Sparks Commentary

“His majesty the king of Prussia cedes … all the territories and domains, and all territorial property of whatever kind , or by whatever tit...

“Helvetius and Rousseau preached to the French nation liberty , till they made them the most mechanical slaves; equality till they destroy...

This is a follow-up to a blog post from 2014 . (For this earlier post, click here .) I wrote a post some years ago about my experience with ...

Wikipedia argues that Rousseau influenced the Founding Fathers … I have often heard people claim that Rousseau “influenced” the Founding Fa...

I’ve read  Rousseau’s “The Social Contract” itself  in the original French . Thus, you might expect me to be something of a “fan” of this wo...

Voltaire and Rousseau disagreed with each other on many issues. Nonetheless, they do have at least one thing in common, which is that they w...

“Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains. One thinks himself the master of others, and still remains a greater slave than they. H...

“Athens became the seat of politeness and taste, the country of orators and philosophers. The elegance of its buildings equalled that of i...

“I admit that, provided the subjects remained always in submission, the prince's interest would indeed be that it should be powerful, ...

“ I shall never hesitate to cite Cesare Borgia and his actions . This duke entered the Romagna with auxiliaries, taking there only French...

“The first man, who, after enclosing a piece of ground, took it into his head to say, 'This is mine,' and found people simple eno...

"There is therefore a purely civil profession of faith of which the Sovereign should fix the articles, not exactly as religious dogma...