Commentary

• Rousseau, Nature, and the Problem of the Good Life

  - Laurence D. Cooper, Rousseau, Nature, and the Problem of the Good Life. (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999).
  From the publisher: The rise of modern science created a crisis for Western moral and political philosophy, which had theretofore relied either on Christian theology or Aristotelian natural teleology as guarantors of an objective standard for ‘the good… More

• The restlessness of ‘being’ Rousseau’s protean sentiment of existence

  - Eve Grace, “The restlessness of ‘being’ Rousseau's protean sentiment of existence,” History of European Ideas, Vol. 27, Issue 2, 2001.  
  Excerpt: The question of the sentiment of existence is central to Rousseau’s thought. For Rousseau’s apparent promise that salvation is to be found on earth for whomever is able to experience it appears as the heart of his claim that man is… More

• Rousseau’s Theodicy of Self-Love: Evil, Rationality, and the Drive for Recognition

  - Frederick Neuhouser, Rousseau's Theodicy of Self-Love: Evil, Rationality, and the Drive for Recognition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).
  From the publisher: This book is the first comprehensive study of Rousseau’s rich and complex theory of the type of self-love (amour propre ) that, for him, marks the central difference between humans and the beasts. Amour propre is the passion that… More