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  • Rousseau et l’utopie: De l’Etat insulaire aux cosmotopies by Antoine Hatzenberger
  • Karen Pagani
Antoine Hatzenberger. Rousseau et l’utopie: De l’Etat insulaire aux cosmotopies. Paris: Honoré Champion, 2012. 736pp. Cloth, $270.14, ISBN: 978-2745322524.

Antoine Hatzenberger’s Rousseau et l’utopie: De l’Etat insulaire aux cosmotopies is a remarkably erudite study of the role that utopia plays in Rousseau’s corpus. Hatzenberger aims to show that the question as to what extent Rousseau’s oeuvre contains utopian undercurrents should be a central rather than marginal concern in Rousseau studies (9). According to the author, utopia was a source for many of Rousseau’s political ideas, as well as a mode by which these ideas could be expressed (669). As such, Rousseau’s work constitutes not so much a rejection of utopian models (as is often argued) but, rather, functions as a crossroads between classical and modern schemata thereof, between narrative utopias and socialist programs (20). Rousseau’s contributions must therefore be regarded as having added a new dimension to existing utopian schemata insofar as he directly confronted the question as to if and how international relations could figure into the utopian perspective and vice versa (26).

Hatzenberger’s objectives—all of which are satisfied by the study’s completion—are threefold. First, he wishes to illuminate both the centrality and the diversity of utopianism in Rousseau’s thought. Second, the author seeks to articulate Rousseau’s positive contributions to the historiography of utopia. Finally, Hatzenberger demonstrates the degree to which Rousseauian perspectives persist in contemporary political philosophy.

Rousseau et l’utopie is made up of an introduction and three parts, the latter of which are each subdivided into three discrete chapters. The introduction faithfully and concisely sets out the broad theoretical outlines of Hatzenberger’s problematic. Part 1 (“Contextes”) provides a nuanced view [End Page 359] of how the question of utopia was most often approached in the eighteenth century, thereby providing a clear picture of the landscape in which Rousseau’s notion of utopia became inscribed. Part 2 (“Topoi”) uncovers and interrogates an impressive array of intertextual references that prove that utopia was a central and recurring theme for Rousseau, notwithstanding his at times very deliberate avoidance of the word utopia in relation to his own projects for political reform. Part 3 (“Cosmotopie”) brings to the fore what Rousseau perceived to be the limits of certain utopias (classical ones in particular), as well as his belief that—by revising the classical model of utopia and very carefully calibrating the international atmosphere—the spirit of utopia could be universalized. This last part also draws important connections between Rousseau’s utopian vision and the humanism espoused by some of his most influential successors, most notably Kant, and is not to be missed (636–44).

Because the study is written in the style of a French dissertation, any reviewer would be remiss not to caution prospective readers that Rousseau et l’utopie requires a good deal of both patience and time. This is perhaps particularly true of the first half of the book, much of which is devoted to a lengthy and at times meandering overview of existing critical literature on both Rousseau and the study of utopia more generally. In these introductory chapters, Hatzenberger at times repeats himself, arriving somewhat circuitously at his central themes and arguments. Thus, from a stylistic perspective, an Anglophone reader such as myself cannot help but wonder if some of the discussion of critical literature could have been relegated to footnotes or whether, for example, a very long discussion of Rousseau’s use of the word chimera and its derivatives could have been condensed (319–33).

Yet the text remains an extremely gratifying read for those who take the time to engage with it fully. Unlike many Rousseau scholars who have tackled this question previously (Melzer, Masters, and Fabre, among others, are named), Hatzenberger refuses to accept the notion that, in order to defend Rousseau against the charge of totalitarianism, one must maintain that he categorically rejected utopia as a notion that could be productive in the composition of political theory. By Hatzenberger’s lights, such a defense of...

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