Reinterprets Rousseau as a political thinker by reconstructing his Epicurean theory of taste

• Recovers Rousseau’s neglected theory of taste, placing it at the centre of his political thought
• Challenges existing pictures of Rousseau as an inconsistent ‘ancient’ utopian or a ‘modern’ systematic philosopher
• Contributes to reframing the intellectual history of liberalism and the foundations of contemporary democratic political theory
• Draws on archival sources and texts rarely addressed in scholarship on Rousseau’s political thought

Rousseau’s Politics of Taste challenges the popular but partial pictures we have of Rousseau as an inconsistent ‘ancient’ utopian or a ‘modern’ abstract philosopher with a systematising spirit. Combining intellectual history and political theory, it reinterprets his understandings of pleasure and happiness, judgment and amour-propre, inequality, the general will and, above all, taste. Rousseau’s readers have long recognised the complex tensions in his thought. By reconstructing his theory of taste as a kind of modern Epicureanism, this book provides a way of articulating neglected patterns in those tensions and, a new understanding of what he was attempting to achieve with his political thought.