A Comparison of Three Political Works by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Abstract

This paper is an attempt to delineate and to compare the central ideas of the three works. It is not an attempt to compare Rousseau with his contemporaries in the field of political philosophy. Rather, I try to test the consistency of Rousseau's ideas for the two proposed governments against his theory. The comparison could be much more extensive. I have herein limited myself to a few truly basic considerations.