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| Frail
Happiness
An Essay on Rousseau
Tzvetan
Todorov
Translation by John T. Scott and Robert
D. Zaretsky
May | 2001 | 5.5 x 8 inches
Philosophy, Philosophy - Ethics, Literature and Philosophy
Hardback: $32.00 SH
ISBN-10: 0-271-02110-1
ISBN-13: 978-0-271-02110-2
Paperback: $17.95 SH
ISBN-10: 0-271-02400-3
ISBN-13: 978-0-271-02400-4
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Frail
Happiness remains possibly the most successful of Tzvetan Todorov's
writings on the history of ideas...it is sustained by great intuition
and emotional sympathy; crafted with admirable modesty and sparing
means, it succeeds in conveying the essence of Rousseau's thinking,
offering an excellent, reader-friendly introduction to anyone wishing
to approach his works.”—Times Literary Supplement
"We are all confronted, at one time or another, with choices as
to what sort of life we will lead." So Tzvetan Todorov begins Frail
Happiness, a provocative meditation on the thought and writings
of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Todorov turned to Rousseau, he tells us,
because he no longer found the professional language of scholarship
an effective means for addressing such questions and because he
found in Rousseau a seemingly immediate language that could speak
about what is difficult and problematic in human life.
Rousseau is often said to have "discovered and invented our modernity,"
and Todorov's interpretation of Rousseau centers on the question
of what sort of life we can live in modern times. Like modernity
itself, the answer is complex: there are several ways of life that
Rousseau contemplates and that Todorov considers along with him.
Rousseau juxtaposes: the life of the citizen and that of the solitary
individual, and then, Todorov shows us, reveals a "third way": that
of the moral individual. Todorov explores these ways of life and
their relevance for us two centuries after Rousseau. Although all
have commendable features, it is the third way, that of the moral
individual—the path laid out in Rousseau's novel, Emile—that
the philosopher recommends without reservation.
Frail Happiness is an important interpretation of Rousseau,
one suffused with Todorov's own moral seriousness and intellectual
depth. While ranging widely through Rousseau's corpus with skill
and scholarly authority, he never loses sight of the questions that
led him to Rousseau in the first place: he returns, again and again,
to the fragile yet persistant hope for human happiness.
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Tzvetan
Todorov is a director of research at the Centre National de la
Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in Paris. A linguist, literary theorist,
and world renowned essayist, he is the author of numerous books, several
of which have been translated into English, among them: Voices
from the Gulag: Life and Death in Communist Bulgaria (Penn State,
1999), Facing the Extreme (Holt, 1996), On Human Diversity
(Harvard, 1993), The Conquest of America (HarperCollins,
1984), and Theories of the Symbol (Cornell, 1984).
John T. Scott is Assistant Professor of Political Science at
the University of California at Davis. He is translator of The
Essay on the Origin of Languages and Writings Related to Music
(volume seven of Collected Writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau,
New England, 1999) and author of articles on
various aspects of Rousseau's thought.
Robert D. Zaretsky is Associate Professor of French at the
University of Houston, where he holds a joint appointment in the Honors
College and the Department of Modern and Classical Languages. He is
the translator of Voices from the Gulag and author
of Nímes at War: Religion, Politics, and Public Opinion
in the Department of the Gard, 1938-1944 (Penn State,
1995), which won the 1997 Hans Rosenhaupt Memorial Book Award of the
Woodrow Wilson Foundation. |
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