{xxxv} Suggestions for Further Reading

The classic edition of Rousseau’s political writings is Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Political Writings, ed. C. E. Vaughan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1915)—now out of copyright and so available on the Internet. The standard modern edition is volume 3 of the Pléiade edition of Rousseau’s Oeuvres Complètes (Paris: Gallimard, 1964). For “The State of War” it is necessary to consult the appendix that appears in the 1975 reprint of that work (pp. 1891–1904) and Grace G. Roosevelt, Reading Rousseau in the Nuclear Age (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990).

The major sources for Rousseau’s biography are the letters to Malesherbes of 1762 (which have been repeatedly translated into English) and the post-humous Confessions. An excellent modern biography is Leo Damrosch, Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Restless Genius (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2005). The classic study of Rousseau is Jean Starobinski, Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Transparency and Obstruction (1957; English translation, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988). A valuable introduction is provided by Patrick Riley, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Rousseau (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), and a brief survey is found in Tzvetan Todorov, Frail Happiness: An Essay on Rousseau (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001).

The two classic texts on Rousseau’s political theory are Ernst Cassirer, The Question of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1932; English translation, New York: Columbia University Press, 1954) and Judith N. Shklar, Men and Citizens: A Study of Rousseau’s Social Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969). Admirable are James Miller, Rousseau: Dreamer of Democracy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984) and Arthur M. Melzer, The Natural Goodness of Man: On the System of Rousseau’s Thought (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1990). For a recent account of Rousseau’s political thought by an English-language political philosopher, there is Joshua Cohen, Rousseau: A Free Community of Equals (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010). On gender and politics, see Joel Schwartz, The Sexual Politics of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984) and Lynda Lange, ed., Feminist Interpretations of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2002). Good starting points for thinking about two of Rousseau’s key concepts are Patrick Riley, “Rousseau’s General Will,” in The Cambridge Companion to Rousseau, ed. Riley (which should be supplemented by a reading of Diderot’s essay “Droit naturel,” translated in Diderot, Political Writings, ed. John Hope Mason and Robert Wokler [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992]) and N. J. H. Dent, “Rousseau on Amour Propre,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society: Supplementary Volumes 72 (1998): 57–73.