Claire Binkley’s Reviews > Emile, or On Education > Status Update

Teaching children to speak is a herculean task for which I would not like to assume responsibility.

I try so hard not to be afraid of spiders, attempt elimination of arachnophobia - one bit me and it swelled disturbingly, though.

"The only useful part of medice is hygiene. ... Temperance and work are the two true doctors of man." I still like to refer to Dr Natalya Vasiuk on occasion. We get along. Better chyle? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chyle ...ew. Colic and worms. This is gross! Let's try to make it through, though, as I've made it through Dostoevsky, ah, Crime & Punishment - sickeningly brutal! Farinaceous? Floury, starchy, mealy.

Zeal makes up for talent more than talent makes up for zeal.

"Our greatest ills come to us from ourselves." Well, the solution is just not to get all depressive about it.

"Men have been buried at one hundred who died at their birth." This makes me remember I've essentially died at eighteen. A shame, since I hadn't even read War & Peace yet by that point, let alone Solzhenitsyn, Trotsky, Marx, or Lenin. "I do not see what [the baby] gained by being born." ... "We'd gladly cripple [babies] to keep them from laming themselves." ... "The first gifts [babies] receive from you are chains."

WHY HADN'T I READ THIS BEFORE? "Every patriot is harsh to foreigners." :/ And Tartars are loved by philosophers so their neighbours don't have to be. Ugh. That's why I didn't force myself through it. Livy and Plutarch are his next sources, both of whom I studied. When I was more than a quarter awake. Rousseau is the first to use bourgeois right, after Marx! Says the endnote. Colleges aren't public? Not even WCU?

The point of the intro is context. *patient* Maybe Cong needs a summer letter. Aw, I know I come across bourgeois. I know Tocqueville wrote on America, but I skimmed over that... Emile/Sophie OTP? Wow, Briseis, Agememnon and Achilles, I haven't read about them for YEARS. Intro conclusion: THIS IS ALL AN ALLEGORY FOLKS if you were looking for porn LOOK ELSEWHERE (like Kant or Schiller) (c)1762 NOW ONTO THE PREFACE

Self-sufficiency undermines civil society and fulfillment of obligation... Hmm, society would be shallow and uncultured without the sexual undertones...? This introduction says in the body of the text Rousseau will show how the higher can be deduced from the lower without falling to its level. This would make good fodder for my next discussion.

Wait, scarcity is a result of extended, insatiable desire? ...actually, that makes sense, doesn't it. So one way to overcome lack of resources is not to want it any more? I don't think that quite works with fresh water, but it's one way to think about it.