Jean-Jacques Rousseau

What was the legacy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau? He was a champion of universal human rights, a great critic of inequality, and one of the most remarkable writers on civic education―as well as the author of paradoxes, resulting in some of his contemporaries considering him as a charlatan. He was an extraordinarily versatile poet, composer, playwright, novelist, botanist, educationist and political philosopher, who deserved his place among the leading thinkers of his century. He is often considered as an heir to Plato, Saint Augustine, Montaigne and Thomas Hobbes and a predecessor of Emmanuel Kant and Karl Marx.

The book falls into two parts: an account of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s life; and an attempt to explain the content of his major publications. It is one of the few recent books to address the life and work of this profound thinker.