Ernst Cassirer, The Question of Jean-Jacques Rousseau; edited by Peter Gay (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989).

Excerpt:

I shall speak of the question of Jean-Jacques Rousseau.  Yet the very formulation of this topic implies a certain assumption—the assumption that Rousseau’s personality and world of ideas have not been reduced to a mere historical fact that leaves us no further task but to comprehend it and describe it in its simple actuality.  Even today, we do not think of Rousseau’s doctrine as an established body of single propositions that can be easily recorded and fitted into histories of philosophy by means of textual reproduction and review.  True, that is how innumerable monographs have described it; but compared with Rousseau’s own work all these accounts seem peculiarly cold and lifeless.

Online:
Amazon