Bibliography

For further details of Rousseau’s life read Maurice Cranston’s three-part biography (see bibliography). Shklar’s Men and Citizens: A Study of Rousseau’s Social Theory (1969) is a slim and accessible volume which provides a rich and insightful introduction to Rousseau’s theory. Plamenatz’s Man and Society Vol. 2 (1992), contains a long chapter on Rousseau. In it Plamenatz presents an analysis of Rousseau’s apparent contradictions, in which popular misconceptions are neatly dealt with and genuine inconsistencies in Rousseau’s argument exposed. Cobban’s Rousseau and the Modern State (1934), uses the author’s wide knowledge of the political world of eighteenth-century France to frame a useful construction of the modern, liberal ideas which he believes lie at the core of Rousseau’s argument. N. Hampson’s Will and Circumstance: Montesquieu, Rousseau and the French Revolution (1983) is a classic contextualisation of Rousseau’s work which is much referred to by other academics working on Rousseau. McDonald’s Rousseau and the French Revolution 1762-1791 (1965) provides a detailed analysis of all aspects of

Rousseau’s influence on the thoughts and activities of the revolutionaries and their opponents. Talmon’s The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy (1952) gives us a damning, but perhaps dated, presentation of the links between Rousseau’s work and violent, dictatorial, totalitarian politics.