ABSTRACT
Jean-Jacques Rousseau discusses theater in greater detail than any of the other arts because he judges it—as we might the movies or television—to be the most completely absorbing of the arts. Rousseau's discussion of the sciences deals primarily with philosophy and philosophers, more briefly, with intellectuals and with scholars. His treatment of these is, on the whole, more modulated than is his treatment of art and artists. The major difference between the arts and the sciences, when they are viewed in the political context, is that the arts are essentially public, whereas philosophy, science, and scholarship are more restricted in their immediate appeal. Rousseau's critique of philosophy is, then, a critique not of this or that doctrine, but of the conception of the place of philosophy or science in the public realm that is typically associated with enlightenment. The political critique of the arts and sciences is but a corollary of more comprehensive studies.
