τὰ γὰρ τῆς τῶν πολλῶν ψυχῆς ὄμματα καρτερεῖν πρὸς τὸ θεῖον ἀφορῶντα ἀδύνατα.

–Plato, Sophist 254b

From the start, Rousseau’s published works on man and politics project a spirited decisiveness, contrasting sharply with the abstemious formalism promoted in social science by contemporary epistemology. Emile, for example, begins with a comprehensive and substantive affirmation: “Everything (Tout) is good going out of the hands of the author of things; everything degenerates in the hands of man.” Yet, after punctuating this with “(man) wants nothing such as nature made it, not even man,” the exordium’s fervent vindication of nature swiftly recedes: “Without that everything would be even worse, and our species does not want to be formed halfway.” Similarly, with its opening aporia the Social Contract seems designed to quicken even more indignation than thought by declaring, “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.” But this is then followed by: “What can render (this change) legitimate? I believe I can resolve this question.”

Rousseau’s paradoxical style of writing appears more that of a rhetorician or a littéraire than that of a scientist or a philosopher. Using ordinary language, his stirring eloquence puts the reader directly in the life-world of the subject he treats; and despite the elusive irony infusing it, his style distinctly awakens in readers a sensibility to the controversies surrounding the topic at hand. To the extent, however, that contemporary academic studies of politics have generally followed the Enlightenment perspective he opposed, the liability of such eloquence is that it does not arrest the attention of the methodologist who demands a systematically structured exposition. As a result, the abiding problems of theory and practice grasped and treated by Rousseau are all the more inaccessible to a mind trained to see politics through the medium of contemporary analytical inquiry.