REVISITING ROUSSEAU

4-5-6 sept 2012
Sir Parashurambhau College, Pune and Alliance Francaise de Poona, with the support of the Embassy of Switzerland in India, will be hosting an Interdisciplinary National Seminar  from 4th to 6th September, 2012 to commemorate the tercentenary of the birth of the great French philosopher , J.J .Rousseau. J.J.Rousseau’s thought occupies a central position in our study of Western political philosophy  in the Under –graduate and Post-graduate studies and it is important to revisit his classis texts because as Leo Strauss has stated “…they are not mere responses to specific historical conditions, but are repositories of profound truths about life….as also, the questions raised by the philosophers in the past are alive in our own society…” Though a thinker of the age of Enlightenment, Rousseau was able to critically bring to the fore the tensions between reason-sentiment, nature-culture.. and raise fundamental issues regarding modernity and civilization. As we all too speak about the ‘loss’ of ‘values’ in today’s technology driven consumerist world, dare we look at similar sentiments echoed by Rousseau in a similar context ? This Seminar will provide us with an opportunity to review Rousseau from the framework of contemporary debates in moral and political philosophy. . regarding  freedom, morality, political obligation, citizenship, gender equality, civil society…to try and understand the passion, vision, conviction of this great philosopher who had proclaimed …’I dare to believe that  I am different from any man who exists….!!!! Â