Der Widerspruch zwischen Mensch und Bürger bei Rousseau (English shop)

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Jean-Jacques Rousseau published his two most important works, the educational novel Émile and The Social Contract, in two consecutive months. Both uphold ideals that could not be more contradictory: the human being developed for himself and individually, and the citizen integrated into his state. Yet if one attempts to unite man and citizen, only ill can come of it – it is with this undertone that Rousseau introduces the bourgeois as a mixture of both ideal images.

Review:

To read Jean-Jacques Rousseau critically and nevertheless to engage with him with understanding and reason – it is with this intention that Ehlers approaches the eighteenth-century thinker of state and education. Focusing on the political “Contrat Social” and the treatise on education “Emile” – published within the space of a month, and contradictory in central statements – he examines Rousseau’s work closely and relates it to his life and way of life. In doing so, Ehlers arrives at the thesis that in Rousseau “man” and “citizen” confront one another in an essentially insurmountable contradiction. How can this opposition be bridged? Rousseau appears to have found the beginnings of a solution to this question in the idea of civil religion – but was evidently no longer able to implement it consistently, as Ehlers plausibly demonstrates.

The book is worth reading as secondary literature on Rousseau even if one has already read other books about him. For Ehlers succeeds in presenting Rousseau neither as a pure political philosopher nor as a pure pedagogue, but in seeking the crux in the connection and the contradictoriness of the two. And few attempt this synthesis. Ehlers thereby does justice not only to Rousseau the thinker, but also to the (fascinating!) tension and contradictoriness between “man” and “citizen” that is inherent in these two roles to this day.

Although the book meets high scholarly standards, the author has succeeded in presenting his subject in an engaging and comprehensible manner. The many quotations from Rousseau are rendered both in German and in the French original and thus do justice to a broad readership. A subject index for those skimming the text rounds off this well-executed introduction to Rousseau and one of his central themes.

Christopher Gohl, Berlin