ENGLISH

Jean-Jacques Rousseau: The Politics of the Ordinary

By Tracy B. Strong

Book information

Publisher
Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Year
2002
ISBN
0742521435, 9780742521438
Language
english
Format
PDF
Filesize
13 MB (13525234 bytes)
Series
Modernity and Political Thought
Edition
Revised
Pages
232\115
Time added
2018-04-14 08:04:45
Political;Philosophy;Politics & Social Sciences;HiUsed & Rental Textbooks;Specialty BoutiqueUsed & Rental Textbooks;Specialty Boutique;Politic

Description

Rousseau is most often read either as a theorist of individual authenticity or as a communitarian. In this book, he is neither. Instead, Rousseau is understood as a theorist of the common person. In Strong's understanding, Rousseau's use of 'common' always refers both to that which is common and to that which is ordinary, vulgar, everyday. For Strong, Rousseau resonates with Kant, Hegel, and Marx, but he is more modern like Emerson, Nietzsche, Eittegenstein, and Heidegger. Rousseau's democratic individual is an ordinary self, paradoxically multiple and not singular. In the course of exploring this contention, Strong examines Rousseau's fear of authorship (though not of authority), his understanding of the human, his attempt to overcome the scandal that relativism posed for politics, and the political importance of sexuality.

Similar books