Books by John Charvet

The belief in equality as the basis of a just society is fundamental to the dominant western, liberal viewpoint. Yet, the standard individualist justification for it is weak and contradictory. This book provides a radically new communitarian account of the value of equality and establishes it's proper limits.

This is a critical study of the political and social ideas of Jean Jacques Rousseau. The importance of the book lies in the originality and the implications of Charvet's critical analysis of this attempted translation, and thus of Rousseau's social philosophy in general.

This book is about the grounds of ethical life, or the nature and basis of our ethical obligations. Charvet considers the ideas of the freedom and equality of men and shows that there is a radical incoherence underlying them which consists in the failure to integrate in a coherent way the particular and the moral or communal dimensions of individual life.