Jean Jacques Rousseau: The Politics of the OrdinaryRowman & Littlefield, 2002 - 201 pages Rousseau is most often read either as a theorist of individual authenticity or as a communitarian. In this book, he is neither. Instead, Rousseau is understood as a theorist of the common person. In Strong's understanding, Rousseau's use of 'common' always refers both to that which is common and to that which is ordinary, vulgar, everyday. For Strong, Rousseau resonates with Kant, Hegel, and Marx, but he is more modern like Emerson, Nietzsche, Eittegenstein, and Heidegger. Rousseau's democratic individual is an ordinary self, paradoxically multiple and not singular. In the course of exploring this contention, Strong examines Rousseau's fear of authorship (though not of authority), his understanding of the human, his attempt to overcome the scandal that relativism posed for politics, and the political importance of sexuality. |
Contents
JeanJacques Rousseau and the fear of the Author | 1 |
The Life | 4 |
The Author as Personality | 8 |
Why Confess? | 12 |
Confession and Constancy | 16 |
The First Discourse and the Question of Philosophy | 19 |
The Language for the Human | 25 |
Rousseau and the Experience of Others | 30 |
The Education of an Ordinary Man | 104 |
Education and the Philosopher | 110 |
Feeling | 113 |
Control and Morality | 116 |
Appearance and Convention | 119 |
Knowing Others | 120 |
The Premise of Human Criticism | 124 |
Sex and the Other | 130 |
Citizen of Geneva | 31 |
The Absence of the Thought of the Common | 35 |
Looking Into Books | 37 |
What Nature Is Not | 40 |
Loving Oneself | 48 |
The Self Encountering the Self and the Other | 49 |
Reading and Seeing | 50 |
Nature and Denaturation | 52 |
Music and the Public Realm | 59 |
Alone With Oneself | 64 |
The General Will and the Scandal of Politics | 67 |
The Thought of the Common | 75 |
The General Will | 79 |
The Seductor Narcissist | 85 |
Sovereignty | 88 |
Representation and Time | 90 |
Government | 94 |
The Threat of Corruption | 101 |
Sex Politics and Virtue | 131 |
The Ends of Politics | 139 |
The Remedy and the Illness | 141 |
The Alternative of Transparency | 145 |
Humanity and Transparency | 147 |
The Deduction of Immanence | 149 |
A Human Home | 152 |
Who Has No Home? | 155 |
Is Sex Human? | 159 |
What Is the Legislator? | 160 |
Ends to the Human | 162 |
Notes Chapters 15 | 164 |
Bibliographical Afterword | 191 |
195 | |
198 | |
About the Author | |
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amour appears argued become Cambridge chapter child citizen claim common commonalty Confessions David Hume Dialogues discussion Edmund Burke Emile 1 OC Emile's encounter Encyclopédie ESOL essay existence experience fact Friedrich Nietzsche Geneva give Hannah Arendt Heloise Hobbes human Hume Ibid idea identity important individual inequality institutions Jean Starobinski Jean-Jacques Rousseau Judith Shklar Kant language legislator Letter live matter means moral Narcisse nature Nietzsche's OC iii OC iv one's oneself ordinary Origin of Languages Paris person philosophy pity political society Political Theory Political Thought portrait possible precisely preface OC present question Rawls reader realm reason relation religion requires Rêveries Rousseau indicates Rousseau writes says Rousseau Second Discourse sense sexuality Shklar Social Contract sovereign sovereignty speak Stanley Cavell Starobinski Strong theater things Thomas Hobbes Transparency tutor University Press virtue women words York