Proceedings of the 9th International Academic Conference, Istanbul

REMEMBERING ROUSSEAU’S DISCOURSE ON POLITICAL ECONOMY AS A COUNTER-ENLIGHTENMENT MANIFESTATION

FATİH DURGUN

Abstract:

The French philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) has expressed strident criticism of what he perceived to be the Enlightenment contractualism in Lockean sense and offered his own alternative of republican political theory against it. Moreover, he has very plainly rejected the enlightened confidence in technological progress as a necessary condition in the formation of modern civilization. These two aspects of his political theory have been rightly considered as the preliminary examples of Europe-wide Counter-Enlightenment thought. However, Rousseau’s views on political economy have not much been evaluated for a clear understanding of his Counter-Enlightenment position. This paper will first concentrate on possible reasons for why Rousseau’s work has not become a source of discussion within the nexus of Enlightenment and Counter-Enlightenment. At the second level, the paper will discuss that the lack of references to the mechanisms of commercial society and Enlightenment notions of political economy in his work actually makes it a Counter-Enlightenment tract. In this sense, this paper optimistically suggests that the anatomizing of Rousseau’s views on political economy will be an attempt not only to fill an important gap in Rousseau’s Counter-Enlightenment thought but also it will offer a new insight for the general framework of Counter-Enlightenment political economy.

Keywords: Rousseau, political economy, enlightenment, counter-enlightenment, General Will, republican political theory.

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