Bibliographic Information

Rousseau and liberty

edited by Robert Wokler

Manchester University Press : Distributed exclusively in the USA and Canada by St Martin's Press, c1995

  • : hbk
  • : pbk

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Note

Papers originally presented at a colloquium held at Trinity College, Cambridge, Sept. 28-30, 1988

Includes bibliographical references and index

Description and Table of Contents

Description

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. The essays explore how Rousseau's doctrine of popular sovereignty and the general will inspired Jacobin admirers to worship his philosophy, to which his critics also ascribed the French Revolution's excesses. The tensions in his thought between natural independence and political cohesion, or between liberty and sovereignty, still inform some of the major ideological conflicts of the contemporary world. Contributors to this collection are leading Rousseau scholars and political theorists from England and America.

Table of Contents

  • Part 1 Reading Rousseau contextually: Rousseau's general will - freedom of a particular kind, Patrick Riley
  • Hume, Smith and Rousseau on freedom, Norman Barry
  • human nature, liberty and progress - Rousseau's dialogue with the critics of the discours sur l'inegalite, Christopher Kelly and Roger Masters
  • Rousseau and Tocqueville on democratic legitimacy and illegitimacy, Melvin Richter. Part 2 Interpreting the social contract: thinking one's own thoughts - autonomy and the citizen, Geraint Parry
  • "Forced to be free", John Hope Mason
  • Rousseau, the problem of sovereignty and the limits of political obligation, John Charvet
  • eternal vigilance - Rousseau's death penalty, Felicity Baker. Part 3 Locating Rousseau's meanings and significance: Rousseau and his critics on the fanciful liberties we have lost, Robert Wokler
  • "But in a republic, men are needed" - guardians of the boundaries of liberty, Ursula Vogel
  • Rousseau's theory of liberty, Maurice Cranston
  • Rousseau's soi-disant liberty, Lester G. Crocker
  • Rousseau and totalitarianism - with hindsight?, Iain Hampsher-Monk.

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