Hence Rousseau's novelistic works, Emile, La Nouvelle Héloïse, and Confessions―each of which is much longer than his primary political treatise, the two Discourses and the Social Contract, put together―constitute an attempt to establish what was missing in earlier democratic thinkers, a democratic art. He does for democracy what Socrates did for aristocracy in the Republic.

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "Hence Rousseau's novelistic works, Emile, La Nouvelle Héloïse, and Confessions―each of which is much longer than his primary political treatise, the two Discourses and the Social Contract, put together―constitute an attempt to establish what was missing in earlier democratic thinkers, a democratic art. He does for democracy what Socrates did for aristocracy in the Republic." in the context of "Allan Bloom, "Rousseau on Equality of the Sexes" in Justice And Equality Here and Now, ed. Frank S. Lucash (1986)" to mean that wisdom is timeless.