Rousseau's Political Writings: Discourse on Inequality, Discourse on Political Economy, On Social Contract

Each piece is fully annotated. Backgrounds includes a sketch of Rousseau’s life, selections from his Confessions, and comments on Rousseau’s work and character from such illustrious contemporaries and early critics as Voltaire, Hume, Boswell and Johnson, Paine, Kant, and Proudhon. Commentaries includes assessments of Rousseau’s political thought by a wide variety of scholars and critics including Judith Shklar, Robert Nisbet, Simone Weil, and Benjamin R. Barber.

Julia Conaway Bondanella is Professor Emeritus of French and Italian at Indiana University where she was Associate Dean of the Honors College and taught courses on Italian and Renaissance literature, Western literature and thought, and the history of ideas. She served as Assistant Director of the National Endowment for the Humanities and President of the National Collegiate Honors Council. She is author of Petrarch’s Dream Visions and Their Renaissance Analogues; co-editor of The Macmillan Dictionary of Italian Literature; co-editor and co-translator of The Italian Renaissance Reader; and translator and co-editor of Rousseau’s Political Writings. With Peter Bondanella, she is co-editor and co-translator of Cellini’s My Life and Machiavelli’s Discourses on Livy and co-editor of Dante’s Purgatorio and Paradiso. Alan Ritter teaches at Trinity College and the University of Connecticut School of Law. He is the author of The Political Thought of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Anarchism: A Theoretical Analysis. Julia Conaway Bondanella is Professor Emeritus of French and Italian at Indiana University where she was Associate Dean of the Honors College and taught courses on Italian and Renaissance literature, Western literature and thought, and the history of ideas. She served as Assistant Director of the National Endowment for the Humanities and President of the National Collegiate Honors Council. She is author of Petrarch’s Dream Visions and Their Renaissance Analogues; co-editor of The Macmillan Dictionary of Italian Literature; co-editor and co-translator of The Italian Renaissance Reader; and translator and co-editor of Rousseau’s Political Writings. With Peter Bondanella, she is co-editor and co-translator of Cellini’s My Life and Machiavelli’s Discourses on Livy and co-editor of Dante’s Purgatorio and Paradiso.