Yet Dewey’s subtle approach also accounts for the creation of a work that genuinely warrants being called a classic – it rises above the educational debates of the early twentieth century to enter into a conversation with its educational ancestry, a conversation that Dewey propelled forward. Had Dewey critiqued his fellow American progressives in the same way he did historical European philosophers of the past, his readers would have better understood his relationship to progressive American educational ideas and practices. My analysis of Dewey’s critique supports a second argument: one of the reasons Dewey’s legacy has been long debated (particularly his relationship to pedagogical progressivism) derives from his reluctance to criticize his contemporaries explicitly and directly. I argue that Dewey’s discussion of historical philosophers’ aims of education was also designed to critique his contemporaries subtly and by analogy. Perhaps Dewey believed that an account of their views would help elucidate his own, or he intended to suggest that his own ideas rivaled or bested theirs. In Democracy and Education, in the midst of the pivotal chapter on “The Democratic Conception in Education,” Dewey juxtaposes his educational aims with those of Plato, Rousseau, Fichte and Hegel.

On Rousseau: An Introduction to his Radical Thinking on Education and Politics fills this void, and should interest educators, educators of educators, philosophy students, and all with a general interest in education and politics and the history of ideas. But a comprehensive introductory book dealing with all the aspects of his thoughts about education and politics has long been overdue. There has been no shortage of books about him in recent years, including general introductory ones. Rousseau made other contributions to education, but his more political works on the subject are usually ignored by commentators. Its revolutionary ideas have influenced radical thinkers and made him famous with generations of educators right into the twentieth century. Emile was among his most celebrated works, a book he regarded as his crowning achievement. He was also one of the most contradictory and controversial thinkers and exciting writers of his time the writer of the first modern autobiography and author of the best-selling novel of his day.

Few would want to dispute that Jean-Jacques Rousseau was one of the most fascinating figures of the Enlightenment a man whose interests ranged over a variety of subjects, from politics, to education, to music, to botany.

Rousseau emile analyse