Lessons on Rousseau

Althusser delivered these lectures on Rousseau''s Discourse on the Origins of Inequality at the �cole normale sup�rieure in Paris in 1972. They are fascinating for two reasons. First, they gave rise to a new generation of Rousseau scholars, attentive not just to Rousseau''s ideas, but also to those of his concepts that were buried beneath metaphors or fictional situations and characters. Second, w...