The rise and spectacular fall of the friendship between the two great philosophers of the eighteenth century, barely six months after they first met, reverberated on both sides of the Channel. As the ...relationship between Jean-Jacques Rousseau and David Hume unraveled, a volley of rancorous letters was fired off, then quickly published and devoured by aristocrats, intellectuals, and common readers alike. Everyone took sides in this momentous dispute between the greatest of Enlightenment thinkers.In this lively and revealing book, Robert Zaretsky and John T. Scott explore the unfolding rift between Rousseau and Hume. The authors are particularly fascinated by the connection between the thinkers' lives and thought, especially the way that the failure of each to understand the other-and himself-illuminates the limits of human understanding. In addition, they situate the philosophers' quarrel in the social, political, and intellectual milieu that informed their actions, as well as the actions of the other participants in the dispute, such as James Boswell, Adam Smith, and Voltaire. By examining the conflict through the prism of each philosopher's contribution to Western thought, Zaretsky and Scott reveal the implications for the two men as individuals and philosophers as well as for the contemporary world.
Contexto: A filosofia do pensador genebrino Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) foi de fundamental importância para o desenvolvimento da mentalidade constitucionalista e, principalmente, dos princípios ...do republicanismo, enquanto uma orientação axiológico-normativa em prol do chamado “bem comum”, compreendido como o conjunto dos bens e dos valores imprescindíveis para o desenvolvimento da comunidade. Além disso, as teses republicanas enxergam a liberdade não apenas como um direito, mas, sobretudo, na qualidade de um dever. Nesse sentido, o republicanismo apresenta, em seu âmago, uma nova compreensão sobre a liberdade, encarando-a a partir do papel do indivíduo na organização do poder político. Objetivos e metodologia: Desse modo, as discussões rousseaunianas acerca da chamada “vontade geral”, das virtudes cívicas, da liberdade enquanto autorregulação e da soberania do corpo coletivo estabelecem um diálogo central com os elementos nevrálgicos da cosmovisão republicana, cujas reflexões são de grande valia para um melhor entendimento das fragilidades democráticas contemporâneas e da crise da democracia liberal. Fundamentado sob a metodologia de abordagem dedutiva, o presente trabalho foi construído com a utilização de fontes bibliográficas.Conclusão: Observa-se a imprescindibilidade da estruturação do constitucionalismo democrático a partir de mecanismos que favoreçam uma compreensão deontológica da liberdade civil, sobretudo, para uma melhor concretização do princípio da dignidade da pessoa humana.
This is a book about why Jean-Jacques Rousseau can be seen as one of the first theorists of the concept of civil society and a key source of the idea of a federal system.
Discuto neste artigo alguns temas relacionados à contemplação da natureza em Rousseau. A partir das análises de Henri Gouhier, procuro mostrar que a proximidade entre Deus e natureza, realizada por ...Rousseau, é fundamentada sempre sobre um Deus transcendente, ainda que os êxtases contemplativos dos Devaneios do caminhante solitário pareçam panteístas. O prazer derivado do sentimento de existência, alcançados nos êxtases contemplativos de Rousseau, revelam um duplo movimento da alma que se expande sobre a natureza ao mesmo tempo em que se dobra sobre si mesmo, num movimento de retração.
While also valuing useful citizenship, Rousseau offers what is perhaps the most substantive modern account and defense of idleness. According to Rousseau, idleness’ attraction lies in its relation to ...human nature and its capacity for producing our highest happiness. However, Rousseau is also careful to show that most existing forms of idleness are false, and true idleness is a difficult achievement. The happiness available in idleness can only be attained when free from vanity, obligation, and foresight. This specific form of idleness is also the only form that is morally and politically defensible. Though Rousseau argues, in the First Discourse, that the useless are pernicious, this is only true of the falsely idle that seek to undermine common morality and political attachment. True idleness, while still useless, satisfies Rousseau’s core moral principle to not harm.
Despite Rousseau's legacy to political thought, his contribution as a constitutional theorist is underexplored. Drawing on his constitutional designs for Corsica and Poland, this book argues that ...Rousseau's constitutionalism is defined chiefly by its socially directive character. His constitutional projects are not aimed, primarily, at coordinating and containing state power in the familiar liberal-democratic sense. Instead, they are aimed at fostering the social conditions in which a fuller sense of freedom - understood broadly as non-domination - can be realised across all social domains. And in turn, since Rousseau views domination as being deeply embedded in complex social practices, his constitutionalism is aimed at fostering a radical austerity - social, economic and cultural - as its foil. In locating Rousseau's constitutional projects within his social and political theory of servitude and domination, this book will challenge the predominant focus and orientation of contemporary republican theory. Leading republican thinkers have drawn on the historical republican canon to articulate a model of constitutionalism which is, on the whole, 'liberal' in focus and orientation. This book will argue that the more communitarian orientation of Rousseau's constitutionalism - that is, its socially-directive focus - stems from a sophisticated and compelling account of the sources of unfreedom in complex societies, sources which are ignored or downplayed by the neo-republican literature. Rousseau embraces a communitarian social politics as part of his constitutional project precisely because, pessimistically, he views domination as being deeply embedded in the social relations of the liberal order.
Andrew Russ argues in this book that a closer look at their philosophical underpinnings finds that Rousseau, Marx, and Foucault are much less "historical" in their methodology than is widely ...believed. Instead, they share a more "timeless" view, one indebted to principles ordinarily seen as timeless or transcendent
Instinct and intimacy Ogrodnick, Margaret
Instinct and intimacy,
c1999, 19990628, 1999, 2000, 1999-01-01
eBook
Drawing upon his autobiographies, Ogrodnick analyzes Jean-Jacques Rousseau as a theorist of the modern self, tracing the implications for the problems and recommendations of his political thought.
Rousseau and desire Blackell, Mark; Kow, Simon; Duncan, John
Rousseau and desire,
2009, 20121108, 2009-01-01, 20090101
eBook
Rousseau and Desire is the first examination of the eighteenth-century philosopher's conceptualization of desire in relation to his understanding of modernity.
Why did Rousseau fail-often so ridiculously or grotesquely-to
live up to his own principles? In one of the most notorious cases
of hypocrisy in intellectual history, this champion of the joys of
...domestic life immediately rid himself of each of his five children,
placing them in an orphans' home. He advocated profound devotion to
republican civic life, and yet he habitually dodged opportunities
for political engagement. Finally, despite an elevated ethics of
social duty, he had a pattern of turning against his most intimate
friends, and ultimately fled humanity and civilization as such.
In Hypocrisy and the Philosophical Intentions of
Rousseau , Matthew D. Mendham is the first to systematically
analyze Rousseau's normative philosophy and self-portrayals in view
of the yawning gap between them. He challenges recent approaches to
"the Jean-Jacques problem," which tend either to dismiss his life
or to downgrade his principles. Engaging in a comprehensive and
penetrating analysis of Rousseau's works, including commonly
neglected texts like his untranslated letters, Mendham reveals a
figure who urgently sought to reconcile his life to his most
elevated principles throughout the period of his main normative
writings. But after the revelation of the secret about his
children, and his disastrous stay in England, Rousseau began to
shrink from the ambitious philosophical life to which he had
previously aspired, newly driven to mitigate culpability for his
discarded children, to a new quietism regarding civic engagement,
and to a collapse of his sense of social duty. This book provides a
moral biography in view of Rousseau's most controversial behaviors,
as well as a preamble to future discussions of the spirit of his
thought, positing a development more fundamental than the recent
paradigms have allowed for.
