Philosophical esotericism – the practice of communicating one's unorthodox thoughts "between the lines" – was a common practice until the end of the eighteenth century. The famous "Encyclopedie of Diderot", for instance, not only discusses this pract...

The true key to all the perplexities of the human condition, Rousseau boldly claims, is the "natural goodness of man". It is also the key to his own notoriously contradictory writings, which, he insists, are actually the disassembled parts of a rigor...