Jean-Jacques Rousseau

should not be judged by the instances where people tried to follow his advice literally, still less by the harmful things done in his name.

As with any truly great writer, it is foolish to judge Rousseau by the instances where people tried to follow his advice literally, still less by the harmful things done in his name (by which standard Jesus Christ does not exactly come off unblemished.) Rousseau's influence on modern culture has been far too vast and multifaceted to squeeze into reductive categories of “positive" and “negative" and even his most misguided prescriptions often came accompanied by profound and poetic insights.

David A. BellThinkers

David A. Bell