Taylor J. Green, Ph.D. Candidate in Political Science at Carleton University, will be giving a public lecture at the Oglethorpe University Politics Department. The event is titled Rousseau’s Rejection of Enlightenment: The Origins of Millenarian Tyranny.

From the presenter: Rousseau’s critique of bourgeois liberalism in the Discourse of the Origin of Inequality, many speculate, inspires Robespierre and the Reign of Terror of the French Revolution, leading to a new type of tyranny not seen before in history, one where the individual is to be completely submerged in the collective. Millenarianism is a modern type of tyranny, according to W.R. Newell, that wants to destroy western Enlightenment progress to return to some idyllic past of community. In this lecture, I bring to light different typologies of tyranny to further uncover the origins of millenarian tyranny. By situating millenarian tyranny in the rejection of bourgeois individualism, I read Rousseau’s critique of Enlightenment as an instrumental force in shaping subsequent millenarian revolutionary movements.