ABSTRACT
Rousseau is famous as a writer of paradoxes. In their attempt to resolve these paradoxes, literary scholars often reduce them to oddities of Rousseau’s personality, while students of philosophy often smooth over apparent contradictions. This essay explores Rousseau’s manner of writing, distinguishing its exploratory style from that of academic textbooks. Rousseau is always confronting positions opposed to his own and attempts to absorb them into his own thought.
