...This chapter discusses how idleness is one of the contradictory figures that weave through Jean-Jacques Rousseau's works. The problem of idleness pervades Rousseau's philosophical writings and dominates his autobiographical works. The chapter aims to trace the various paradoxes that inhabit...

...This chapter examines Cicero’s claims about the political content of his philosophical writings and their potential benefit to the future of the state. Drawing on two of his treatises, the preface to book one of Tusculan Disputations and the preface to book one of De...