Rousseau and the Dilemmas of Modernity

This volume seeks to capture Jean-Jacques Rousseau's astonishing contribution to our understanding of the dilemmas of modernity. For the contributors to this book Rousseau is present as well as past, because he was so modern and yet so ambivalent about modernity, a position with which we are quite familiar. Highlighted in this volume is the contention that Rousseau set the stage for many discussions of the good and bad of modernity.Previous efforts to deal with Rousseau and modernity have suffered from myopia. In the nineteenth century the Romantics claimed Rousseau as one of their own, pulling him out of his historical context, ignoring his full scale immersion in the debates of the French Enlightenment. In the twentieth century commentators have read into Rousseau the ahistorical and present-minded Cold War theme of "Rousseau the totalitarian."In this volume Rousseau is treated as a person of his age but also as someone who speaks to us today. The topics covered range from feminism, music, science, and political theory, to updating the classics, and to the search for and limitations to the quest for self-knowledge. Few if any figures can compete with Rousseau when it comes to forcing us to face up to the price we pay for "progress."

Introduction: Rousseau and the Dilemmas of Modernity Mark Hulliung Part One: Before and After Vincennes1 Rousseau's Chemical Apprenticeship Christopher Kelly Part Two: Citoyens and Citoyennes2 Rousseau's Response to the Social Contract Tradition Mark Hulliung 3 Over Her Dead Body: Voila La Citoyenne? Claudia Schaler Part Three: Sound and Music4 How to Be Modern in Music: Rousseau between Greece, Italy, and Vienna Michael O'Dea 5 Listening in Rousseau's Auditory World: Sound, Noise, and Music Julia Simon Part Four: Ancients and Moderns6 Rousseau, Fenelon, and the Quarrel between the Ancients and the Moderns Patrick Riley 7 Stoicism for Rousseau and Other Beleaguered Moderns Mark Hulliung Part Five: The Modern Predicament8 Rousseau and the Dilemmas of Liberal Modernity Shefali Misra 9 The Unconditional Self Claude Habib About the AuthorsIndex