Patrick Riley - The Cambridge Companion to Rousseau

THE CAMBRIDGE COMPANION TO

ROUSSEAU

Each volume in this series of companions to major philosophers contains specially commissioned essays by an international team of scholars, together with a substantial bibliography, and will serve as a reference work for students and nonspecialists. One aim of the series is to dispel the intimidation such readers often feel when faced with the work of a difficult and challenging thinker.

Universally regarded as the greatest French political theorist and philosopher of education of the Enlightenment and probably the greatest French social theorist tout court, Rousseau was an important forerunner of the French Revolution, although his thought was too nuanced and subtle ever to serve as mere ideology. This is the only volume that systematically surveys the full range of Rousseau's activities in politics and education, psychology, anthropology, religion, music, and theater.

New readers will find this the most convenient and accessible guide to Rousseau currently available. Advanced students and specialists will find a conspectus of recent developments in the interpretation of Rousseau.

Patrick Riley is Oakeshott Professor of Political and Moral Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin Madison., and Professore a Contratto, Facolt di Giurisprudenza, Universit degli Studi di Bologna.

The Cambridge Companion to

ROUSSEAU

Edited by Patrick Riley

University of Wisconsin Madison

and

Universit degli Studi di Bologna

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, So Paulo

Cambridge University Press
The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 2RU, UK

Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York

www.cambridge. org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/0521572657

Cambridge University Press 2001

This publication is in copyrightright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 2001

A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data
The Cambridge companion to Rousseau / edited by Patrick Riley.
p. cm. (Cambridge companions to philosophy)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-521-57265-7 ISBN 0-521-57615-6 (pbk.)
1. Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 17121778. I. Riley, Patrick, 1941II. Series.
B2137.C27 2001
194 dc21 2001018430

ISBN-10 0-521-57265-7 hardback
ISBN-10 0-521-57615-6 paperback

Transferred to digital printing 2005

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My chief debt is to Terence Moore, senior Humanities Editor at Cambridge University Press (New York office), who asked me to edit The Cambridge Companion to Rousseau in 1995 and who has displayed an admirably long-suffering patience in waiting for the volume to materialize. It is a real joy to work with so understanding and helpful an editor. (I am particularly grateful to him for bending the rules of the Cambridge Companion series by permitting republication of celebrated Rousseau essays by the late Judith N. Shklar and George A. Kelly; I learned everything I know about Rousseau from them (and from John Rawls) and was determined to have them in the present Companion. Ill health prevented Rawls himself from contributing what would have been a splendid chapter.)

I am of course grateful to all the other contributors to the Companion; many of them put aside pressing work to produce their contributions. No editorial uniformity was imposed on them: I simply asked each to do what he or she knows and loves best, and I think that the outcome justifies such faith and confidence.

I am grateful to my son, Professor Patrick Riley, Jr., of the Department of French at Colgate University, for undertaking his fine translation of Jean Starobinski's remarkable chapter, The Motto Vitam Impender Vero and the Question of Lying.

For typing and other technical help I am grateful to Ms. Laura Weeks, who has taken on more than a fair share of labor for this Companion. Without her constant effort the book would not exist.

I am grateful to the National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh, for kindly permitting the reproduction of the Ramsay portrait of Rousseau that adorns the Companion's cover.

Finally I acknowledge my own companion, Joan A. Riley, who for 35 years has made all of my work possible; without her support I would have achieved little indeed.

Patrick Riley
Cambridge, Massachusetts
October, 2000

CONTRIBUTORS

CHRISTOPHER BROOKE is Senior Tutor in Political and Moral Philosophy at Magdalen College, Oxford University. His work is on early-modern Stoicism and on 17th-century Augustinianism.

C.N. DUGAN is a Tutor at St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland. His dissertation was on political education in Plato's Laws, and he is presently preparing a version of this work for publication.

VICTOR GOUREVITCH is Professor (Emeritus) of Political Philosophy at Wesley an University. He is the editor of the Rousseau volumes in the Series, Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought, and the author of numerous chapters and articles on Rousseau.

MARK HULLIUNG is Professor of History at Brandeis University. He is the author of Rousseau: The Autocritique of Enlightenment (Harvard University Press) and of a book on Machiavelli.

THOMAS KAVANAGH is Professor of French Literature at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of Writing the Truth: Authority and Desire in Rousseau (University of California Press).

CHRISTOPHER KELLY is Professor of Political Science at Boston College. He is the author of Rousseau's Exemplary Life: The Confessions as Political Philosophy (Cornell University Press) and is coeditor (with Roger D. Masters) of Rousseau's Collected Writings (University Press of New England).

THE LATE GEORGE ARMSTRONG KELLY was Visiting Professor of Political Philosophy at Johns Hopkins University. He was the author of Idealism, Politics and History (Cambridge University Press), Hegel's Retreat from Eleusis (Princeton University Press), and many chapters and articles.

GERAINT PARRY is Professor of Government at the University of Manchester, England. He is the author of numerous works on the philosophy of education (especially on Rousseau).

PATRICK RILEY is Oakeshott Professor of Political and Moral Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin (Madison). He is the author of The General Will before Rousseau (Princeton University Press) and of Leibniz Universal Jurisprudence: Justice as the Charity of the Wise (Harvard University Press).

SUSAN MELD SHELL is Professor of Political Science at Boston College. She is the author of several books on Kant (Toronto and Chicago) and is at work on a book on Punishment.

THE LATE JUDITH N. SHKLAR was Professor of Government at Harvard University. She was the author of Men and Citizens: A Study of Rousseau's Social Theory (Cambridge University Press), of Ordinary Vices (Harvard University Press), and of a study of Hegel's Phenomenology (Cambridge).

JEAN STAROBINSKI is Professor in the Department of Modern French Language and Literature at the University of Geneva, Switzerland. He is the author of