Volume 20, Number 19 · November 29, 1973
Rousseau & Modern Tyranny
By Jean Starobinski, Translated by Peter France
Jean-Jacques Rousseau: A New Interpretative Analysis of His Life and Works, Vol. I: The Quest, 1712-1758
by Lester G. Crocker
Macmillan, 372 pp., $9.95
Jean-Jacques Rousseau: A New Interpretative Analysis of His Life and Works, Vol. II: The Prophetic Voice, 1758-1778
by Lester G. Crocker
Macmillan, 385 pp., $10.95
There is not much left in Rousseau to respect or admire when Professor Lester G. Crocker has finished with his life and works. Professor Crocker's analysis, resting on solid documentary research, does not aim primarily to map out the story of a life; this has been done often enough and Crocker has no new unpublished documents to add to Rousseau's file. He simply takes this file in its present state—including the valuable material contributed by the Pléiade complete works and Professor R. A. Leigh's edition of the complete correspondence—and subjects it to a process of systematic interpretation. From beginning to end this interpretation follows the biography step by step; the reader cannot remain indifferent to it. After a series of statements for the defense (in the studies of Guéhenno, Guillemin) and sympathetic attempts to relive Rousseau's experience (in those of Raymond, Burgelin, Grimsley), we have here an uncompromising speech for the prosecution which is more than a mere rehash of the old charges of anarchic individualism brought at the beginning of this century by the anti-Romantics (Maurras, Barrès, Babbitt).
Review, 5334 words
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