@inbook{ee1919465dc7453a97a234ad7c02943f,
title = "The Gossip Circles of Geneva: Morals, Mores and Moralizing in Political Life",
abstract = "Ethics, for Simon Critchley, is an anarchic meta-politics that produces modes of thinking and being that can drive us in ways that are otherwise absent from contemporary politics, and he looks to ethics for an answer to the question of why today so few of us are motivated to be involved in the political life of our liberal democracies. This essay examines the contribution Rousseau makes to this conversation in his Letter to d{\textquoteright}Alembert on the Theater (henceforth Letter to d{\textquoteright}Alembert). Rather than concentrating on his work on civil religion, it investigates the role Rousseau gives to the social organizations which govern interactions between men and women in the city state of Geneva. The Letter to d{\textquoteright}Alembert demonstrates that if ethics is to be the solution to the problem of a motivational deficit in political life, it will have a powerful social component. Its most effective forms will look less anarchic and more like social Calvinism or Machiavellian republicanism.",
keywords = "Geneva, Letter to D{\textquoteright}Alembert, Mores, Rousseau, Simon Critchley",
author = "Anne O{\textquoteright}Byrne",
note = "Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2015, Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht.",
year = "2015",
doi = "10.1007/978-94-017-9448-0\_5",
language = "English",
series = "Sophia Studies in Cross-cultural Philosophy of Traditions and Cultures",
publisher = "Springer Science and Business Media B.V.",
pages = "69--77",
booktitle = "Sophia Studies in Cross-cultural Philosophy of Traditions and Cultures",
}