Encountering Tragedy : Rousseau and the Project of Democratic Order

Rousseau's work has long been fundamental to democratic thought. Steven Johnston here addresses some of the more paradoxical and problematic aspects of his ambiguous legacy. Johnston argues that the philosopher's real and imagined polities foster forms of violence--even cruelty--at odds with his republican ideals. How could an author committed to freedom and equality authorize new forms of domination? How could Rousseau's considerable theoretical successes simultaneously produce profound and persistent infelicities? Arguing that Rousseau's political prescriptions deliver something other than what they promise, Johnston offers answers to these difficult questions. Johnston draws on selected texts in Rousseau's corpus--including the underappreciated tracts on Poland and Corsica--to interpret Rousseau first and foremost as an anatomist and architect of order. Encountering Tragedy contests Rousseau's munificent ontological presumptions, probes the necessary and disturbing fictions of the Founding, and delineates the constitutive role of enmity in his virtuous republic.