Abstract:

 From the Tanzimat era to the establishment of the Turkish Republic, reading and translating the works of French Enlightenment philosophers, especially those of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, had been a practice passed down from one generation to another. However, even before the Tanzimat era, several studies had already referred to the works of Rousseau, who was called an atheist and whose ideas paved the way for the French Revolution in 1789. The extant samples, which provide insights into the first translation of Rousseau’s Social Contract, include a few pages of an article published in a journal named Ictihad in 1911, an unfinished translation of “Book I” published in Paris in 1904, and other translations published in Istanbul in 1911. Considering the translations of Rousseau’s works during the period from the Young Ottomans to the Young Turks, we distinguish the clear disproportion between the translation of his political works and the Ottoman intelligentsia’s admiration for him.  

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