Rousseau is an author who has contributed more strongly to shape our modern identity. Not only his contemporaries such as Kant, Goethe, Hegel and others but all subsequent thinkers, who to date have investigated the contradictions between nature and civilization, have returned again and again to the ideas of Rousseau and his radical approaches. This paper offers a thorough analysis of the turning points of Rousseau's thought, guided by a main question: What are the paths that open before man entangled in existence and what is expected at the end of each course? To answer your question Todorov uses a new strategy of literary criticism that involves a return to a humanistic and moral reading of the texts of Rousseau. There are three possible ways: the nature, civilization and an intermediate path of reconciliation between the two extremes, which is the true moral path. But this path doe...read more
