Major Works

• Emile

  - Recommended translation: Emile or On Education, ed. and trans. by Alan Bloom (New York: Basic Books, Inc., Publishers, 1979). Originally published in 1762.
  Published in 1762, Emile, or On Education, outlined a process of education that would prevent man from being corrupted by society and instead nurture his natural virtues and goodness. Part-treatise, part-novel, the work recounts the life of a fictional… More

• Julie, or The New Heloise

  - Julie, Or, The New Heloise: Letters of Two Lovers Who Live in a Small Town at the Foot of the Alps, translated and edited by Philip Stewart and Jean Vaché, University Press of New England, 1997. First published in 1761.
  From the publisher: Rousseau’s great epistolary novel, Julie, or the New Heloise, has been virtually unavailable in English since 1810. In it, Rousseau reconceptualized the relationship of the individual to the collective and articulated a new moral… More

Other Works

• Letter to d’Alembert on the Theatre

  - Recommended translation: Politics and the Arts: Letter to M. D'Alembert on the Theatre (Agora Paperback Edition); trans. by Alan Bloom (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1968) [First published by Agora Editions, 1960].
  In October of 1758, Rousseau published the Letter to d’Alembert to refute Jean d’Alembert’s suggestion that Geneva establish a public theater. Rousseau’s essay critiqued the immorality of the Parisian theater and argued that a… More

Commentary

• The Sexual Politics of Jean-Jacques Rousseau

  - Joel Schwartz, The Sexual Politics of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980).
  From the publisher: Joel Schwartz presents the first systematic treatment of Rousseau’s understanding of the political importance of women, sexuality, and the family. Using both Rousseau’s lesser-known literary works and such major writings as… More

• Gendered Community: Rousseau, Sex, and Politics

  - Penny Weiss, Gendered Community: Rousseau, Sex, and Politics (New York: NYU Press, 1993).
  From the publisher: Rousseau’s writings reflect paradoxes and apparent inconsistencies with his principled commitments to freedom and equality. In this engrossing work, Penny Weiss wrestles with issues of gender in the works of Rousseau. Weiss attempts… More