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Paranoid and persecuted

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From: The Spectator
Date: 19970329
Author:Raymond Carr

THE SOLITARY SELF: JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU IN EXILE AND ADVERSITY by Maurice Cranston Allen Lane, 225, pp. 247

It can be argued that the two thinkers who have done most to influence the way Western man looks at himself and the natural world surrounding him are Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Charles Darwin. It is odd that both were chronic invalids, and that we know the intimate details of their symptoms through their extensive correspondence - a proof of the correctness of Rousseau's fear that the advance of technology, in this case the telephone, would impoverish our lives. Both sapped the ...

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