Graeber and Wengrow note that, although Enlightenment philosophers such as Rousseau remain relevant and widely read, some of the important foundations of modern social theory are laid by traditionalists from the nineteenth century
"[A]lmost all the great issues of modern social science--tradition, solidarity, authority, status, alienation, the sacred--were first discussed in the works of men like the theocratic Vicomte de Bomald, the monarchist Comte de Maistre, or the Whig politician and philosopher Edmund Burke" (495)