Aperson’s literary talents do not seem to bear any direct relation to their human qualities. More precisely, the value of a work, its depth as well as its beauty, cannot be judged by the life of the person who wrote it — even when the work has obvious biographical resonances.
Those who refuse to read Émile on the grounds that Jean-Jacques Rousseau abandoned his children are depriving themselves of a work that has very few equivalents in the entire history of Western literature and philosophy, and which can rival Plato’s Republic.
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