Natural Man, Citizen, Philosopher: The Political Philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau

These essays exploring the political philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau were first presented at the 2023 A.V. Elliott Conference on Great Books and Ideas. One thread which unites the chapters is the attempt to understand and clarify Rousseau’s conception of his own highly idiosyncratic, philosophic activity, as well as how that activity relates to Rousseau’s competing archetypes of natural man and citizen. This exercise requires engaging some of the most fundamental and vexing tensions of human life. Should we be understood and defined as individuals or as members of a community? How can we be free and live together? What in human beings is natural and what is the product of education, nurture, or historical processes? How do we come to know something and how might our attempts to know potentially undermine truth itself? The Rousseau that emerges is truly a thinker of the first rank, a subtle and penetrating student of what it means to be a human being, a citizen, and a philosopher.

Will R. Jordan is professor of Political Science at Mercer University. He holds a BA from Washington and Lee University and a PhD in Political Science from Loyola University Chicago. Jordan serves as codirector of Mercer’s McDonald Center for America’s Founding Principles. He has edited or coedited six previous volumes in the A.V. Elliott Conference Series.