Important historically, alike as giving us an insight into the mind He is still revered or hatedĪs the author who, above all others, inspired the French Revolution.Īt the present day, his works possess a double significance. Reject his political doctrines as a whole, without sifting them orĪttempting to understand and discriminate. Now men are inclined, as political bias prompts them, to accept or He isĪccepted as one of the greatest writers France has produced but even Name, a hundred and fifty years after the publication of the SocialĬontract, is still a controversial watchword and a party cry. Oppressors with an equal lack of understanding and imagination. He has been cried up and cried down by democrats and Rousseau has suffered as much as any one from critics without a sense They will be most the children of their age, when they are Tradition to express the deeper truths towards which they are feeling Old-fashioned form, and to use the inadequate ideas and formulae of What is most startlingly new, they will be most likely to put it in an Statements that have been handed down to them. Of fundamental problems will always be relative to the traditional Will always be those their contemporaries are asking their statement Great men make, indeed, individualĬontributions to the knowledge of their times but they can never In which they behave, are the result of the habits of thought andĪction which they find around them.

The form in which men cast their speculations, no less than the ways Theory, no less than action, is subject to these necessities Inessential and temporary to the absolute and permanent value of their Without mentally referring to theĮnvironment in which they lived, we cannot hope to penetrate below the COLE, FELLOW OF MAGDALEN COLLEGE, OXFORDįor the study of the great writers and thinkers of the past, historical DUTTON & CO 1920ĮVERYMAN'S LIBRARY EDITED BY ERNEST RHYS PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY ROUSSEAU'S SOCIAL CONTRACT, ETC. THE SOCIAL CONTRACT & DISCOURSES BY JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU Images of the original pages are available through ***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SOCIAL CONTRACT & DISCOURSES***įrom page images generously made available by With this eBook or online at Title: The Social Contract & Discourses Re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and withĪlmost no restrictions whatsoever. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Translated by George Douglas Howard Cole

The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Social Contract & Discourses, by Jean-Jacques Rousseau The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Social Contract & Discourses, by

The social contract theory of rousseau