Book Review: Rousseau and Revolution by Will & Ariel Durant

The Story of Civilization, Part X: Rousseau and Revolution by Will Durant
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

If Voltaire was the embodiment of rationalist philosophers looking to bring reason to government and society then Rousseau was the embodiment of Romantic impulse for self-exploration and social revolt, they lived at the same time and died the same year without known their two visions would influence Europe’s most famous Revolution. Rousseau and Revolution is the tenth—the planned concluding but eventually penultimate—volume of The Story of Civilization by Will Durant and for the fourth time joined by wife Ariel Durant which reveals how Jean-Jacques Rousseau brought forth the Romantic counterpoint to Voltaire’s Enlightenment and how it played into the development of Europe in the late 18th century.

Unlike the previous volume, Rousseau is not as prominent throughout but his influence if felt as the chronology of the various parts of Europe are covered politically and culturally especially as the underpinnings of the Romantic movement begin appearing. The decline and fall of the French Ancien régime bookend the volume as Durant signals the fall of the absolute monarchy with Louis XVI putting the cockade of the Revolution on his hat, yet the history behind the collapse is and how each Estate had a ‘revolution’ of their own before being overtaken by the next until that moment. Between the rest of Europe is covered either from where they were politically and culturally left off in either of the last two volumes. As the Durants originally planned that this would be the final volume of the series, they ignored their 1789 ending point to finish out the lives of various individuals and take a glance at various movements—political and cultural—that began in the focused-on decades, and they did not believe they would fully cover. If this had been the final volume as planned it was a good ending to the overall series, but with another volume to go it will be interesting how the Durants write it given how they wrote this one.

Rousseau and Revolution finds Will and Ariel Durant revealing the countering of Voltaire’s emotionless rationalism in Jean-Jacque Rousseau as well as the consequences of his undermining of the Church that help prop up the absolute monarchy leading to the latter’s fall.

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