Voltaire and Rousseau Book

Voltaire and Rousseau offered opposing viewpoints on the major intellectual movement of their time: the Enlightenment. Like most Enlightenment thinkers, Voltaire repudiated tradition and history, embracing reform based on individualism and intellectual freedom. Rousseau, however, valued intellectual tradition and emphasized society's importance in establishing property, the rule of law, moral equality, and freedom. Though they openly despised one another, their contest of ideas provided important insights into the commitments of an era that produced the American and French Revolutions.