ROUSSEAU AND GENEVA

Scholars have been sharply divided over the relevance of Genevan politics and history to Rousseau's political philosophy. In this article, I try to achieve a coherent view of Rousseau's engagement with Geneva, one that rejects the idea that Geneva is simply irrelevant to his core political doctrines, but that also rejects the view that essentially reads everything as a political intervention in Genevan politics. Neither of these views seem accurate. Rather, Geneva (as Rousseau thought of it) is a constant presence that informs his thinking in different ways. Rousseau was not so naive as to think that Geneva incarnated his principles, but neither did he see its true nature as a hereditary oligarchy. He judged it flawed but remediable, a judgement perhaps informed by a loathing of civil conflict, at least until Genevan reality collided with his illusions.