ge was a dark, uncertain world. Such a world lacked morality and progress. Conversely, Rousseau saw the world of knowledge as equally immoral. Further, to Rousseau, a knowledgeable world was destructive in that it was filled with artificial men expressing artificial thoughts rather than true men of natural thought. Although Rousseau makes the argument that Bacon's commitment to knowledge works against the nature of man, he does not give it full play. Rather he seems content to endlessly debate what manner of men the Romans were. Yet had he carried his argument on the need for the naturalness of man to be admitted further, Rousseau would have found the weakest part of Bacon's theory. Though never used as such, Rousseau's own feelings of alienation and nostalgia for times never experienced, form a potent attack on the supremacy of knowledge. Rousseau's alienation was from a society that denied his emotions. By claiming his right to emotion, Rousseau became estranged from both his contemporaries and his world.Historically, this estrangement remains. Rousseau has been claimed by both Fidel Castro and Jean Paul Marat as a true revolutionary and damned by the radical Frankfort School for his belief in individualism. Bertrand Russell calls him the father of Romanticism; Ernst Cassirer places him side by side with Kant in the heart of the Enlightenment. Much, too, of Rousseau can be seen in the German and English Idealists. Although these claims and counter-claims concern the whole of Rousseau's work, the Discourse itself and the responses to it foreshadowed much of the confusion that was to come. Such confusion was inevitable- a true critic must be, to some extent, divorced from his world. Perhaps then, the confusion over Rousseau is but a testament to the power and insight of his criticism. ...
