• France

  / The influence of Montesquieu and Rousseau
• Spain

  / Domestic reforms
• Carolus Linnaeus

  / The sexual system of classification
• aria
• Jean-Antoine Houdon

• Louise-Florence-Pétronille Tardieu d’Esclavelles, dame de la Live d’Épinay
• David Hume

  / Morals and historical writing
• Louise-Éléanore de la Tour du Pil, baroness de Warens

• opéra-comique
• opera

  / France, 1752–1815
• philosophe
• Pre-Romanticism

• education

  / The background and influence of naturalism
• education

  / The early reform movement: the new educational philosophers
• pedagogy

  / Naturalistic theories

• history of Europe

  / Rousseau and his followers
• Pestalozzianism

• Western literature

  / Romanticism
• biography

  / Formal autobiography
• children’s literature

  / From T.W. to Alice (1712?–1865)
• novel

  / Narrative method and point of view
• French literature

  / Rousseau
• noble savage
• myth

  / Demythologization of major religious traditions
• sentimental novel
• history of Europe

  / Simplicity and truth

• Western philosophy

  / Social and political philosophy
• aesthetics

  / Major concerns of 18th-century aesthetics
• deconstruction

  / Deconstruction in philosophy
• philosophy of education

  / Principal historical figures
• ethics

  / Rousseau
• general will
• constitution

  / The social contract
• history of Europe

  / The language of the Enlightenment
• democracy

  / Rousseau
• political philosophy

  / Rousseau
• popular sovereignty

  / Popular sovereignty in political theory
• individualism
• state

  / Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau
• state of nature

  / The state of nature in Rousseau
• theological liberalism

• social science

  / Heritage of the Enlightenment
• civil religion
• collectivism
• common good
• nationalism

  / French nationalism
• natural law

  / Natural law in the Enlightenment and the modern era
• social contract

  / The social contract in Rousseau
• political science

  / Early modern developments
• conservatism

  / The Burkean foundations
• sovereignty

  / History

• loyalty
• Niccolò Machiavelli

  / Legacy
• Michel de Montaigne

  / Readership
• history of Europe

  / Problems solved by the war

Biographies

A thorough study in three volumes is Maurice Cranston, Jean-Jacques: The Early Life and Work of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 1712–1754 (1983), The Noble Savage: Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 1754–1762 (1991), and The Solitary Self: Jean-Jacques Rousseau in Exile and Adversity (1997).

Other noteworthy biographies include Lester G. Crocker, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 2 vol. (1968–73), detailed but unsympathetic; Leopold Damrosch, Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Restless Genius (2005); Jean Guéhenno, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 3 vol. in 2 (1966; originally published in French, 1948–52); and George R. Havens, Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1978).

Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, La Vie et les ouvrages de Jean-Jacques Rousseau, ed. from the author’s unfinished manuscript by Maurice Souriau (1907), is the only biography by an author who knew Rousseau personally.

General and introductory studies

Ernst Cassirer, The Question of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1954, reissued 1963; originally published in German, 1932), is a classic. More recent overviews include N.J.H. Dent, Rousseau: An Introduction to His Psychological, Social and Political Theory (1988), and Rousseau (2005); Ronald Grimsley, The Philosophy of Rousseau (1973); Timothy O’Hagan, Rousseau (1999); and Robert Wokler, Rousseau: A Very Short Introduction (2001).

Special topics

Various aspects of Rousseau’s thought are treated in Christopher Bertram, Rousseau and “The Social Contract” (2004); John Charvet, The Social Problem in the Philosophy of Rousseau (1974); Joshua Cohen, Rousseau: A Free Community of Equals (2010); David Gauthier, Rousseau: The Sentiment of Existence (2006); Roger D. Masters, The Political Philosophy of Rousseau (1968, reissued 1976); James Miller, Rousseau: Dreamer of Democracy (1984); and Joel Schwartz, The Sexual Politics of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1984).

Novels

Julie; ou, la nouvelle Héloïse (1761; Julie; or, The New Eloise, 1968); Émile; ou, de l’éducation (1762; Emile; or, Education, 1911).

Autobiographical works

Rousseau juge de Jean-Jacques: dialogue (1780; Rousseau, Judge of Jean-Jacques: Dialogues, 1990); Les Rêveries du promeneur solitaire (1782; The Reveries of a Solitary, trans. by John Gould Fletcher, 1927); Les Confessions de J.J. Rousseau: suivies des reveries du promeneur solitaire (1782–89; The Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 1900).

Essays

Discours qui a remporté le prix à l’Académie de Dijon en l’année 1750; sur cette question proposée par la même académie si le rétablissement des sciences et des arts a contribué à épurer les moeurs (1750; “Discourse on the Sciences and Arts,” in The First and Second Discourses, ed. and trans. by Roger D. Masters and trans. by Judith R. Masters, 1964); Discours sur l’origine et les fondements de l’inégalité parmi les hommes (1755; A Discourse upon the Origin and Foundation of Inequality Among Mankind, 1761); Du Contrat social; ou, Principes du droit politique (1762; The Social Contract, in Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract: And Discourses, 1913); Considérations sur le gouvernement de Pologne (1782; Considerations on the Government of Poland, trans. by Willmoore Kendall, 1947); Lettres élémentaires sur la botanique (1780; Letters on the Elements of Botany, trans. by Thomas Martyn, 1785).

Letters

J.J. Rousseau, citoyen de Genève, à M. d’Alembert, sur son article Genève dans le septième volume de l’Encyclopédie, et particulièrement sur le projet d’établir un Théâtre de Comédie en cette ville (1758; A Letter from M. Rousseau, of Geneva, to M. d’Alembert, of Paris Concerning the Effects of Theatrical Entertainments on the Manners of Mankind, 1759); Lettres écrites de la montagne (1764; Letters Written from the Mountain, in Christopher Kelly and Eve Grace [eds.], Letter to Beaumont, Letters Written from the Mountain, and Related Writings, trans. by Christopher Kelly and Judith R. Bush, 2001).

Collected works

The standard French edition is Oeuvres complètes, 5 vol. (1959–95), ed. by Bernard Gagnebin and Marcel Raymond. The best English edition of Rousseau’s major works is Roger D. Masters and Christopher Kelly (eds.), The Collected Writings of Rousseau, 13 vol. (1990–2010). In some earlier editions of Rousseau’s collected works, published at the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th, material can be found that has not been reprinted in the 20th-century collections.

R.A. Leigh (ed.), Correspondance complète de Jean Jacques Rousseau: édition critique, 13 vol. (1965–95), wholly supersedes the Correspondance générale de J.-J. Rousseau, 20 vol., ed. by Théophile Dufour and Pierre P. Plan (1924–34).