RoR: Forum

Linz,
Here I come but I think you may be disappointed. A while back I placed two quotations side by side; one by Kant, the other by Rousseau. I'm too tired (just got back from Boston and leave tomorrow for Amsterdam) to search for it--but here is my favorite Rousseau quotation which, in my mind, makes him the antipode of Kant.

"Almighty God, you who hold minds in your hands, deliver us from the enlightenment and the deadly arts of our fathers, and give back to us ignorance, innocence and poverty--the only goods that can bring about our happiness and that are precious in your sight." from DISCOURSE ON THE SCIENCES AND THE ARTS.
THE BASTARD

And now something antipodal from Kant.

"Sapere Aude! 'Have the courage to use your own understanding!' --that is the motto of enlightenment." from AN ANSWER TO THE QUESTION 'WHAT IS ENLIGHTENMENT'"

If you want a defense of Rousseau, (and I know that you don't) you won't get it from little old me.

Fred

Post 21

Thursday, December 30, 2004 - 11:48pm

Congratulations, Jason Quintana! An excellent reply. Max is the typical European who lives from that minimum percentage of Capitalism we have in the world but yearns to eliminate even this small part for they consider that the Greens and all further Marxians are SO right and we should all really live in the jungle. My personal comment on Greenies and their supporters (unfortunately a majority of the world population) is: Why don't you all go back to the jungle, but naked and unarmed (and no refrigerators, etc. of course) and see how you can overcome in this state wild animals and hunger? Mankind has gone a long way to leave all this behind and we must thank those who used their brain to do it. We should fall on our knees and say "Thanks" to the grimyest smokestack (as Ayn Rand recommended) for Industrial Civilization to have extended our life to 70 years and much beyond, while savages reach their 30tiest only if the are very, but very, very lucky. Manfred

Post 22

Sunday, January 2, 2005 - 5:58am

Neil: In fact, many conservatives also see Rousseau as evil. Christopher Dawson, for example, sees in Rousseau's rejection of original sin and his belief in the perfectability of society the origins of revolutionary thought.

I thought many conservatives saw Rousseau in a possitive light. Don't the Straussians see him as correcting the "crass" individualism of Locke?

Chris quoting Collier: "and every philosophy engages, implicitly or explicitly, in controversy with its opponents. Philosophy may seek truth, but it seeks it in an adversarial as well as in an investigative manner."

Now I knew there was a reason I liked arguing with you!

Post 23

Monday, August 8, 2005 - 10:12pm