“Franco has written a judicious new study of Rousseau and Nietzsche, presenting them for our instruction as two vitally important figures whose writings provide a dialectical critique of the ethical and cultural deficit of modern Enlightenment liberalism and that has lost none of its pertinence. The author sheds valuable light on key themes common to both writers, including their differing appeals to nature, their thinking about sexual difference, their conceptions of politics, and their innovative and far-reaching genealogies of modernity.  This is a rich and wise study that will be of interest to scholars and students working across the humanities and social sciences.”

Keith Ansell-Pearson, University of Warwick

“Franco shows that Rousseau and Nietzsche, often considered as polar opposites, have far more in common than is often believed. Each offers a powerful diagnosis of the Enlightenment and its characteristic human type: the bourgeois. Each formulates his own distinctive answer to this problem coming up with new ideas about freedom, independence, and authenticity. By putting these two modernist giants into dialogue with each other, Franco brilliantly exposes just how much more we still have to learn from each.”

Steven B. Smith, Yale University

"Outstanding. . . . Franco’s engagement with and retrieval of the political and moral thought of Rousseau and Nietzsche provides resources that allow one to conceive of oneself, perhaps anew, in terms of the psychological depths, spiritual height, and human possibilities that, though not completely closed off by the late modern world, are more and more difficult to achieve."

Choice