Between Athens and the Port-Royal; contextualising Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Plato

Bibliographic Data

ID11348261
AuthorsBenjamin C Thompson (0000-0002-0146-5614, Kyungpook National University, corresponding author)
Year2023
Volume49
Issue1
Pages18-36
Publication date2023-01-02
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueHistory of European Ideas (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0191-6599 • E-ISSN: 1873-541X
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/01916599.2022.2062779
OpenAlexW4293189347
LanguageEN
References cited27

Increasing attention has been paid to Platonism in Rousseau’s moral and political thought; however, there has been incomplete consideration of his annotated Platonis Operum – a Ficino Latin translation. Addressing this lacuna, the article details Rousseau’s study of Plato’s works. It can be shown that Rousseau’s reading of Plato commenced no earlier than the summer of 1737 during his residence at Les Charmettes. At this time, Rousseau had been considering a set of largely seventeenth-century philosophical texts, which allows contextualisation of his encounter with Plato and the themes he drew upon. As part of a cluster of intellectual activities, Rousseau canvassed Platonic tropes of sublimated Eros and disinterestedness. Meanwhile, he conceptualised ideas as objects of the understanding typical of Locke and a seventeenth-century discourse known as the ‘way of ideas’. These interests challenge existing accounts of Rousseau’s Platonism; moreover, Rousseau’s mature works attempt to reconcile Platonic beliefs on sublime love with ideas conceptualised under a demi-Lockean episteme

Aesthetics · Art · Episteme · Epistemology · Hegelianism · Literature · Platonism · Politics · Sublime · European Political History Analysis · Law · Philosophy · Political Theory and Influence · Rousseau and Enlightenment Thought

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