Ryan Patrick Hanley, “Political Economy and Individual Liberty” in The Challenge of Rousseau, edited by Eve Grace and Christopher Kelly (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013).

Excerpt:

The Discours sur l’économie politique is indeed likely “the least commented upon of Rousseau’s political writings.” This is in some sense unsurprising; as a contribution to the subject its title proclaims to be its focus, it can only be regarded as a failure. Indeed even if one can find in it “échos directs” of certain economic debates of the first half of the eighteenth century, the third Discourse does not present itself principally as a contribution to such debates. As a result Rousseau figures only relatively minimally in leading recent English-language studies of pre-revolutionary French political economy. Yet the failure of the third Discourse to speak to the classic questions of political economy hardly justifies relegating it to the dustbin. For, as a contribution to political theory – and specifically as a contribution to the study of the relationship of political and economic institutions to the preservation of the liberty and dignity of the individual – it stands as one of Rousseau’s greatest if least appreciated achievements.

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