Social Contract and Other Late Political Works

Author: Rousseau
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2003-07-01
Features: The series "Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought" is edited by Raymond Geuss, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Cambridge, and Quentin Skinner, Professor of Modern History at the University of Cambridge. In the field of political theory, "Cambridge Political Thought Classics" has firmly established itself as a major student textbook series. This series aims to enable students to access all the most important original works in the history of Western political thought from ancient Greece to the early 20th century. It includes all the famous classic works, but at the same time, it expands the traditional evaluation criteria to include a wide range of less well-known works. Many of these works had never had a modern English version available before. Whenever possible, the selected original works are published in their complete and unabbreviated form. The translation of The Work of Jean-Jacques Rousseau is presented in the series "Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought" in two volumes, together forming the most comprehensive collection of Rousseau's political writings in English. This second volume contains the major later writings, The Social Contract, together with portions of the early draft of the Contract known as the Geneva Manuscript, which Rousseau omitted in the final published version of the work, The Discourse on Political Economy, and The Considerations on the Government of Poland, as well as an important fragment on War and several letters in which he speaks more fully about the central features of his thought. Rousseau's influence was widespread and has continued to grow since his death in 1778: the American and French Revolutions were profoundly affected by his thought, as were Romanticism and Idealism. This volume, like its predecessor (The Discourses and Other Early Political Writings), contains extensive editorial material that should prove useful to both students and specialists of these seminal works: a comprehensive introduction, a chronology, a guide to further reading, a discussion of Rousseau's vocabulary, detailed editorial notes, and an index. The translations are literal and consistent throughout.