Rousseau and the Problem of Human Relations

Contents

Acknowledgments

List of Abbreviations

Prologue

1 Rousseau’s Theory of Human Relations

2 Social Longing and Moral Perfection

3 Pity and Human Weakness

4 Romantic Love in Emile

5 Romantic Love in Julie

6 Friendship, Virtue, and Moral Authority

7 The Ecology of Justice

8 The Sociology of Wholeness

Epilogue

Notes

Bibliography

Index

“Warner’s book offers a lucid and intelligent interpretation of Rousseau that understands the challenge of human relations not as a problem to be solved but rather as a fundamental, insoluble condition to be lived with and within. Warner successfully resists the twin poles of the radically individualist and radically collectivist interpretations of Rousseau by emphasizing the dynamic, irreducible tension at the heart of Rousseau’s project. This book makes a significant contribution to our understanding of that tension and its role in Rousseau’s different models of human association.”

—Denise Schaeffer, The Review of Politics