ABSTRACT
Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s critique of divided modern existence and its devastation of the soul of man, as well as his partial paternity of the modern ideology of nationalism, have been fully acknowledged. Less well noted is the similarity between his insights about national homogeneity and the flattening of “difference” undertaken by every successful modern liberal state to ensure its health through identity formation, suppression, and reformation. The liberal state may stitch together a liberal narrative of national identity, but the need for that identity and a narrative to sustain it is a Rousseauian stipulation that liberal states must accept no less than illiberal ones. As public and collectivist a work as the Social Contract postulates a stringent hierarchy rather than a strident dichotomy between private and public existence. The success of illiberal foundations in holding aloft the modern liberal state and its personal and political freedoms may or may not owe anything directly to Rousseau’s thought.
