How could anyone be so wrong?
That isn't Voltaire.
>>1379718
Care to elaborate without resorting to Voltaire-tier primitivism slander?
>>1379846
>guise we're all just good people its the government and capitalism that makes us bad
>>1379718
he wrote some really cool novels tho
>>1380131
>guise we're all just good people
I said WITHOUT resorting to Voltaire-tier primitivism slander, faggot.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_savage#Erroneous_identification_of_Rousseau_with_the_noble_savage
I've been wondering why Rousseau is so disliked here.
My dear chap... He was the prime example of "feels > reals" next to Kierkegaard. The boy was dripping with ectoplasm, who you gonna call?
>>1379718
fuck off, derrida
inb4 "but I love Rousseau!"
>>1379846
His political philosophy was based on all population being loyal to the common good. That's religion tier levels of delusion. He's also a proponent of direct democracy, in spite of believing a professional bureaucracy a fundamental part of government. He also thought professional armies abhorrent and wanted to go back to militias, in spite of being a muh freedumbs fag.
In short he routinely said one thing and its opposite on every two consecutive pages.
>>1380445
>'religion is delusional'
>'professional armies aren't abhorrent'
>'thinking that they are somehow clashes with being a 'freedumbs fag''
Also, no his political philosophy was based on the population being loyal to the general notion of good, which they are by definition. feck off
>>1380445
>His political philosophy was based on all population being loyal to the common good.
But that's wrong. He explicitly differentiates between the sum of all wills (volonté de tous) and the greater good (volonté générale). Ironic that your criticism of this doctrine is the exact opposite of Russel's criticism of this doctrine, namely that this would lead to a form of government that doesn't need democratic confirmation. Almost like you're talking out of your ass.
>He's also a proponent of direct democracy
For city-states, like his own Geneva. He himself stated this could never work for France because it was simply too big. He argued that for the sake of maximizing freedom the city-state was the best form of government. Not an erronous line of reasoning.
>He also thought professional armies abhorrent and wanted to go back to militias, in spite of being a muh freedumbs fag
If only there was a historical model that actually functioned like that and worked. Some sort of Republic in Italy, maybe around the Rome region. A Roman Republic, if you will.
This pseudo-Rousseauvian shade you're arguing against sure is delusional, but Rousseau himself is not.
>>1380469
>Update
I have been wondering why the enlightenment is so dissliked here
>>1380469
>Read your own link, Rousseau genuinely did believe the "we're all just good people its the government and capitalism that makes us bad" but he didnt glorify primitive peoples or luddite like behavior
Do I need to actually cite the parts that contradict what you say?
>Rousseau maintained that man in a State of Nature had been a solitary, ape-like creature, who was not méchant (bad), as Hobbes had maintained, but (like some other animals) had an "innate repugnance to see others of his kind suffer" (and this natural sympathy constituted the Natural Man's one-and-only natural virtue)
>Natural Man's one-and-only natural virtue
>In fact, Rousseau arguably shared Hobbes' pessimistic view of humankind, except that as Rousseau saw it, Hobbes had made the error of assigning it to too early a stage in human evolution
The only way in which Rousseau believed man was "good" was that he did not share Hobbes' view of a "war of all against all", or in other words a Natural state in which everyone killed eachother for shits and giggles. He believed, like Plato before him, that scarcity (among others) was required to drive men against eachother in mass events of violence, and that such scarcity had to be preceded by property. Man did not kill eachother for the sake of killing as they did under Hobbes, but they were not good either.
>>1380131
>shitposting to make a point.
Don't do this.
>>1380481
Funny how you cut out the sentence directly before that quote
"Jean-Jacques Rousseau, like Shaftesbury, also insisted that man was born with the potential for goodness; and he, too, argued that civilization, with its envy and self-consciousness, has made men bad. In his Discourse on the Origins of Inequality Among Men (1754),"
>>1380477
There's definitely an element of contrarianism behind it however If I were to hazard a guess Id say it was
-people who see the current state of society as being a product of the enlightenment
-people whether they are Stirnerian, post modernist, or followers of the more classical schools of philosophy dislike the hypocrisy and the fact that weaker arguments dominate their own.
-People who are religious
>>1380527
>Man has the potential for good
>This automatically means man was perfect
>Civilization has made man bad
>This automatically means "muh government" and "muh capitalism"
>This is not the same "property and its desire to protect it" argument we see in Hobbes, whom American excaptionalists use as the more "reasonable" counterpart to Rousseau and even in Plato
The big difference between Rousseau and Hobbes, as far as their view of the natural state goes, is that Rousseau accuses Hobbes of taking civilized man and taking him out of civilization. His natural state is mostly a state before property existed and there was nothing to gain from needless violence. The "potential for goodness" argument is also a refutation of Hobbes' idea that there is no such thing as good, only a justification of one's fancies. It is not an idealization of the pre-civilized man.
>>1382085
>a state before property existed
Considering territoriality is older than mankind itself, this state doesn't exist.
>>1382176
biblically it does
did you forget which period these people lived in?
