The emergence of contextualism in Rousseau's political thought: The case of Parisian theatre in the 'Lettre a d'alembert'

In this article, I address Rousseau's evolution as a political thinker between the years 1750 and 1753 during which time his critics challenged him to square the radical implications of his Discours sur les sciences et les arts (1750) with the realities of eigtheenth-century European life. It was in the course of replying to his critics that Rousseau first adopted what I refer to as a more contextual orientation to political institutions. I argue that Rousseau's ostensibly Montesquieuian turn in the replies sustained his claim in the Lettre a d'Alembert (1758) that theatre, the scourge of Geneva's republican simplicity, might nevertheless serve a useful function in Paris, where moeurs, in Rousseau's estimation, had lapsed already to a point of irreversible corruption. I conclude that this contextual orientation to institutions guided much of Rousseau's subsequent though about political reform in modern public.