Quotes About Rousseau

One of the most beautiful passages of Rousseau is that in the sixth book of Confessions, where he describes the awakening in him of the literary sense. Of such wisdom, the poetic passion, the desire of beauty, the love of art for its own sake, has most.

But what if Rousseau was wrong and that inner self was, as traditional moralists believed, the seat of asocial or harmful impulses, indeed of evil?

What Rousseau asserts, and what becomes foundational in world politics in the subsequent centuries, is that a thing called society exists outside the individual, a mass of rules, relationships, injunctions, and customs that is itself the chief obstacle to the realization of human potential, and hence of human happiness.

The self-care and wellness movements are simply contemporary manifestations of Rousseau's vision of the "plenitude" of the inner self. That self is good, and its recovery is the original fount of human happiness. But it has been polluted by an outer society that feeds us unhealthy foods full of pesticides and artificial flavors, that sets goals and expectations that build anxiety and self-doubt, and by competitive urges that undermine our self-esteem.

Kant picked up on Rousseau's idea of perfectibility, and turned it into the core of his moral philosophy. At the beginning of the Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, he says that the only thing that is unconditionally good is a good will, and that the capacity to make moral choices is what makes us distinctively human. Human beings are ends in themselves and should never be treated as a means to other ends.

Rousseau ranks among the great educational theorists of the modern era, even if he was the last man to put in charge of a classroom. Young adults, he thought, should be allowed to develop their capabilities in their distinctive way.

Los franceses fueron los primeros en adoptar la Ilustración inglesa y transformaron brillantemente su propia cultura intelectual, tomándola como base, antes de que los rousseaunianos distorsionaran la Revolución, alejándola de los lockistas, y la convirtieran en el caos del terror.

Kant fue criado como un "pietista", una versión del luteranismo que destacaba la simplicidad y evitaba la ornamentación externa. Consecuentemente no tenía retratos o pinturas en ninguna de las paredes de su casa, con una excepción: sobre su escritorio en su estudio colgó un retrato de Rousseau[39], y escribió: "He aprendido a honrar

Matthey, a Geneva physician very close to Rousseau's influence, formulates the prospect for all men of reason: 'Do not glory in your state, if you are wise and civilized men; an instant suffices to disturb and annihilate that supposed wisdom of which you are so proud; an unexpected event, a sharp and sudden emotion of the soul will abruptly change the most reasonable and intelligent man into a raving idiot.

The story of a man's soul, however trivial, can be more interesting and instructive than the story of a whole nation, especially if it is based on the self-analysis of a mature mind and is written with no vain desire to rouse our sympathy and curiosity. The problem with Rousseau's Confessions is that he read them to his friends.

All roads from Rousseau lead to Sade.

Every road from Rousseau leads to Sade.

Simply follow nature, Rousseau declares. Sade, laughing grimly, agrees.

Only in the late eighteenth century, with Burke and his theory of the sublime, Wordsworth and his mountains, Rousseau and his thoughts on Nature, did any sense of the romantic appeal of such wilderness areas begin in Europe. But having discovered such a sensibility ourselves, there has always been a reluctance to ascribe it to any other culture, let alone one which might have come to it before us.

And we have seen how Rousseau's insistence on creating a world that makes sense ultimately vitiates his attempt to educate a child for a world that does not.

Nor did the point escape Machiavelli. Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote, citing him: "It seemed, wrote Machiavelli, that in the midst of murders and civil wars, our republic became stronger [and] its citizens infused

In fact, Rousseau's focus in Confessions on his inner psychology and the idea of the true self that he articulates in the Discourses together represent what we noted in chapter 1 is now known as expressive individualism, the notion that I am most truly myself when I am able to express outwardly what that voice of nature says to me inwardly. Doing that, to use modern parlance, is what makes me authentic.

Entre los modernos, Rousseau habló de una religión civil "cuyos artículos corresponde fijar al soberano, no precisamente como dogmas de religión sino como sentimientos de sociabilidad, sin los cuales es imposible ser buen ciudadano ni súbdito fiel".

Humanist thinkers such as Rousseau convinced us that our own feelings and desires were the ultimate source of meaning and that our free will was, therefore, the highest authority of all.

Joie est mon caractere, C'est la faute a Voltaire; Misere est mon trousseau C'est la faute a Rousseau. [Joy is my character, 'Tis the fault of Voltaire; Misery is my trousseau 'Tis the fault of Rousseau.] - Gavroche

From this point of view, Rousseau knew that death is not the simple outside of life. Death by writing also inaugurates life. "I can certainly say that I never began to live, until I looked upon myself as a dead man" (Confessions, Book 6 [p. 236]).

There once was a man called Rousseau who wrote a book containing nothing but ideas. The second edition was bound in the skins of those who laughed at the first.

The most absolute authority is that which penetrates into a man's innermost being and concerns itself no less with his will than with his actions.

It is in Rousseau's writing above all that history begins to turn from upper-class honour to middle-class humanitarianism. Pity, sympathy and compassion lie at the centre of his moral vision. Values associated with the feminine begin to infiltrate social existence as a whole, rather than being confined to the domestic sphere.