“Rousseau’s ideas were in the air; he only expressed what many of his contemporaries knew, namely that they were faced with a choice and had to decide either for Voltairianism, with its reasonableness and respectability, or for the surrender of historical traditions and a completely new beginning. There is no personal relationship in the whole history of European culture with more profound symbolic significance than that between Voltaire and Rousseau.”

—  Arnold Hauser

Source: The Social History of Art, Volume III. Rococo, Classicism and Romanticism, 1999, Chapter 2. The New Reading Public

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Arnold Hauser34
Hungarian art historian 1892–1978

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