In 1959 1960 Deleuze dedicated a year of coursework to Jean Jacques Rousseau a thinkerwe are not used to rank among Deleuze s famous minor philosophical heroes Indeed itwould be easy to dismiss Rousseau as too romantic too aristocratic and too much of a Statethinker in order to have any profound connection with Deleuze However the course s typedsummary of twenty seven pages never published but available at several places online 1 suggests otherwise The document is a surprising encounter between Deleuze and Rousseau one in which Deleuze explicitly transforms Rousseau into a thinker of genesis virtuality andactuality each a key concept in Deleuze s own thought This connection or transformationdisappears or is rendered implicit in the single essay Deleuze published on Rousseau in1962 2 as does much of the internal structure Deleuze discerns in Rousseau which makes thecourse summary a unique source to turn to