Browsing: Diary of John Adams, Volume 1

1. A quotation from Jean Jacques Rousseau, Du contrat social (1762), a work of which JA eventually owned at least three copies, a pirated edition in French, Amsterdam, 1742 [i.e. 1762?], and two copies of the first English translation, A Treatise on the Social Compact, or the Principles of Politic Law, London, 1764; see Catalogue of JA’s Library , p. 216. For an illuminating survey of JA’s intellectual relations with Rousseau, see Haraszti, JA and the Prophets of Progress , ch. 5, “Rousseau and the Man of Nature.”