Greatness of Soul and the Souls of Women: Rousseau’s Use of Plato’s Laws in the Letter to d’Alembert

Abstract

Rousseau did not believe that we could or should return to the primitive condition that he thought most conducive to human happiness. This chapter examines the highly original way in which he used insights drawn from Plato’s Laws to defend institutions adopted in the Republic of Geneva against threats posed by Enlightenment philosophy. His Letter to d’Alembert analyzes the subversive effects on human happiness of decadent art and the accompanying distortions of relations between the sexes. Traditional family life, the indispensable and fragile basis for the kind of liberal society promoted by Enlightenment thinkers, is threatened by the cosmopolitan principles those thinkers advocate.