Public Vision, Private Lives

Listening closely to the religious pitch in Rousseau’s voice, Cladis convincingly shows that Rousseau, when attempting to portray the most characteristic aspects of the public and private, reached for a religious vocabulary. Honoring both love of self and love of that which is larger than the self–these twin poles, with all the tension between them–mark Rousseau’s work, vision and challenge–the challenge of 21st-century democracy.