Volume 32, Number 14 · September 26, 1985
Virtue & Terror
By Conor Cruise O'Brien
Nothing, I think, is known with certainty about the relation between Robespierre and Rousseau, except that the great revolutionary always expressed love and admiration for the philosopher. And that in itself doesn't tell us very much, because virtually everybody in France who could read, in the last quarter of the eighteenth century, seems to have loved and admired Rousseau. Marie Antoinette, whom Robespierre guillotined, loved and admired Rousseau. The Thermidorians, who guillotined Robespierre, loved and admired Rousseau. A common love of Rousseau doesn't seem to have been a very reliable bond, when the heat was on.
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