The Jean-Jacques Rousseau appreciation thread

I don't know if this is going to be construed as a "pretentious asshole" thread or not, but whatever.

Long story short: I'm in my senior year at a Prestigious Great Books School, and this has afforded me the opportunity to read lots of philosophy over the years. I've been on a tear with Rousseau lately, the man was just amazing. Most people seem to think that his writing and philosophy centered on the Second Discourse noble savage stuff (and to be fair, many seem to misunderstand even that concept), but the body of his work comprises much more depth than that.

Anyway, I was just wondering if we had any other fans here. And if you're not, you should be. His writing, even if you don't agree with it, is nearly always engaging and interesting.

If you're interested in reading his stuff, I'd start with the Discourses, and then move on to Emile, and then just pick and choose from there. As far as translations go, the Discourses are in a rather nice edition from Cambridge, edited by Victor Gourevitch. For Emile, the Allan Bloom translation is the only way to go.

Oh, man, totally. I love how one of his favorite things to do was rip on Hobbes in pretty much everything he ever wrote. Of course, I haven't read Confessions or Julie (or a bunch of other stuff, for that matter), and I wouldn't be surprised if he just slipped a "Fuck Hobbes!" in there somewhere.

In other news, Senior Year here is pretty much leading up to the twentieth century, and having read a lot of Rousseau, I see his fingerprints in pretty much every writer we've been reading. I'm beginning to come to the conclusion that he's probably the single most influential modern philosopher, and not only in terms of philosophy. Literature was never the same after him, for example (Tolstoy and Proust were fans). Most seem to recognize only his influence over the romantics and the idealists, but Rousseau definitely reaches far wider than that. His influence of Nietzsche and Marx is pretty obvious, and Hegel would probably hate to admit it that he kind of cribs from Book I of Emile for his Phenomenology.

God, I'm a dork...

Have you read Emile? That's the main thing for me. If I were judging solely on the Discourses and The Social Contract, I'd be more inclined to agree with you, but Emile really delves deep into the human condition, and how all our faculties are related, and what he says in that book was obviously very influential on pretty much every philosopher that came after him. Or at least, the ones that I've read. Hell, I think that he even laid some of the groundwork for psychology right there alongside Kant, and he definitely showed the development of the consciousness in a way that Hegel would pick up and run with in Book I. The preamble of the Profession of Faith in Book IV gives what Hegel would use to be the origin of the 'God Concept' in Phenomonology, and Rousseau does it in one paragraph that makes sense the first time you read it.

While he didn't fully develop these ideas, they were definitely part of his thinking, just not the sole object of it. We're reading Beyond Good and Evil right now, and while large sections of it are very obviously Nietzsche's own, a fair bit of Nietzsche's rhetoric about "conserving yourself" comes straight from Book V of Emile.

Anyway, Emile seems to be an unjustly forgotten book, as it is a touchstone for most of the philosophy to come after it, and pretty much all the psychology, which it still manages to outstrip.

(As an aside: We also just read Use and Abuse of History for Life, which takes a lot from the First Discourse and other choice bits of Rousseau's philosophy, which is why I think if your going to put Nietzsche on a short list [And why the hell not? He deserves it.], Rousseau should be right there with him.)

I mean, he may not be THE modern philosopher, but he definitely belongs in the upper echelon with Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, etc.

Of course, it is possible that I'm overstating the importance of Emile and merely seeing coincidence. I do love that book, and I did feel changed by it, so I may have some rose-tinted glasses on.

EDIT: By the way, thanks for the well-wishes!

Go for it, man. It's his masterwork.

In other news, I was flipping through Bertrand Russell's (I haven't read anything by him yet) History of Western Philosophy, and his critique of Rousseau in there was pretty damn antagonistic, and also seemed to miss the point. He calls Hitler a Rousseauvian politician, which was kind of dumb to me. Also, he only seemed to have read the two discourses, the Contract, and the Profession of Faith. His criticism of Rousseau's attitudes towards liberty were quite off the mark, something that I attribute to not reading Book 5 of Emile.

Then again, Rousseau hated popularizers...