Emile: Or Treatise on Education (Great Books in Philosophy) Paperback – August 1, 2003

Great book

Excellent novel.

I bought this book because I needed to read the profession of faith of a savoyard priest but I cannot find it in this copy. Neither could my professor. I can't help but wonder what else was left out but I don't have the time to compare it to copies I know to be complete. Really sad when the iBook store has a full digital copy but a print copy doesn't have the whole book. I would have rather read the print copy but I guess I'll have to make due with the digital (which I hate).

I was disappointed to see that one of the pages was ripped. About a quarter of the page was ripped out. I did intend to read the entire book.. So I returned it, got a refund and I'm ordering a different one.

While the translation is readable, this book is missing sizable chunks of the original text, which is entirely unforgivable. The entire discourse on private property through beans is missing, as well as a discussion on the Savoyard Vicar. This is hardly suitable for either a general reading or deep study, I suggest the Bloom translation instead.

Where the censors in 18th century France failed, the people at "Great Books in Philosophy" succeeded admirably, sanitizing Rousseau's convoluted masterpiece of all its deluded glory. They edited out the "profession de foi" and the more sadistic of the tutor's elaborate exercises, the abhorrent "hidden hand" behavioral manipulation, the eerie panopticon voyeurism, the abnormal obsession with order and control. These are the parts that inspired Robespierre and Danton, Marx, Lenin, and Stalin, which is to say, the parts that are really significant and, unfortunately, enduring.This must have been abridged to give freshmen elementary education majors a bite size edition to discuss in class for a day or two; as for Rousseau's techniques applied to actual and not theoretical children, I know a two and a half year old who would chew him up and spit him out like creamed cauliflower, long before nap time.