Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Philosophy

Thank you. Great lecture.
You convinced me: Lock is sensible, applying reason and trust in people humanist.
Rousseau - neurotic, idealist, misanthrope.

I just came across this today. I listened to the John Locke one, and then this one. These are brilliant lectures. Thankyou for making them, and for posting them.

If it is always about strength.. Then peace according to this theory, must be impossible

Do you have any more lectures by professor Charles Anderson?

1segreaim'ieant/addq'mendti'ment'a (segraiment) amendment 1 //nd.d

He has a Mona Lisa smile in this picture. A product of the Enlightenment and a critic of the Enlighment. Romanticism faith intinct vs Faith in Reason. Pathos vs Logos. Rural vs Urban. Small town Geneva vs big city Paris. Primitive Savagy vs Civilized Savagery. Brazilian Cannibalism vs Industrial Cannibalism. The good old days of Hunter Gathers. Before metallurgy and the deplorable agricultural which led excess wealth, which led to private property, which led to governments, which led to laws to protect private propert, which led to master-slavery. Rights Of Man, yes, Rights of Women, not so much. Ever one is a slave. Even the slave master. Govt must not be of the strongest but the most cooperative?

The general will is the consensus of people who use reason?

a grand tour, taken thru political theory. Very good stuff!

Only in the absence of contemplative, individual, instinct-driven thought does the volonté générale include giving its very understanding to the sophistry of academia. 😢

Man sounds like Donald Sutherland :)

To think that the same man publicly exposed his butt in hopes of a spanking in his younger years

Wow, what an absolute prick. still got 30 mins left, so, let's see if he pulls off a twist...

Why are the students constantly coughing?

Outstanding lecture 👏

سنوات طويلة في مجال العمل في مجال التعليم والتدريب التقني والفني من خلال برامج التدريب والتاهيل والتدريب على مستوى عال جدا جدا في مجال التعليم 😮😅

Student: Does Rousseau subscribe to the principle of pleasure and pain?
C. Anderson: Yes, he does.
This is wrong. Rousseau's natural man is not a calculating agent. He or she has a natural tendency for mercy and acts according to his or her heart. Otherwise, Rousseau 's state of nature would be a Hobbesian one. Society makes people corrupt and calculating. Rousseau wants to make them virtuous again.

Work ourselves to death ? Try being a serf in the Middle Ages, or a slave before the Civil War. Nor should we imagine the life of the nomad, the hunter-gatherer, or the pre-industrial farmer was any picnic. Farming in the time before the industrial revolution was a labor-intensive and precarious way to make a living, meanwhile having to travel far and wide in search of food, track down your prey, and then kill it, prepare it, and cook it was no easy task for early man,. Oh, we think we have it so hard ! Actually, we don't have a clue what hard really means -- and neither did Rousseau, who apparently wished the state to house and feed him for the rest of his life, while providing him with a library and garden in which he could relax and repose. State of nature ? I think not. Rousseau, my friend, in the state of nature, you wouldn't last a day. There are no gardens and there are no books, there are only the life-threatening elements and the starving-hungry animals looking for their next kill -- and, you my friend, are on the menu.

Plato opened the door, and Diogenes walked-in, promptly stomping his dirty-feet back-and-forth upon Plato's rug. "Thus I stomp upon the pride of Plato !", Diogenes contemptuously declared looking defiantly into the surprised eyes of Plato. "Ah, yes, but with what greater pride do you do so, Diogenes.", Plato flatly replied.
Vanity, Rousseau ? Yes, indeed.

Society exists because it is based upon rules -- social norms, morals, laws. Of course, it's not natural -- that's actually the point of society: overcoming the state of nature in which the condition of man is nasty, brutish, and short !

Unfortunately, it is not 'clear, rational analysis' -- French or otherwise --- once you bring into the picture romanticized views of the state of nature. It is at best, a clear case of fiction that arbitrarily employs reason only to make its fictional account appear to be more plausible than it otherwise would. Now, I am not saying there is no value nor any truth in the writings of Rousseau, for there is almost always some value and even some truth in every great work of fiction -- e.g. Plato's dialogues.

Where is the rest of this series?

Anderson's lectures are great! Have you got the rest of this cycle? (I've heard the one on Mill )

After studying modern epistemology, you will see that Hobbes was probably right 😆, the three of them are like different epistemological positions taken by scholars today, this Rousseau general will discussion sounds like Putnam, anyway I have this funny quote from Pascal,

"If they [Plato and Aristotle] wrote about politics it was as if to lay down rules for a madhouse. And if they pretended to treat it as something really important it was because they knew that the madmen they were talking to believed themselves to be kings and emperors."

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How can a Nation as large as the United States function under Rousseau's government? This only works as a small regional government and one that is ethnically homogeneous.

Fantastic lecture