Jean-Jacques Rousseau

[Anonymous No.20389836]

Have you read him? What do you think of him?

[Anonymous No.20389860]

His discourses are worth a read, but knowing the context where they were written.

From then on the thing gets either too philosophical or too personal. The first is fine if youre interested in it and the second can be great but requires good immersion if you want to truly know it.

The Enlightenment is a nice period to explore, with many less known figures that are interesting.

[Anonymous No.20389885]

Discourse on Inequality is amazing. Civilization was a mistake. We must return to monke

[Anonymous No.20390090]

>>20389836
Luv freedom
Hate “actors”
Simple as

[Anonymous No.20390542]

>>20389836
> Reason
> Has kids
> Gets rids of kids
This guys a meme. He didn't even finish his fucking work.

[Anonymous No.20390765]

>>20389836
Everything he wrote was golden, especially the 1st and 2nd Discourses. One of the few modern political philosophers who can hold a candle to Plato and Aristotle.

[Anonymous No.20390771]

>>20389885
>Civilization was a mistake. We must return to monke
He doesn't argue that. Very simplistic reading. >>20389860
Nigga all this shit is personal. Life isn't a joke.

[Anonymous No.20390782]

>>20390771
Sounds lime you have a simplistic understanding, bud

[Anonymous No.20390789]

>>20389836
Probably the greatest European writer/thinker of the 18th century.

[Anonymous No.20390795]

>>20390782
If Rousseau thought every civilizational development was a mistake, then why did he cite examples of evolution that were unequivocally better than the state of nature, e.g., the beginning of the family? Why is he ambivalent on whether savage man or civilized man is better in virtue by the end of the 2nd Discourses (only merely pointing out that the two would horrify the other, and that each could easily kill the other within their own domain, the wilderness or the city)? Why does he disown the Discourses later in his life? Why does he feel the need to make "the chains" legitimate in the Social Contract?

[Anonymous No.20392157]

>general will will solve our problems
>becomes into a façade to hide them

Enlightened indeed!

[Anonymous No.20392164]

Too based.

[Anonymous No.20392186]

>>20389860
>His discourses are worth a read, but knowing the context where they were written
What do you mean by this? I have his discourses and was going to read them soon

[Anonymous No.20392196]

He's a respectable enemy.
>>20389885
>Ce passage de l'état de nature à l'état civil produit dans l'homme un changement très remarquable, en substituant dans sa conduite la justice à l'instinct, et donnant à ses actions la moralité qui leur manquait auparavant. C'est alors seulement que la voix du devoir, succédant à l'impulsion physique et le droit à l'appétit, l'homme, qui jusque-là n'avait regardé que lui-même, se voit forcé d'agir sur d'autres principes, et de consulter sa raison avant d'écouter ses penchants. Quoiqu'il se prive dans cet état de plusieurs avantages qu'il tient de la nature, il en regagne de si grands, ses facultés s'exercent et se développent, ses idées s'étendent, ses sentiments s'ennoblissent, son âme toute entière s'élève à tel point, que si les abus de cette nouvelle condition ne le dégradaient souvent au-dessous de celle dont il est sorti, il devrait bénir sans cesse l'instant heureux qui l'en arracha pour jamais, et qui, d'un animal stupide et borné, fit un être intelligent et un homme

[Anonymous No.20392225]

>>20392186
well, i just mean that being informed about the sociohistorical context can be useful to know the relevance of what he is treating there; it is also not useless to have some notions about the debates of the epoch, such as for instance the social contract debate and the authors with whom he is implicitly or explicitly debating (hobbes locke pufendorf grotius etc).

Cause the thing is that one can read those texts as if they were wondering about general timeless issues, whereas he is really wondering about defined issues in his time (for example, in the 2nd dicourse he is not wondering about what the state of nature is but simply about how to justify the civil society he will later expose in the social contract).

But ok, dont overfocus on that either, the texts are also great as food for thought and have also a general value.

[Anonymous No.20392232]

>>20389885
thats what Voltaire thought, which is a misreading.

>>20392196
well chosen quote.

[Anonymous No.20392259]

>>20389836
He's alright, but birthed the noble savage myth, which is a crime against humanity

[Anonymous No.20392268]

>>20392259
did no such thing

[Anonymous No.20392283]

>>20392196
>>20392225
>>20392232
What advice would you guys give to someone about to start reading Rousseau in order to avoid such common misreadings? Rousseau is one of the most important figures in political thought and will be, explicitly or implicitly, a reference from his time onwards. If I'm not mistaken, Tocqueville regarded his works with the utmost importance. Also, Discourse on Inequality then Social Contract, right?

[Anonymous No.20392284]

>>20389836
I read his Social Contract and it was decent. I heard his other works are worse.

[Anonymous No.20392301]

>>20392283
nothing. just read his essay carefully.

[Anonymous No.20392329]

He's the other Nietzsche, the most "untimely" man of the 18th century. One of the greatest and most exciting writers of all time. Really exciting to read because he simultaneously typifies and transcends his time, and it's by doing one that he does the other, reciprocally. He rejects the premises of his whole century by immanently developing them to a breaking point that the rest of the collective consciousness would have to take a hundred years to catch up to. One of the most interesting men in history.

[Anonymous No.20392346]

>>20392329
Holy midwit chill out with the buzzwords and read a book once in your life

[Anonymous No.20392350]

>>20392283
Well I would just say get some basic notions of the Enlightenment as a historical movement, above all in its questioning of the Old Regime society. The ideas of the 'philosophes' are a direct attempt to change that, based on 'Reason'.

Usually a good edition of the text includes an introduction that mentions briefly those things.

And yeah, the Social Contract after the Discourse. You might want to know that, additional to the two famous discourses (On science and arts and On inequality) there is one on the Origin of languages. But those two you mentioned are the main ones, up to you which ones to read.

[Anonymous No.20392364]

>>20392283
Rousseau agreed with Hobbes on most points and was the significantly inferior thinker. If you are actually interested in political thought, read Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Machiavelli, and Hobbes first. Rousseau is a minor intellectual figure.

[Anonymous No.20392379]

>>20392346
For books I recommend Cassirer's classic, anything by Isaiah Berlin on Rousseau, Garrard, Hulliung.

>>20392283
Try reading Cassirer's book on the Enlightenment first, it's not too long and is a decent general primer. You can read his Renaissance book too if you want, which is even shorter and is sort of the prequel. The short overview of Rousseau in Strauss/Cropsey History of Political Philosophy, by Bloom, is okay and was much read. Anything by Berlin, like the essay in Six Enemies of Human Liberty.

[Anonymous No.20392392]

He took "poetry and prose" rulership to its logical conclusion "communism" and blamed the "might is right" theory of property for why poverty exists.

Typical French philosopher.

[Anonymous No.20392399]

>>20389885
>Discourse on Inequality is amazing. Civilization was a mistake. We must return to monke

>We must return to monkey

Lmao that was about the conclusion

[Anonymous No.20392415]

>>20392283
>>20392379
Forgot to also recommend Lilla's discussion of him in Stillborn God. It's short.

[Anonymous No.20392424]

>>20392364
>Machiavelli, and Hobbes.
Superior political writers
>Rousseau is a minor intellectual figure.
Rousseau was more of an economic speculator on wealth inequality than a political writer.

See>>20392392

[Anonymous No.20392765]

>visits a random forest near the city for a few days
>pretends to have found the original state of humanity and the principle of social organization

Nice research method, XVIII century's style.

Those texts might have a historical interest, cause they had a huge influence on what took place later, but the concrete issues treated in them can be today considered from other more relevant points of view, such a for instance anthropology concerning the so called state of nature.

Levi-Strauss mentions explicitly this issue, directly evoking Rousseau, in his famous 'Tristes Tropiques', as well as in a conference reprinted in his 'Anthropologie Structurale deux'.

[Anonymous No.20392795]

>>20390782
Anon is right though.
Life is personal.

[Anonymous No.20392807]

>>20392350
Yeah, the Origin of languages interests me as well. But I'd take it after the main two.

>>20392379
Oh yeah, Cassirer's book on the philosophy of the Enlightenment might be a good read. Thank you for remiding me of him. About Isaiah berlin, I don't like him. His introduction in Maistre's Considerations on France is terribly biased and I couldn't see any genuine engagement with Maistre's, and anti-Enlightenment, thought.

[Anonymous No.20392843]

Social Contract has some interesting sections
I especially like the part where he says that Russia will one day be taken over by Tartars

[Anonymous No.20392846]

>>20392765
I know Levi-Strauss wil say that there exists a kind of primitive science that is just as useful as our modern one for giving an understanding of world, civil or common society, etc., but does he at any point claim or suggests something in the line of Rousseau of bon sauvage?

[Anonymous No.20392900]

>>20392846
Well, what he basically says is that Rousseau asked the right questions but didnt really have the best methods or resources to answer them. The big question is that of how the passage from nature to culture is done, which LS tries to answer in his Elementary Structures of Kinship. He tries, if you want, to find how the 'savage' truly lives, irrespective if he is 'good' (or 'bad').

[Anonymous No.20393010]

>>20392900
This is one of the books I wanted to read the most of his. I think I'll get into it soon.

[Anonymous No.20393068]

>>20393010
Well, the thing is a 600-page brick of pure technical anthropology, with thousands of references. If one is into that stuff then it is a fantastic read, but if not maybe just the introduction and the conclusion would be a good first contact with it, helped maybe by an introductory book to complement it.

His other books are less anthropological and more philosophical, but that first one, based on his doctoral thesis, is pure academic anthropology in its most technical sense.

[Anonymous No.20393119]

>>20393068
I became interested in this book specifically because of Girard's chapter on it in the Violence and the Sacred.

[Anonymous No.20393122]

>>20389836
Every thinker from the Enlightment is thrash. We really got into the dark ages after the Middle ones were over.

[Anonymous No.20393159]

>>20393119
Yeah, every anthropologist that treats those questions has to mention his posture regarding LS's thesis. Girard is a good read too.

[Anonymous No.20393175]

>>20389836
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rz2k4VARv0c

[Anonymous No.20393236]

>>20393175
checked over 30 videos and her instagram and barely found one or two feet shots, and she looks like she has rockin jugs but she never shows them

[Anonymous No.20393242]

>>20392795
kys

[Anonymous No.20393265]

If you hate and/or haven't read Rousseau, you have no culture and are a lowbrow at best. Simple as.

[Anonymous No.20393276]

>>20393236
There was some vid from like 2016, she is doing yoga, huge boobs and nice ass.
Then she got fat, still fuckable

[Anonymous No.20393283]

>>20393276
why do they do yoga if they know men like us exist

who needs to see you do yoga in the first place? what kind of narcissist films themselves doing mundane activities for no reason

[Anonymous No.20393286]

>>20393242
Anon, I won’t kms, I get u are pmsing but life is personal

[Anonymous No.20393471]

>>20393236
>>20393276
She's a person, at least have the decency to objectify her in silence. Those of us that don't exist in your shallow, sexless frame-of-mind, don't like being reminded that your sort exist.

[Anonymous No.20393475]

>>20393471
I WISH I WERE HER BICYCLE SEAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I WISH I WERE HERE LITTLE TAMPON BABY BOY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! HER JUGS JIGGLE WHEN SHE MOVES IN A WAY THAT INDICATES SHE OFTEN DOESN'T WEAR A BRA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! HER ASS GOT THICKER WHEN SHE GOT FAT AND I DON'T MIND AT ALL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Anonymous No.20393561]

>>20393471
Ok, repress your sexuality Cosby.

[Anonymous No.20393593]

>>20393475

[Anonymous No.20393807]

>>20393236
She uploaded her completely nude photos

I'm sure you can find them

[Anonymous No.20393822]

>>20393807
What, where?

[Anonymous No.20393855]

>>20393822
just google antastesia nudes or antastesia leaks

[Anonymous No.20393857]

>>20393855
She had a porn Patreon with all that ultrafeminism shit on her channel? Fucking women, no principles.

[Anonymous No.20393859]

>>20393857
Expolited worker, perhaps.

[Anonymous No.20393899]

>>20392268
Sure, pal

[Anonymous No.20393918]

>>20389836
He was right about actors. On a purely literary level his Confessions is brilliant, and I dare say one of the best prose works of the 1700s. Also he would be only too pleased to see his almost total posthumous victory over his old enemy and rival Voltaire, who except for Candide and a few memes is nowadays almost totally forgotten, while for better or for worse people are still discussing Rousseau’s political philosophy to this day

[Anonymous No.20394372]

>open thread to have a gentlemanly and scholarly talk about the Enlightenment thinkers.
>half the thread is about a random french attention-seeking youtuber.

Maybe that is what the Lumières ideas turn into in real life: from Rousseau wondering about what an ideal social organization is to those youtubers trying to get viewers anyhow. After all, both are 'free citizens of a Republic'.

Maybe freedom is only useful in times of real social crisis, because if you are not under constraint it will most likely go to waste.

To end on a more positive note, have here an example of a neckbeard that has done something with his time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spdWp7ocFgE

[Anonymous No.20394633]

>>20389836
>Jean-Jacques Rousseau
I don't know who he is, or why I should care about him.

[Anonymous No.20396086]

>>20394633
Are you even serious. I mean, that name is practically the only one people retain from highschool classes about enlightenment...

[Anonymous No.20396150]

>>20396086
Take how you feel about him not knowing who Rousseau is and multiply it by a hundred and that's the real truth of how little zoomers know about the world. They have an extremely thin and brittle surface covering of very well known things, but underneath that there is no additional depth. Zoomers who go to college can write you a 10 page essay on John Stuart Mill's concept of liberty but they don't know who he was, where he lived, what the time was like that he lived in, who he knew, etc. The death of holistic knowledge of the world among intellectuals in the post-war period is now developing toward its natural conclusion, the death of holistic knowledge in general.

[Anonymous No.20396227]

>>20396150
Yeah true... facing such a situation what I would do is just making it clear for them that the world where we live is the result of a defined history, which we need to know in order to keep the present world in a more or less ordered state. Like that, when things finally go completely off the rails they will at least know where to start looking for answers.

[Anonymous No.20397525]

>>20389836
i like his works, though he was a horrible father.

[Anonymous No.20398392]

Rice-oh!
Vall-tire!
Mon-tease-queue!

Dee-deer-oat!
Dall-amber!

Rubbers-peer

was your fault.

[Anonymous No.20398443]

>>20389836
The social contract myth is the worst virus that has ever happened to the human species. Fuck any retard ""thinker""" that shilled for such a retarded belief

[Anonymous No.20398690]

>>20398443
the social contract did not cause the historical process where it appeared. it only manifested it.

[Anonymous No.20398849]

>>20389836
>abandons his 5 kids
>writes a book on how to raise kids
lmao

[Anonymous No.20400917]

based

[Anonymous No.20401900]

Dr. Johnson on Rousseau:

Boswell: "Do you really think him [Rousseau] a bad man?"

Johnson: "Sir, if you are talking jestingly of this, I don't talk with you. If you mean to be serious, I think him one of the worst of men; a rascal, who ought to be hunted out of society, as he has been. Three or four nations have expelled him: and it is a shame that he is protected in this country."

Boswell: "I don't deny, Sir, but that his novel may, perhaps, do harm; but I cannot think his intention was bad."

Johnson: "Sir, that will not do. We cannot prove any man's intention to be bad. You may shoot a man through the head, and say you intended to miss him; but the Judge will order you to be hanged. An alleged want of intention, when evil is committed, will not be allowed in a court of justice. Rousseau, Sir, is a very bad man. I would sooner sign a sentence for his transportation, than that of any felon who has gone from the Old Bailey these many years. Yes, I should like to have him work in the plantations."

James Boswell, Life of Samuel Johnson

[Anonymous No.20402779]

>>20392196
So Rousseau shares the opinions as your average redditor? Go it.

[Anonymous No.20403191]

De Maistre conclusively disproved Rousseau

[Anonymous No.20403931]

>>20403191
>De Maistre

You say it as if that was not in Rousseau's advantage.

[Anonymous No.20404639]

>>20403191
Doubt

[Anonymous No.20404765]

>>20389836
He liked being spanked by his mistress ~10 years his senior and he had social anxiety to the point where he had erectile dysfunction in the presence of prostitutes. Dude was a barbarian.

[Anonymous No.20404792]

Read his autobiography and loved it. Its a pain to read but just knowing how bad his mommy issues were, i dont see his theory the same now

[Anonymous No.20404802]

>>20392232
>>thats what Voltaire thought, which is a misreading.
No. Voltaire is pro commerce and pro bourgeois.

[Anonymous No.20404815]

>>20393265
meanwhile the crowd reading this enlightenment garbage looks like this >>20393175

[Anonymous No.20404822]

>>20394372
The atheist republic is the the merger of politics, education and entertainment, nothing else nothing more.

[Anonymous No.20405224]

>>20389836
One of the fuckers that fucked western civilization. This cuck and his ideals deserve to be forgotten.

[Anonymous No.20405289]

>>20389836
One of the GOATs, innovated in autobiography with the Confessions, in childhood psychology with Émile, prefigured romanticism with his Rêveries, and is by far the most influential enlightenment philosophers concerning political science. No idea why anglos hate him so much, probably a meme spread by low-brow internet reactionaries.

[Anonymous No.20405597]

>>20389885
filtered hard

[Anonymous No.20405998]

>>20404822
what do you mean merger, cause that could imply many things.