Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Fundamental Political Writings

This classroom edition includes On the Social Contract, the Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts, the Discourse on the Origins of Inequality, and the Preface to Narcissus.

Each text has been newly translated and includes a full complement of explanatory notes. The editors’ introduction offers students diverse points of entry into some of the distinctive possibilities and challenges of each of these fundamental texts, as well as an introduction to Rousseau’s life and historical situation. The volume also includes annotated appendices that help students to explore the origins and influences of Rousseau’s work, including excerpts from Hobbes, Pascal, Descartes, Mandeville, Diderot, Voltaire, Madame de Staël, Benjamin Constant, Joseph de Maistre, Kant, Hegel, and Engels.

Matthew W. Maguire is Associate Professor of History and Catholic Studies at DePaul University. He is the author of The Conversion of the Imagination: From Pascal through Rousseau to Tocqueville (2006) and Carnal Spirit: The Revolutions of Charles Péguy (2018).

David Lay Williams is Professor of Political Science at DePaul University. He is the author of Rousseau’s Platonic Enlightenment (2007) and Rousseau’s ‘Social Contract’: An Introduction (2014), as well as co-editor of The General Will: The Evolution of a Concept (2015).

Ian Johnston is Emeritus Professor at Vancouver Island University, Nanaimo, British Columbia.