The Enlightenment and Rousseau

Rousseau is not I seems to me my teacher in politics. He's in a way the author of a kind of radical individualism at the same time. The headwaters of a certain kind of communitarianism, lots of people trace their descent to him. And for me he's not so much a teacher of doctrine as a person who wakes you up and shakes you to your roots by the kinds of challenges and questions that he forces you to confront.