Leo Strauss, “Rousseau”, in Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953), pp. 252-293.
Excerpt:
The first crisis of modernity occurred in the thought of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Rousseau was not the first to feel that the modern venture was a radical error and to seek the remedy in a return to classical thought. It suffices to mention the name of Swift. But Rousseau was not a “reactionary.” He abandoned himself to modernity. One is tempted to say that only through thus accepting the fate of modern man was he led back to antiquity. At any rate, his return to antiquity was, at the same time, an advance of modernity.
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