/lit/ - Literature

It might be time for me to take my leave. I rarely find even one thread worth reading here nowadays. I think my tastes and attitudes have just diverged too far from /lit/'s, or /lit/'s from mine, for me to find anything here anymore. Not that there is really anywhere else to go, but this place is beginning to resemble not visiting anywhere anyway.
Maybe I'll check back in a few months to see if anything has changed, maybe I'll still stick around, I don't know.

The dichotomy that exists between the two is really just the question of whether man has an innate nature which the structures of society should be built around, or whether the structures of society creates man's nature. Hobbes is the former and Rousseau is the latter. Further divergence of their political projects stem more from meta-questions of political philosophy (Rousseau having a very classical, Aristotelian view, while Hobbes had a far more modern view) than from their conception of human nature. People tend to miss the forest for the trees when they focus too much on this and the state of nature, especially with Rousseau and the 'noble savage' meme. The truth likely lies somewhere in between their conceptions, but the worst you can accuse Hobbes of is being too conservative, while Rousseau's views can lead to disastrous utopian projects (though Rousseau himself wasn't so radical in his prescriptions). I do think Hobbes made the more enduring contribution, and, while I don't like to talk in terms of who refuted who, i think Smith offered a convincing counter to most of Rousseau's core arguments.

>>16566748
There are plenty of good charts on the wiki if you want reading lists.
>>16567155
>>16567334
I have to run and will be busy for the next few hours, but i'll try to answer when i get back.