Jean-Jacques rousseau on alienation, bildung and education

Abstract

This article is based on the conviction that Jean-Jacques Rousseau's (17121778) originality and importance for modern thinking is twofold. Firstly, he introduced the first influential modern theory of alienation. This is widely recognised in the contemporary philosophical and pedagogical Rousseau-reception. Secondly, he introduced, without using the term, perhaps the first modern theory of Bildung and in relation to this, the pedagogical and political remedies to the problem of alienation. This is not so widely recognised in the contemporary philosophical, and even more emphatically, in pedagogical Rousseau-reception. The aim of this article is to justify this conviction.