To Exonerate God, Rousseau Must Make Man Depraved

Professor Alan Kors explains that the young Rousseau did not trust the Paris philosophes. He met with them in the cafes but did not like their deism. He had known and argued with atheists. The philosophes seemed to him to seize upon deism to argue that God did not exist—perhaps created the world, but was nowhere to be found in it. To Rousseau, that sounded like atheism.