Of The Social Contract and Other Political Writings

(Review 'Other Political Writings') The following extracts were really helpful, in fleshing out Rousseau's thinking, and the application of his ideology in a real-world setting. By the end, I really felt like I understood his ideas, and how he justified them, to a strong extent.   Geneva MS Expanding......more

Quite a lot to take in, and several times within a section I found myself hard-pressed to see who would ever want to be ruled by such a strict and 'manly' society that did not allow the arts to flourish. The only reason we know so much about Ancient Greece, Rome and powerful states is through the ar......more

An interesting read! Rousseau's words are fairly endearing, as a champion of the people and the truth he believes that government should serve to make the people stronger, and any abuse against this is against the country in general; and of course for all good philosophical works, he goes into detail......more

I picked this up again recently in an effort to ground my thinking about the heartache and the thousand natural shocks that America is heir to. The line on America is that we're a country of laws, that we're a people bound not by the caprice of a sovereign but by a constitution, that we're endowed w......more

Rousseau is one of those thinkers who you have to be careful with, in order to avoid throwing away the baby with the bathwater. While it is true that the irony was lost on the guy when he wrote a book about how to raise children, even though he abandoned all of his children, and that he declared tha......more