The Natural Goodness of Man [Book Review]

Review of Metaphysics 44 (4):854-856 (1991)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

Rousseau asserted that "all my ideas fit together, but I can hardly present them simultaneously"; when defending his writings against the charge of contradictoriness, he complained that it was not he, but rather his readers, who could not think systematically. Melzer's admirable effort to support Rousseau's self-description as a systematic philosopher discredits the common view of Rousseau as a confused visionary rebelling against "system" of all kinds. His book is indispensable to forming a just estimation of Rousseau as a seminal philosophical writer of the Western tradition, one to whom Kant, Fichte, and Hegel acknowledged deep indebtedness. Failure to appreciate the unity of Rousseau's thought has been partly due, Melzer notes, to the unsystematic style of Rousseau's writings, none of which presents the "system" as a whole, but which nonetheless are "inseparable... and explain themselves each by the others." Interpreters have so often regarded Rousseau's thought as incoherent and contradictory because they have been misled by the apparent independence of each writing, thus "mistaking fragments for completed wholes".

Other Versions

No versions found

Links

PhilArchive

    This entry is not archived by us. If you are the author and have permission from the publisher, we recommend that you archive it. Many publishers automatically grant permission to authors to archive pre-prints. By uploading a copy of your work, you will enable us to better index it, making it easier to find.

    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 102,283

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Analytics

Added to PP
2012-03-18

Downloads
50 (#448,054)

6 months
5 (#1,007,269)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Richard Velkley
Tulane University

Citations of this work

No citations found.

Add more citations

References found in this work

No references found.

Add more references