Bertrand de Jouvenal, "An Essay on Rousseau’s Politics" in Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Critical Assessments of Leading Political Philosophers (Volume I), edited by John T. Scott (London: Routledge, 2006). pp. 79-140.

Excerpt:

Here we have the author who was the most praised, the most cursed, and the one who has exercised the greatest influence on the development of political beliefs and institutions.  Yet he is not a political writer.  Take a look at his oeuvre: those works dedicated to government are minimal.  And look at his letters: his political concerns rarely appear.

Of the four essays written by Rousseau dedicated to public matters, the first theoretical and the others practical, his contemporaries knew of only two, and posterity has retained only one.  It is a small, incomplete book which the author later said he would rework, an infamous desire given the book’s effects.

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