<i>Juan-Jacobo’s</i> Paradox: The 1750 <i>Discourse on the Arts and Sciences</i> in Spanish America

Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s popularity in Spanish America between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is often attributed to the direct influence of his ideas in the region. This explanation tends to obfuscate the development of a distinctive Spanish American political thought in which Rousseau’s ideas were creatively adapted. Attending to the reception of the Discourse on the Arts and Sciences (1750) reveals how interest in Rousseau’s alleged ‘paradox’ of societal development framed the political imaginary of his Spanish-American readers by contributing to their prolonged engagement with Enlightenment theories of progress, namely through the concepts of barbarism and civilization.