Excerpt from Voltaire, Montesquieu and Rousseau in England About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
Rousseau is known as the forerunner of the French Revolution. He called for a "return to nature" which included a society demonstrating true equality. Rousseau's main philosophical works, which outline his social and political ideals, include: The New Eloise; Emile, or On Education; and The Social Contract. Rousseau was the first political philosopher who, while exploring the origins of the state, attempted to explain the causes of social inequality and its forms. He believed that the state existed through a social contract with the people. Rousseau's writings rebuke modern society for inequalities, while providing ethical instruction and encouraging the science of compassion. DISCOURSE ON THE ARTS AND SCIENCES DISCOURSE ON THE ORIGIN AND BASIS OF INEQUALITY AMONG MEN DISCOURSE ON POLITICAL ECONOMY ÉMILE, OR ON EDUCATION THE SOCIAL CONTRACT OR PRINCIPLES OF POLITICAL RIGHT CONSTITUTIONAL PROJECT FOR CORSICA CONSIDERATIONS ON THE GOVERNMENT OF POLAND REVERIES OF A SOLITARY WALKER THE CONFESSIONS OF JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1908 edition. Excerpt: ... ROUSSEAU IN ENGLAND I The circumstances under which Rousseau sought an asylum in England, and his residence here between January 1766 and May 1767, can scarcely be described as an unwritten chapter in his biography, because they have been treated with some fulness both by Burton in his Life of Hume, and by Mr. John Morley in his well-known monograph on Rousseau. But Burton confines himself chiefly to Rousseau's relations with Hume; and considerations of symmetry, as well as the plan and design of Mr. Morley's work, necessarily precluded him from entering too much into detail about what was after all only a short episode in a long and somewhat crowded life. And yet this episode well deserves particular attention. Nothing which concerns a man so truly extraordinary can be without interest; everything which can throw light on his peculiarities and character is of importance. The visit to England was the turning-point of his life; it was more; it witnessed or occasioned the transformation of the author of La Nouvelle Hilo'ise, of Emile, of the Contrat Social, of the Lettre a Christophe de Beaumont, into the author of the Confessions, of the Reveries, of the Dialogues, and of the Letter to General Conway. It found him, no doubt, a compound as whimsical as Pascal's and Pope's picture of man, but consistent in inconsistency and perfectly intelligible, --it left him a psychological problem almost as puzzling and fascinating as Swift. It is commonly supposed that the eccentricities which always distinguished him simply became exaggerated in England, and that he was essentially the same man between 1766 and his death as he had been before. This was certainly not the case. To speak of him indeed as losing the balance of his mind and as becoming..
The Spirit of the Laws not only systematizes the foundational ideas of “separation of powers” and “balances and checks,” it provides the decisive response to the question of whether power in the nation-state can be limited in the aftermath of the Westphalian settlement of 1648. It describes a civilizational change through which power becomes domesticated, with built-in resistance to attempts to absolutize (or make total) political power. As such, it is the Bible of modern politics, now made more accessible to English readers than it ever has been.
