Instinct and Intimacy

Drawing on his autobiographies, Margaret Ogrodnick analyses Jean-Jacques Rousseau's role as a theorist of the modern self, tracing the implications for his political thought. In elucidating the corresponding images in his autobiographical and philosophical works, the book attends especially to the hidden and intimate dimensions of the self. As a psycho-analytic thinker, Rousseau propounds the internal retrieval of instincts as the psychological basis of his democratic republic.

As a philosopher of intimacy, he stresses the importance of intimate relations and private sentiments in building community bonds.