| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 106.3

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 106.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Methods/Theory

James Swenson. On Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Considered as One of the First Authors of the Revolution. (Atopia: Philosophy, Political Thought, Aestetics.) Stanford: Stanford University Press. 2000. pp. xiii, 320. Cloth $55.00, paper $19.95.

The question of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's influence on the French Revolution has occupied a unique niche in historiography for more than two hundred years. From such actors in the revolution as the terrorist Maximilien Robespierre and the aristocrat Charles-François Lenormant to contemporary commentators, establishing or denying a causal link between the "Sage of Europe" and the political upheavals that put an end to the ancien régime continues to stimulate controversy. Compared to Montesquieu, whose contribution to revolutionary thought has been well documented and relatively uncontroversial, Rousseau and his legacy have not ceased to elicit at times strongly emotional arguments and paradoxical formulations. The problematic of Rousseau and the revolution is further complicated by his vexed relationship to the Enlightenment itself as well as by the question of the Enlightenment's role in providing the impetus for the revolution. To add to these uncertainties, literary critics, historians, and political scientists have weighed in to the Enlightenment-Rousseau-French Revolution triangle from very different perspectives, often appropriating one another's methodologies with varying success. . . .

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