Teach me about Rousseau
"Vive le partie" basically. Nativity about people and the ability for them to work together at its finest. Your welcome anon
>>1353237
A bastard and a hack. Extremely overrated.
>>1353281
Voltaire pls
>>1353237
Lived as a meme died as a meme.
had five kids, all out of wedlock, two died of suicide and every single one of them claimed to hate him.
>>1353237
He ruined everything.
>>1354330
Tbqh hume was a dick
>>1354566
You take that back, you double nigger.
Also, where did you get that information, I'm genuinely curious. From all accounts, aside from being an underachiever and pissing off Presbyterians, he seemed like a pleasant dude.
>>1353237
Voltaire's bitch, he even died one month after Voltaire's dead.
>>1354244
>Sowell
Jesus.
>All these memes
>No real substance
Of course, what did I even expect from /his/. Not exactly a Rousseau scholar, but I'm pretty sure I'm more qualified than most of these chumps.
tl;dr:
>Be autodidact from Switzerland
>Move to France because that's where all intellectuals (philosophes) gather
>Read Hobbes and Locke, be dissatisfied
>As is common with philosophy, expand on their tradition
>Starts out with the natural state of man, in which primitive man may not have been virtuous per se but existed in a situation where he had an inherrent distaste of seeing others of his kind die (his critics claim there was some "perfect man" ideology or some "bonne sauvage" ideology, neither terms are used by Rousseau however)
>Sees the social contract as a situation in which man gives up his natural freedoms (that's bad) to gain civic freedoms (that's good)
>Like in the natural state, it only makes sense for this civic society to be egalitarian in nature, starting the trend of egalitarian democracy
>However, it is important according to him that such a representative democracy values the volonté générale (or the will of the collective ie. the greater good) over the volonté de tous (which is to say the will of each individual person). To name an extremely simple example an individual person may not want to pay a certain tax, but it is in the greater good that these taxes are paid.
>Citizens have a right to remove themselves from the social contract and establish a new one if they feel the volonté générale isn't sufficiently guaranteed (see what he's doing here?)
>Also writes a lot about children, and argues for an education system that focuses more on the child itself than on the information that needs to be stamped in his head
>Writes some novels and plays, whatever
>Voltaire, or mister Free Speech, tries to get Rousseau's books condemned
Somehow he's also a socialist though Marx never mentions or quotes him.
>>1353237
Amazing author, terrible person, hyped beyond belief. Intellectually speaking the most important thing he did was to give De Maistre a serious butthurt.
>>1354738
>Voltaire, or mister Free Speech, tries to get Rousseau's books condemned
Really? I know they had a quarrel but I've never heard about that particular point.
>>1353237
>>1354835
This is delightful
>>1354831
I'm fairly sure he set the intellectual tone for the French revolution.
>>1354891
That and egalitarianism in general.
>>1354835
>>1354875
Post the full pic at least
>>1353237
Why does he wear the wig?
Excellent prose, amazing human being. He is an overrated composer though
The Reveries of a Solitary Walker is an excellent book, but the Confessions are probably my personal favorite
>>1353237
Probably the most spooked of the enlightenment thinkers. Also famous for his hostility to inequality and his belief on human nature being fundamentally good only to be corruttped by society.
>>1354835
Heh
>>1353237
Probably the worst philosopher to ever exist
>>1355516
Next to Ar*stotle you mean
