ABSTRACT
Jean-Jacques Rousseau was the first political thinker to make a text of his own life. His Confessions and Rousseau Judge of Jean-Jacques are apologies for a life which went wrong. Rousseau has spawned a hugh body of commentary on his political thought, and it is easy to see what all these often differing commentaries have in common: they all agree that Rousseau himself is different. The business of blaming Rousseau for the Revolution began very early with Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France. Burke was extremely acute as a futurologist. For Burke, Rousseau is the most typical of the thinkers of the arch-rational Enlightenment, encouraging his disciples to reason deductively from political axioms. Taine’s critique of Rousseau is ambiguous.
