Rousseau: Dreamer of Democracy [Paperback]

James Miller (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Hackett Pub Co Inc (September 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0872203379
• ISBN-13: 978-0872203372
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #10,737,731 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Rousseau at the birth of democracy, November 7, 2003

By 

John C. Landon "nemonemini" (New York City) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Rousseau: Dreamer of Democracy (Paperback)

From the text, "Before Rousseau, democracy was, at best, an admirable but obsolete pure form of government, generally of interest only to students of jurisprudence. After him, it became a name for popular sovereignty, extending to all the promise of a personally fulfilling freedom, exercised in cooperation with others."
A very nicely done study of Rousseau who suffers chronic mishandling by misinterpreters. As the author notes three potential forms of 'democracy' struggled for the name in the generation after Rousseau, representative democracy, direct democracy, and totalitarian democracy. As we look backwards armed with the definition of the winner, the first in the list, we tend to misinterpret the history, as did the actors in the drama of emergence, due to our already settled assumptions. The historical resolution and judgment requires careful scholarly balance, and here we find it.