Public Vision, Private Lives: Rousseau, Religion, and 21st-century Democracy

Public Vision, Private Lives: Rousseau, Religion, and 21st-century Democracy
ISBN-10
0231139691
ISBN-13
9780231139694
Category
Literary Criticism
Pages
298
Language
English
Published
2007
Publisher
Columbia University Press
Author
Mark Sydney Cladis

Description

Turning to Rousseau's Garden, its inhabitants, the Solitaires, and the question of restoration and redemption that preoccupied much of Rousseau's thought, Cladis examines how Rousseau addressed the tension between the joys and moral obligations of social engagement and the desire for solitude. He was caught between two possibilities: active involvement in the creation of an enlightened and humane society or extrication from social entanglements in favor of cultivating a spiritual interior life. Yet Rousseau did not view this conflict as a desperate division. Rather, for him it was a moral struggle to be endured by those who had fallen from the Garden.

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