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Rousseau's Platonic Enlightenment
344 pages | 6 x 9 | 2007
Cloth edition is not available
ISBN 978-0-271-02998-6 | paper: $25.00 sh
“Rousseau’s Platonic Enlightenment is a model of thoughtful and sustained philosophical argument, and Williams is a sympathetic and careful reader of Rousseau. He has evidently learned much from his engagement with the commentators and from his effort to situate Rousseau’s contributions within a larger intellectual narrative, and his work is rich with insights. Whether or not one is persuaded by its central claim, Rousseau’s Platonic Enlightenment provides the most comprehensive account available of Rousseau’s use of Platonic themes, and it offers a provocative argument bound to stimulate readers interested in Rousseau or the larger tradition of political thought.” —Joseph R. Reisert, Review of Politics
“In this sterling, deeply researched study, Williams (Univ. of Wisconsin, Stevens Point) explores how thinkers ranging from Hobbes to d’Holbach highlight various sets of ideas that Rousseau combated in developing his philosophical teaching. The account of Rousseau’s predecessors who might be called Platonists is especially interesting, as is the account of those who qualify as materialists. Moreover, Williams provides a good overview of Rousseau’s teaching, demonstrates a commendable grasp of the relevant secondary literature, and argues ably for the superiority of his own interpretations. . . . Clearly written and superbly organized, this book contributes much to Rousseau studies. An indispensable book for Rousseau scholars, this volume also will appeal to general readers and students at all levels.” —C. E. Butterworth, Choice
“Williams makes an impressive and largely successful attempt to discuss Rousseau beyond the confines of any one discipline, and as a result this book will be of value to literary scholars, historians of ideas, and philosophers as well as political theorists.” —Neven Leddy, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews
“Williams offers a carefully researched and well-argued case for Rousseau as a latter-day Platonist. Readers who care about Rousseau and his role in the unfolding of modernity will want to read this book.” —Laurence D. Cooper, Carleton College
“David Williams has now brilliantly undertaken the first serious study of Rousseau’s Hellenophilia in seven decades. . . . Williams’s book will immediately become the ‘standard’ one, and will join the company of Shklar, Hendel, Starobinski, and Cassirer as a work that responsible Rousseau students need to know.” —Patrick Riley, University of Wisconsin-Madison
“Rousseau is too often thought to have waved his hands at what successors like Kant and Freud would really grasp. Williams is to be congratulated for following Rousseau’s own lead to Plato, his greatest predecessor. Surprisingly, his Platonic Rousseau, though rooted in the past, proves a greater original and more important guide to our own time than the Rousseaus who gesture toward the future.” —Jonathan Marks, Ursinus College
“Scholars have often remarked on the fact that Rousseau, a distinctively modern thinker, was a partisan of ancient political practice. But perhaps Rousseau’s philosophy isn’t as modern, or as simply modern, as one has supposed. David Lay Williams offers a carefully researched and well-argued case for Rousseau as a latter-day Platonist. Readers who care about Rousseau and his role in the unfolding of modernity will want to read this book.” —Laurence D. Cooper, Carleton College
Although many commentators on Rousseau’s philosophy have noted its affinities with Platonism and acknowledged the debt that Rousseau himself expressed to Plato on numerous occasions, David Williams is the first to offer a thoroughgoing, systematic examination of this linkage. His contributions to the scholarship on Rousseau in this book are threefold: he enters the debate over whether Rousseau is a Hobbesian (in rejecting transcendent norms) or a Platonist (in accepting them) with a decisive argument supporting the latter position; he tackles from a new angle the ever-challenging question of unity in Rousseau’s thought; and he explores the dynamic metaphor of the chain throughout Rousseau’s writings as a key to understanding them as inspired by Platonism.
The book is organized into three main parts. The first sketches the background of Platonism and materialist positivism in modern European metaphysics and political philosophy that provided the context for Rousseau’s intellectual development. The second examines Rousseau’s choice of Platonism over positivism and its consequences for his philosophy generally. The third addresses the legacy of Rousseau’s thought and its appropriation by Kant, Marx, and Foucault, suggesting that in an age where materialism and relativism are rife, Rousseau may have much to teach us about how we view our own society and can engage in constructive critique of it.
David Lay Williams is Associate Professor of Political Science and Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin–Stevens Point.
Contents
Foreword
List of Frequently Cited Works
Preface
Acknowledgments
1 The Context, Part 1: Metaphysics and Politics in Hobbes and Locke
2 The Context, Part 2: Materialism and Platonism in Modern Europe
3 Metaphysics and Morality: The Platonism of the Savoyard Vicar
4 The General Will: On the Meaning and Priority of Justice in Rousseau
5 Of Chains, Caves, and Slaves: Allegory and Illusion in Rousseau
6 Rousseau's System of Checks and Balances: The Negative Function of Justice
7 Kant's Conceptions of the General Will: The Formalist Interpretation
8 The Foucauldian Legacy: Critiques Without Justice?
References
Index