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Natural happiness, sensation, and infancy in Rousseau's Emile.

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From: Polity
Date: 20020922
Author:Smith, Jeffrey A.

Until very recently, Jean-Jacques Rousseau has widely been regarded by political theorists as that philosophic hero (or culprit, depending on one's cup of tea) who is responsible for dethroning nature and installing will as the foundation of !aw and right. According to a new view, however, Rousseau intends neither to discredit nor to abandon human nature as the ontological foundation of normative principles. (1) The vast discrepancy between those two interpretations is of course owed to the variety of textual evidence one can muster from the writings of Rousseau, and which ...

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