Abstract

Between the lines of this rich but sometimes uneven collection of essays on the legacy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, it is less 1789 and more the glow of 1989 that illumines things. The language is that of post-Cold War ennui: “end of history,” “modern closure,” “the totalized bourgeois,” “iron cage,” and even “the last man.” Yet the ambiance of the fourteen pieces is one of Weberian wistfulness, not of Nietzschean exuberance.