Introduction

Berlin lectures on Rousseau's 'On the Social Contract' and discusses his anti-intellectualism, his idealism of Nature, and the worryingly authoritarian implications of his philosophy. Originally broadcast on the BBC Third Programme in 1952. The only recording that survives from this six-lecture series, based on his Mary Flexner Lectures, 'Political Ideas in the Romantic Age', at Bryn Mawr College, Pennsylvania, in spring 1952; published in 'Freedom and Its Betrayal' (2002; 2nd ed. 2014)