Rousseau and Hobbes

Abstract

Abstract This book provides the most extensive analysis to date of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's engagement with the political thought of Thomas Hobbes. This involves tracing Hobbes's French reception in the first half of the eighteenth century to elucidate the context in which Rousseau responded to Hobbesian ideas and arguments. When situated in this context, many of the difficulties in understanding Rousseau's critique of Hobbes are overcome, and its deeply polemical character is revealed. In particular, the book shows how Rousseau sought to reveal that much modern natural law and doux commerce theory was, despite its protestations to the contrary, indebted to a Hobbesian account of human nature and the origins of society. The book also advances an original interpretation of Rousseau's political philosophy, emerging from this encounter with Hobbesian ideas and arguments. This stresses the importance and interplay of three themes: first, nature understood as a normative standard; second, free will as an inalienable gift of nature; third, the role of the passions in general and of amour-propre in particular. The book argues that Rousseau's vision of a well-ordered republic was based on cultivating man's naturally good passions, while respecting and generalizing man's inalienable gifts of nature—his life and free will—in order to render the life of the virtuous citizen in accordance with nature as a normative standard.

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