Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
Anyone here read any Rousseau? I’m finishing up the First Discourse, over an amber ale at Cowboy Ciao in the Phoenix International Airport.

A pretty reactionary anti-promethean take on the enlightenment. First I’ve read any of his writings.
 

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
Starting the second discourse now, and his arguments about a smaller republic being more able to govern itself make total sense.

In more business-like terms I see this in certain situations where a “two-pizza” team is most suitable for certain projects, IE a group of people where each person can reasonably be expected to know everyone else.

But then Rousseau takes this to an extremity of the citizen grounding their will and pride in patriotism, and I wonder if there is a way to express the aforementioned logic in a manner more amenable to larger-scale societies like the US, ideally without resulting in an ultra bureaucratic metafederation.
 

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
So what do you think was man born free is he everywhere in chains
I do agree that vice/virtue/morality emerged as man began exercising rational faculties, but I'm not sure I agree with him (Rousseau) that this constitutes a downfall from some primordial state of innocence.
 

sus

Well-known member
Darkness was on the face of the deep... And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.... And God said let there be light... And there was light
 

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
In a way I do agree that the emergence of rational faculty occasioned philosophic angst and doubt and whatnot, to say nothing of the positives, but I’m inclined to take more of a Nietzschean perspective on that: persist through the abyss.

In the first discourse Rousseau makes a similar metaphor, saying that the “truth” perennially lies out of reach and in some dark ambiguous recess. But he frames it this way so as to portray truth-seeking, for the common man, as futile.

Part of me does agree that most people will never get a real footing in this stuff, unless they have a natural drive to do so, in which case they’ll be all the more capable of teaching/guiding themselves.
 
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