Rameau has three replies. First, why should we have any regard for the long-run if the prospect of immediacy is sufficiently enticing? Secondly, does the philosophe’s view not entail that even in the long-run we ought to obey the moral rules only when and insofar as they serve our desires? And thirdly is not this indeed the way of the world, that each individual, each class, consults his or its desires and to satisfy them preys on each other? Where the philosophe sees principle, the family, a well-ordered natural and social world, Rameau sees these as sophisticated disguises for self-love,
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