/lit/ - Literature

it's fuckin' not. they are fundamentally irreconcilable. i have a lot more respect for hobbes' views and theories, but his insistence on social contract theory, an episodic theory of progress (h/t to ernest gellner), and his obvious political motives in theorizing (it's hard to read leviathan as anything but an attempt to legitimize the authority of the crown) kind of speak against him. otoh rousseau is just an asshole (fuck him)

Hardcore proto-communist vs. Hardcore proto-libertarian

Damn ...

>>1302950
neither of those statements can accurately be attributed to either of those articles. and if you think they can you are fucking dumb. neither hobbes nor rousseau can be read as analogues or examples of any contemporary political philosophy, although they may have influenced them.

>>1302950
neither of those descriptions can accurately be attributed to either of those authors. and if you think they can you are fucking dumb. neither hobbes nor rousseau can be read as analogues or examples of any contemporary political philosophy, although they may have influenced them.

>>1302952

It's generally considered that Rousseau and his General Will shit unwittingly isnpired soviet populism of the 20th Century.

Hobbes' "libertarianism" is marginally justifiable in that the Sovereign can only impose himself on those that fuck up their contracts to either him or each other, and cannot otherwise intervene in the private or economic spheres of his contractors, and if he did they would have a right to defend themselves.

>>1302964
>It's generally considered that Rousseau and his General Will shit unwittingly isnpired soviet populism of the 20th Century.

yeah, i'm familiar with the argument, and there are certainly commonalities between rousseau's thought and later marxist / soviet thought. but rousseau is not a proto-communist, there's no direct line of descent, and their philosophies are hugely different in like every other important way. they share attributes but are not really similar.

>Hobbes' "libertarianism" is marginally justifiable in that the Sovereign can only impose himself on those that fuck up their contracts to either him or each other, and cannot otherwise intervene in the private or economic spheres of his contractors, and if he did they would have a right to defend themselves.

i mean, even given that (which i'm not sure that i'm willing to do), calling hobbes a proto-libertarian is fucking laughable. quite simply, for hobbes, the individual has no meaningful protection against the sovereign. hobbes' whole political philosophy is about legitimizing, defending, and expanding the powers of the sovereign as a bulwark against people being evil. anyone who thinks that this is basically consonant with or similar to libertarianism is insane.

>>1302971

I'm well aware of your points, thanks, but I just wanted to engender debate with controversy :(
I like them both

Counter-enlightenment up in this bitch

>>1302984
vico, hamann, herder up in this mother

isaiah berlin 4 life

>>1302984

FUCK YEAH

LOCKE TRUMPS BOTH

>>1303604
locke is literally the worst

fuck locke

Rousseau is a fucking piece of shit, but the poor fella's theories have been corrupted to fulfill absolutely everyone's motives. Just the idea of doing something for the greater good, while a noble notion, gives license to every extremist that what they are doing is right.

>>1303752

Pic related, it's you.

You're the kind of moron who thinks Marx was a bad guy.

inb4 conservafag shitstorm

>AYN RAND AYN RAND AYN RAND

lol

>>1303782
I don't know if anybody (who you should take seriously) thinks he was a bad guy. His theory was just adopted by the power-hungry and legions of idealistic idiots, leading people to believe that he himself must have been either power-hungry or overly idealistic.

>>1303826
(i agree that marx is not a bad guy but) your analysis of marxism as a movement is pretty facile and easy, and pretty incorrect as a result.

i recommend reading Raymond Aron's The Opium of the Intellectuals for a thoughtful, lucid analysis and critique of Communism as a movement.

>>1304023
Thanks anon, will read.

>>1303782

Not that guy, but I don't like Marx. I mean, as a person I'm sure he was a nice enough guy. It's his ideas.

>>1304023
I'll put it on the list.

>>1304095

To the contrary, old bean. All of the accounts we have of Roussea as a human being indicate that was impossible to get along with. He alienated every single one of his friends throughout the course of his life, including David Hume, who he suspected of plotting to kill him.


As to the OP's question: no, of course it's not possible to reconcile their views of human nature. Rousseau was in many ways responding to -- and disagreeing with -- Hobbes' conception; his main criticism was of course that Hobbes treated men in nature as though they possessed many of the qualities that we have now (a notion of property rights, for example).

>>1302997

I've never considered Saint-Simon to have been a counter-Enlightenment figure really. The Saint-Simonians were certainly cultish and occasionally sinister, but I don't think that would qualify them as such.

>>1304137

Apparently my keyboard ceased to function at various points throughout this post. Forgive the numerous errors.

>>1304153
A good carpenter never blames his tools. smh.

Anyone have an original way of contrasting Rousseau and Hobbes' views on the state of nature?

>>1305784
Yes, because I did my own homework.

>>1303752
And the notion of being a selfish asshole has done so much good for mankind.

Clearly Hobbes would win. I mean come on, he's a tiger!

>>1305797
>implying Hobbes is a real tiger...

>>1305833
GOD DAMMIT WHY WOULD YOU POST THAT?

>>1305860
See this /lit/? See how that 4 panel comic made Courage Wolf feel shittier than any novel could?

>>1305862
To be fair he is a pretty two-dimensional tripfag

>>1305882
>X&X !pSkjEcB9sQ
>two-dimensional tripfag

>>1305892
Maybe you have not seen my award winning threads on harold bloom, the question of whether pushkin smoked, getting outside of the text, etc

this guy's claim to fame is that he gets a bunch of people to swap opinions a book under the label and pretense of a "book club", a somewhat redundant notion I should think considering how that is what happens on this board every single day.

But what can you do, there will always be freeloaders, hangers-on, demagogues, the usual

>>1305892
REMEMBAR REMEMBAR

YOU ARE ON 4C

"brilliant" connotates opinion and so two contradictory opinions are easily reconcilable on the grounds that an opinion is nothing but a personal feeling or judgement arrived at by subjective standards.