Rousseau and Radicalization

Table of Contents

https://doi.org/10.3735/9781961844230.book-part-003

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Abstract

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) was one of the most innovative thinkers of the Enlightenment. He broke with most other philosophes—political thinkers of the period—by insisting that passion and emotion had more influence over the formation of human societies than did rational thinking. His political works, especially Discourse on the Arts and Sciences (1750) and The Social Contract (1762), developed a theory of the origins of human society that stood in opposition to those of his contemporaries. He insisted that emotion, rather than rational thinking, governed human society in the state of nature. This idea irritated many his fellow philosophes. For Rousseau, these philosophes did more to contribute to the problem of social evil than to solve it.