María José Villaverde Rico, Rousseau visto por sus contemporáneos: odio e idolatría

Abstract

In Rousseau visto por sus contemporáneos, professor María José Villaverde delves into the life and works of Rousseau and his relationship with the movement of the Enlightenment, as well as with its adversaries, the Counter-Enlightenment. These relations, plagued with personal and ideological disputes with those that were, at first, his friends and later on, his enemies (Diderot, Voltaire, D'Holbach, Hume, etc.), help illustrate the life differences that, in turn, translated into even larger divergences in their conceptions of the world and their theoretical propositions. Thus, we see that Rousseau distanced himself from his Enlightenment colleagues due to their excessive cult of reason, their appreciation of wealth, power and social artifice, their religious incredulity and their alienation from the natural world. In contrast, Rousseau argued for the value of sentiments, the love of nature and the rejection of social artifices and hypocrisy and the search for solitude, intimacy, transparency and compassion.