Paul-Claude Moultou

This chapter focuses on Jean-Jacques Rousseau's letter to Paul-Claude Moultou on February 18, 1765. Moultou had written to Rousseau about the condemnation of the Letters Written from the Mountain in Geneva. In his letter, Rousseau answers that what is happening does not surprise him as he has always predicted that outcome. He says that “one could not go further without risking the fatherland and the public peace, which a wise man should never do.” According to Rousseau, “when there is no more communal liberty, there remains one resource: to cultivate individual liberty, that is, virtue.” He argues that “if the Genevan bourgeoisie knew how to restore its principles, purify its tastes, adopt stricter morals, while leaving these Gentlemen to the degradation of theirs, it would again become so respectable to them that even with their apparent arrogance they would tremble before it.”