1847143199

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Jean-Jacques Rousseau has a claim to be ranked above even Karl Marx as the political philosopher who has most influenced everyday life. His much-read philosophy of education alone would qualify him for a high place, but his political theory is even more important: decisions affecting millions of people were made based on the reading of certain lines of the Social Contract. Yet while politicians and scholars have studied this book for 250 years, almost no agreement exists on how to interpret its central concept: freedom. Rousseau's theory of freedom has led him to be called everything from the greatest prophet of individual liberty to the designer of the first totalitarian state. This book offers a new, unifying interpretation of the theory of freedom in the Social Contract. Simpson gives a careful analysis of Rousseau's theory of the social pact, and then examines the kinds of freedom that it brings about, showing how Rousseau's individualist and collectivist aspects fit into a larger and logically coherent theory of human liberty. Simpson's book not only helps us to understand one of the pre-eminent political minds of the 18th century, but also brings us into closer conversation with those he influenced, who have done so much to shape our world. And in light of the interest in contemporary contractualist philosophers like Rawls, Scanlon, and Gauthier, readers will find it worthwhile to return to the thinker who offers one of the most radical, profound, and insightful theories of the social contract ever devised.


Rousseau and Liberty

Rousseau and Liberty

Author: Robert Wokler

Publisher: Manchester University Press

Published: 1995

Total Pages: 324

ISBN-13: 9780719047213

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Rousseau is considered to be at once the most modern political thinker of the 18th century and the most ancient in his allegiance to classical republicanism. These essays address the place of liberty in his moral and political philosophy, and the origins, meaning, strength, weakness and significance of his argument.


Fugitive Rousseau

Fugitive Rousseau

Author: Jimmy Casas Klausen

Publisher: Fordham Univ Press

Published: 2014-03-03

Total Pages: 356

ISBN-13: 0823257312

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Critics have claimed that Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a primitivist uncritically preoccupied with “noble savages” and that he remained oblivious to the African slave trade. Fugitive Rousseau presents the emancipatory possibilities of Rousseau’s thought and argues that a fresh, “fugitive” perspective on political freedom is bound up with Rousseau’s treatments of primitivism and slavery. Rather than trace Rousseau’s arguments primarily to the social contract tradition of Hobbes and Locke, Fugitive Rousseau places Rousseau squarely in two imperial contexts: European empire in his contemporary Atlantic world and Roman imperial philosophy. Anyone who aims to understand the implications of Rousseau’s famous sentence “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains” or wants to know how Rousseauian arguments can support a radical democratic politics of diversity, discontinuity, and exodus will find Fugitive Rousseau indispensable.


The Free Animal

The Free Animal

Author: Lee MacLean

Publisher: University of Toronto Press

Published: 2013-01-01

Total Pages: 249

ISBN-13: 1442644958

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Featuring careful analyses and an extensive engagement with the secondary literature, The Free Animal offers a novel interpretation of the changing nature and complexity of Rousseau's intention.


Social Contract, Masochist Contract

Social Contract, Masochist Contract

Author: Fayçal Falaky

Publisher: State University of New York Press

Published: 2013-12-20

Total Pages: 238

ISBN-13: 1438449917

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Theorization of sensual desire was not uncommon in the eighteenth century; like many materialists of the French Enlightenment, Jean-Jacques Rousseau rejected imperatives founded on metaphysical suppositions and viewed the senses as the only valid source of philosophical knowledge. In Social Contract, Masochist Contract, Fayçal Falaky demonstrates that what distinguishes Rousseau is that the foundational measure on which he bases his materialist philosophy is a sexual instinct endowed, paradoxically, with the same sublime, self-abnegating attributes historically associated with Christian, metaphysical desire. To understand the aesthetics of Rousseau's masochism is, Falaky argues, to understand how ideals of Christian morality and spiritual ennoblement survived the Enlightenment, and how God died, only to be repackaged in new fetishes. Whether it is the imperious mistress of his erotic fantasies, the Arcadian nature of his philosophical reveries, or the sublime Law designed to elevate the citizen from enslaving appetite, Rousseau's fetishes herald the new regulative Ideals of the modern secular state.


The Liberty of Ancients Compared with that of Moderns

The Liberty of Ancients Compared with that of Moderns

Author: Benjamin Constant

Publisher: Good Press

Published: 2020-12-08

Total Pages: 30

ISBN-13:

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This is an essay by Benjamin Constant. In this essay, Constant contrasted two views on freedom: one held by "the Ancients," particularly those in Classical Greece, and the other by members of modern societies. He investigates the dangers of attempting to impose ancient liberty in a modern context, as well as the risks associated with each type of liberty. The danger of ancient liberty was that men, preoccupied with securing their share of social power, might place too little value on individual rights and pleasures. The danger of modern liberty is that we will give up our right to participate in political power too easily, absorbed in the enjoyment of our independence and the pursuit of our particular interests." Constant believes that the two types of liberty must eventually be combined.