Critics have claimed that Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a primitivist who was uncritically preoccupied with “noble savages,” and that he remained oblivious to the African slave trade and so used “slavery” and “freedom” callously. Fugitive Rousseau demonstrates why these charges are wrong and argues that a “fugitive” perspective on political freedom is bound up with the themes of primitivism and slavery in Rousseau’s political theory. Rather than tracing Rousseau’s arguments primarily to the social contract tradition of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, Fugitive Rousseau places Rousseau squarely in ... More

Critics have claimed that Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a primitivist who was uncritically preoccupied with “noble savages,” and that he remained oblivious to the African slave trade and so used “slavery” and “freedom” callously. Fugitive Rousseau demonstrates why these charges are wrong and argues that a “fugitive” perspective on political freedom is bound up with the themes of primitivism and slavery in Rousseau’s political theory. Rather than tracing Rousseau’s arguments primarily to the social contract tradition of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, Fugitive Rousseau places Rousseau squarely in two imperial contexts: European empire in Rousseau’s Atlantic world and Roman imperial philosophy. Rousseauian political freedom cannot be understood without locating Rousseau’s figures of savages and slaves on the frontier of European expansion and colonization and in the Enlightenment reception of Stoic and Epicurean ideas on slavery and natural humanity. By placing empire front and center, Fugitive Rousseau thus shows how Rousseau’s work contributes to an international political theory and is thus not merely a theory of civic obligation and consent. Klausen critically examines Rousseau’s arguments on cosmopolitanism and nativism, developed in response to threats to freedom posed by European mobility and commerce, and pushes the cosmopolitan and nativist projects to their logical conclusions to reveal their limitations. Fugitive Rousseau then reconstructs an alternative Rousseauian conception, a fugitivefreedom, whereby a people constitutes itself, and affirms its freedom, in flight from domination.