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Continued from yesterday: What was the Voltaire-Tronchin conspiracy, and why did these two leading denizens of Geneva decide to conspire to ruin Rousseau’s reputation and expose him as an intellectual and moral fraud? (And where does Adam Smith, who was … Continue reading →

Continued from yesterday’s post — footnotes and references are below the fold: The correspondence between Dr Theodore Tronchin and Jean-Jacques Rousseau resumed in the spring of 1759, when the Swiss philosopher wrote to the doctor in Geneva asking for medical … Continue reading →

One aspect of Rousseau’s thought that may have piqued Adam Smith’s admiration, curiosity, and intellect, even before his travels to Geneva in 1765-66, was the Swiss philosopher’s Lettre à M. d’Alembert sur les spectacles, first published in 1758, the original … Continue reading →

Pictured above is Dr Théodore Tronchin (1709-1781), one of the most celebrated — in some quarters, despised — medical doctors of the Age of Enlightenment. In this post, Alain Alcouffe and I will discuss what we like to call “the … Continue reading →

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) descended from a long-line of Genevan watchmakers, for his father Isaac Rousseau (1672–1747) and his grandfather David Rousseau (1641–1738) — as well as his great- and great-great grandfathers! — were master clockmakers in the city-state of Geneva. … Continue reading →

Thus far, Alain Alcouffe and I have explored Adam Smith’s possible motives for visiting the Swiss city-state of Geneva in the fall of 1765 (cf. the map of Geneva below, circa 1760). Among other things, we established a possible connection … Continue reading →

Alain Alcouffe and I have been researching Adam Smith’s sojourn in Switzerland. More specifically, we have posed a number of questions about this chapter of Smith’s life. Did he, for example, take an interest in the whereabout of Jean-Jacques Rousseau … Continue reading →

In this post (and our next one), Alain Alcouffe and I will address the following questions: Why did the leaders of the Republic of Geneva try to suppress The Social Contract, and what role, if any, did Marc Turretin — … Continue reading →

As Alain Alcouffe and I mentioned in our previous post, the rather mysterious-sounding “Syndic Turretin” is mentioned in passing in John Rae’s biography of Adam Smith (Rae 1895, p. 191). According to Rae, this particular individual was one of the … Continue reading →