This volume provides basic writings of Dostoevsky, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Rilke, Kafka, Ortega, Jaspers, Heidegger, Sartre, and Camus, including some not previously translated, along with an invaluable introductory essay by Walter Kaufmann.

In this new interpretation of Rousseau's political thought, Daniel E. Cullen demonstrates that the concept of freedom is fundamental to the complex unity of Rousseau's work. He shows that the pervasive tension in Rousseau's thought between freedom and order, legitimacy and reliability can be explained as an effort to attune the political to the natural condition and to reestablish a condition of independence in political and social circumstances. Cullen's argument bears important implications for those who currently seek to bolster the (...) case for participatory democracy by appealing to Rousseauian assumptions and conclusions. Cullen's aim is to clarify some of the issues that divide liberals from communitarians and constitutionalists from participatory democrats in the current debate about freedom, rights, morality, and politics in America. In affirming Rousseau's fundamental philosophical agreement with liberals concerning human nature and with conservatives concerning the character of a good society, Cullen suggests that Rousseau has offered perhaps the only possible theoretical resolution of the tension implicit in democratic freedom. In light of what Rousseau calls for in order to bring about this resolution, however, Cullen wonders whether the time has come to rethink fundamental questions about human nature and citizenship that underlie contemporary problems of political theory. Freedom in Rousseau's Political Philosophy will be of interest to scholars and students of the history of political thought and contemporary democratic theory. (shrink)

Whether seen as a literary genius, educator, dedicated patriot, misanthrope, scoundrel, proto-Jacobin, or out-right lunatic, Jean-Jacques Rousseau left a bewildering pattern on the Russian intellectual landscape. Fully tracing this pattern for the first time, this book reveals the nature and extent of Rousseau's initial influence in Russia, as well as a great deal about the social, cultural, and political contexts in which he was so variously understood by the Russians. Thomas Barran shows here how Rousseau quickly became a model of (...) the visionary to the Russians. Russia Reads Rousseau makes explicit the selectivity, ambivalence, and energy with which Russians accepted Rousseau's works. Barran's book provides a refreshing corrective to the numerous misinterpretations by both Russian authors who introduced Rousseau to Russia and scholars who have analyzed the Russian reception of Rousseau. Mapping Rousseau's varied and extensive influence, Barran considers major writers such as Denis Fonvizin, Nikolai Novikov, Nikolai Karamzin, and Aleksandr Pushkin, as well as lesser known or forgotten figures. He shows how Rousseau's works were Russianized in numerous ways, as translations, adaptat. (shrink)

The essay juxtaposes the intellectualpreoccupations and fraught careers of two great20th-century Russian philologist-philosophers,Aleksei Losev and Mikhail Bakhtin. AlthoughLosev''s is the more crippling case, theexternal trajectory of their lives develops inrough parallel (bold, prolific productivity inthe 1920s; arrest and deportation in the1930s; slow reintegration in thepost-Stalinist era; recent revivals, cults,booms, and scandals connected with theirlegacy). What is more, the subject matterthat fascinated them often overlapped (theClassical world, the status of the Word,Dostoevsky). Still, differences overwhelm thesimilarities. The essay concludes withspeculation about these (...) two types ofphilosopher-king squandered, martyred, andelevated by their home culture. (shrink)