What happens when a man looks at civilization and sees not progress, but a catastrophe? Not liberation, but the slow corruption of everything natural and good in us?

Jean-Jacques Rousseau believed that human beings were born free, compassionate, and whole, and that society had made them vain, competitive, and miserable. Born in Geneva in 1712, abandoned by his father, self-educated and restless, he wandered through Europe before arriving in Paris and producing some of the most dangerous ideas the Enlightenment had ever seen.

This three-hour episode traces Rousseau’s life and philosophy from his youth as a wanderer through Savoy and Turin to his explosive arrival in Parisian intellectual life. We explore his account of human nature, the psychology of amour-propre, his revolutionary ideas about education, his quarrels with Voltaire and the philosophes, his invention of modern autobiography, and his lasting influence on the French Revolution, Romanticism, and democratic theory.

Rousseau was a deeply flawed person who produced some of the most consequential ideas in Western philosophy. This episode holds both truths without flinching.

Please listen only in safe, restful contexts.

(0:00:00) The Wanderer and the Age of Reason

(0:15:49) The First Discourse and the Case Against Civilization

(0:31:32) The State of Nature and the Origins of Inequality

(0:47:35) Compassion, Self-Love, and the Psychology of Corruption

(1:03:54) The Social Contract and the General Will

(1:19:31) Freedom, Authority, and the Paradox of Being Forced to Be Free

(1:34:34) Emile and the Education of a Free Human Being

(1:50:18) The Confessions and the Invention of the Modern Self

(2:05:58) The Break with the Enlightenment and the Road to Romanticism

(2:21:58) Revolution, Legacy, and the Unfinished Argument

Suggested Reading:

The Social Contract by Rousseau (Penguin Classics): https://amzn.to/4bdOsmm

A Discourse on Inequality by Rousseau (Penguin Classics): https://amzn.to/4bemkQf

The Confessions by Rousseau (Penguin Classics): https://amzn.to/4rgWG36

Emile, or On Education by Rousseau: https://amzn.to/3PpLS5m

Reveries of the Solitary Walker by Rousseau (Penguin Classics): https://amzn.to/4rcjv81

Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Restless Genius by Leo Damrosch: https://amzn.to/4sxpOnS

Rousseau: A Very Short Introduction by Robert Wokler: https://amzn.to/47yV1Pk

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