Lessons on Rousseau

The lectures on Rousseau's Discourse on the Origins of Inequality, delivered by Althusser in 1972, significantly influenced Rousseau scholarship by encouraging deeper exploration of his underlying concepts beyond mere metaphors. These insights reveal Althusser's early development of ideas related to aleatory materialism and a departure from strict historical determinism, laying the groundwork for a new philosophical approach to Marx. His interpretation emphasizes themes of void, accident, and the necessity of contingency within Rousseau's work.