Rousseau

[Caid Ivik]

18th century spawned many weird theories, mostly thanks to improvement of media, academic freedom and also lust for wisdom. With already-done reformations of Church and succesful democratic revolutions in Netherlands and Britain, now growing own wealth by trade with whole world, most of the continental Europe felt ashamed: prime played by absolutistic national monarchies like France, Austria, Prussia, Spain and else could not even compare with two democratic naval superpowers.

Liberal english thoughts were felt especially in France, a nation well known for its misinterpretations: see Templars, Pope's internation in Avignon, catar movement and else. With Hobbes, Hume, Smith and other philosophers French started to think own view over human rights, democracy and such. Then Voltaire, Diderot and others managed to create an Encyclopedia, summa of wisdom of the western civilisation. With such big deed, they started to think: "We now much. Much more than we see in Bible. Then why do we need religion?"

Conceited philosophers started to yell, that God is nothing more than just an architect, without influence, and that we don't need to stay with his joking laws - why without a reward? (with finger pointed to Smith) Humanity is a senseless thing, why should it be led by another senseless thing - state, which IS BAD in France? (second one on Hobbes) As Voltaire's generation remained rational, without seducement of radicalism, Rousseau's one did not.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau was born in 1712, in a calvinist genevian family. Due to his totalitarian, dualistic religion, he felt his mind is too limited. He started to travel around France, permanently converting between catholics and calvinists to remain financial support. His first book was Discours, where he written about inequality between humans, which he considered as a part of one big pantheistic nature. Here he parted from his spiritual father Diderot and made own way. Soon, his critics were pointed even against encyclopedists. Fascinated by history, he has chosen another spiritual father, Platon, which was with him on one board: he was agnostic, made a special system of state based on personal abilities (altough caste system is not today considered as very social...), had charisma and through it enough followers to maintain the legacy. Aristoteles, negator of Platon, was for him just a "carrier of arsen for civilisation".

Despite his great work, French glorified only three of his books:

JULIE OR NEW HELOISE, manifest of his pantheism, with points on ancient animistic view of female - donor of life, with reproduction as core of morale and sense of humanity;

EMIL OR ABOUT EDUCATION, his ideological manifest, based on a thought that natural human is good, and we hust have to put out unnatural parts from state and society and it will spontanelly improve itself, or separate every human from the else like an old bear;

and ABOUT SOCIAL CONTRACT, his political manifest, which shows platonic hive-like society: human will give his right of will to society, which will create naturally good laws (hence human is naturally good) and a totalitarian view on religion as a thing for ensurement of support of citizens to the state...

Evil was for him just an abomination, ilness of decadent society. If he was true, person isolated from the else would be saint, when brought to civilisation. Fact is, that when human is closer to nature, usually chooses death or real natural laws - which are too brutal to be considered as core for morale. Not saying that society itself was made by just more people, with regulation of God's laws, which are de facto supernatural. Altough some still feel need to question their divinity, without them the society falls.

That's why I consider Rousseau unworthy of calling him "illuminated".

_{consider this thread as a continue of this thread: http://www.dune2k.com/forum/?board=34;action=display;threadid=11573}

[Egeides]

1-

I think that during tumultuous times, many will go by the Hegelian principle of overcompensation. Rousseau, Marx and many many others, while trying to bring the best they could to humanity, also went too far. A bit like Marx, who will say "THEY are like this". I read some Marx and all I thaught was "Damn, there are as many sophism as there are sentences!": he was emphatic.

2-

Data is the basis for an analysis which brings conclusions. I think we have to understand that they perhaps didn't have as many quality data as we do: women really doing something on the public scene were pretty rare, same for normal people, aristocracy was profiting, etc. There were some reasons I suspect making that the data they had wasn't of the best quality :

- It was pretty much only the extremes: kings and peons. You can't personally equally know both sides that easily (1) and it doesn't advantage nuances (2).

I can bet that classes/social groups didn't knew each other very well, and some could conclude "they are weak" or "they are only exploiters" pretty fast: about all data at hand was going on this side for the authors.

Perhaps one that evaded this quite a bit is Emile Zola, with his method that consists of going on the field and live there, thus bringing better data and an analysis showing subtle elements as broad ones. This is what I noticed from Germinal, his well-known novel.

I thus believe that not all Lights were right or completely right, with some reasons to this trend to exagerate (even if some got out of this), which will politically culminate during the French Revolution with the fiery groups that will form, all competing for their vision of an "enlightened country", and some of them (I suppose, since it's politics) for certain interests.

[Caid Ivik]

Pointing to Zola, most french art literature of first half of 19th century found described teh truth. I like on such authors like Balzac or Hugo their view of individual. Writers of that age were philosophers or artists, both were usually something like a middle class. While philosophers usually lived in their own interpretation, artists described the world around them, with inspiration on real persons. In their books, people are not just a part of mass, like nowadays. Philosophers had only own limited thought, and if their ideas would be filled, the humanity will be composed of a one modelled persons. Art can describe everything and you won't lose the sense in it.

Main thing is to end with conceit. Realistic literature showed the humanity in true light, seeing that we must find a cure for crisis in ourselves, each person in himself. I don't see anything "enlightened" on searching for ultimate cure. It's only dehumanising.