What do you think?
Rate this book
The Essential Rousseau
Can individual freedom and social stability be reconciled? What I the function of government? What are the benefits and liabilities of civilation? What is the original nature of man, and how can he most fully realize his potential. These were the questions that Jean-Jacques Rousseau investigated in works that helped set the stage for the French Revolution and have since stood as eloquent expressions of revolutionary views, not only in politics but also in such areas as personal life styles and educational practices.
300 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1762
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
February 8, 2022
How long ago did I read Rousseau’s Discourse on the Arts and Sciences? I can’t even remember, but I remember my reaction. I enjoyed it and I thought it was clever, but I never for a moment took it seriously. I never felt I needed to take it seriously to take the second discourse seriously. But I have reconsidered my position, though I wouldn’t really call it a position. I think I was more enamored of the idea of the noble savage than convinced by it.
I can’t blame my younger self for this. She read with the future in mind, not the past. She chose the noble savage over leviathan because of what she wanted human nature to be. This just proves that she was not a very good reader of books, for she mistook the descriptive for the prescriptive and simply chose nobility over slavery.
Nowadays I’m more interested in the past – how we got here rather than where we’re going. Now I think Rousseau’s first discourse needs to be taken more seriously. I couldn’t see it before because I could not bear a world without the arts and sciences, without culture, without sophistication. The noble savage I extolled was a philosophical idea, a subject of intellectual discourse, a product of the imagination. The paradox of extolling an ideal that is the negation of all the things I value, a negation even of the work of literary sophistication that embodies it, was resolved by my not really believing a word of it.
But now I do believe. This time the paradox is resolved by my recognition that the things I value ought not to be so valued. I came to this change of mind as I reflected upon the art and science that I hold most dear: language. When I first read Rousseau attributing moral corruption to the invention of culture, I could not believe it because I thought quite the opposite. Although I knew that sophisticated civilizations gave rise to new vices, I felt certain that the good outweighed the evil. How could art not make people better? How could cultural progress not lead to moral progress?
I knew that the noble savage was happy and robust, a solitary yet compassionate soul. I knew that civilization created political inequality. Still, I couldn’t blame the arts and sciences for that. I couldn’t blame the search for beauty and truth. I couldn’t blame language for the moral corruption that has been eating away at our species for millennia. But now I do.
“ ... the art of writing preceded the art of thinking, an order which may seem strange, but may be all too natural” (207)
Language is the ultimate weapon of moral corruption. The more sophisticated language becomes, the more damage it can do. That is because language is the tool that creates other tools. From language comes a host of abstractions. These abstractions take on the status of real things. Then we become slaves to our own creations.
But do I believe this? I have a room full of books that seem to say otherwise. They are intellectually edifying, emotionally moving, aesthetically pleasing. Reading them, I become a more civilized and sophisticated person, but do I become better?
I can’t blame my younger self for this. She read with the future in mind, not the past. She chose the noble savage over leviathan because of what she wanted human nature to be. This just proves that she was not a very good reader of books, for she mistook the descriptive for the prescriptive and simply chose nobility over slavery.
Nowadays I’m more interested in the past – how we got here rather than where we’re going. Now I think Rousseau’s first discourse needs to be taken more seriously. I couldn’t see it before because I could not bear a world without the arts and sciences, without culture, without sophistication. The noble savage I extolled was a philosophical idea, a subject of intellectual discourse, a product of the imagination. The paradox of extolling an ideal that is the negation of all the things I value, a negation even of the work of literary sophistication that embodies it, was resolved by my not really believing a word of it.
But now I do believe. This time the paradox is resolved by my recognition that the things I value ought not to be so valued. I came to this change of mind as I reflected upon the art and science that I hold most dear: language. When I first read Rousseau attributing moral corruption to the invention of culture, I could not believe it because I thought quite the opposite. Although I knew that sophisticated civilizations gave rise to new vices, I felt certain that the good outweighed the evil. How could art not make people better? How could cultural progress not lead to moral progress?
I knew that the noble savage was happy and robust, a solitary yet compassionate soul. I knew that civilization created political inequality. Still, I couldn’t blame the arts and sciences for that. I couldn’t blame the search for beauty and truth. I couldn’t blame language for the moral corruption that has been eating away at our species for millennia. But now I do.
“ ... the art of writing preceded the art of thinking, an order which may seem strange, but may be all too natural” (207)
Language is the ultimate weapon of moral corruption. The more sophisticated language becomes, the more damage it can do. That is because language is the tool that creates other tools. From language comes a host of abstractions. These abstractions take on the status of real things. Then we become slaves to our own creations.
But do I believe this? I have a room full of books that seem to say otherwise. They are intellectually edifying, emotionally moving, aesthetically pleasing. Reading them, I become a more civilized and sophisticated person, but do I become better?
February 16, 2014
The ideas of art and formal education being detrimental to humanity and our growth as individuals is interesting. I personally disagree, but would need further study to break down each of his precepts.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews