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Discussing Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Discourse in Inequality (1754) and book 1 of The Social Contract (1762).
This is a 31-minute preview of our vintage 1 hr, 29-minute episode which you can buy at partiallyexaminedlife.com/store or get for free with PEL Citizenship (see partiallyexaminedlife.com/membership). You can also purchase the full episode in the iTunes Store: Search for "Partially Rousseau" and look under "Albums."
What's the relationship between culture and nature? Are savages really slavering beasts of unquenchable appetites, or probably more mellow, hangin' about, flexin' their muscles, just chillin', eh?
Rousseau engages in some wild speculation about the development of humanity from the savage to the modern, miserable wretch. Association with other people corrupts us, especially association with Wes. Is there some form of government that will make things tolerable? Maybe that one where Oprah is our queen.
Read the texts online here and here or buy them here
End song: "Love Is the Problem" by New People from The Easy Thing (2009).
Great episode, great song. Cheers Lifers.
Thanks, Geoff!
I listen to every minute of every show. Sometimes twice! (Usually twice, once for entertainment and once for serious)
You guys are going to go down in history.
You make it real and you make it fun and you don’t just skim the surface. You’re doing right by the subject.
It takes an hour or two in order to really sink into the stuff.
There are plenty of ‘philosophy’ podcasts out there that spit out fifteen minutes of quotes and drivel.
The three of you dig deep and give it time to be meaningful.
You’re doing it right and brilliantly well.
Wonderful!
And thank you.
Thanks so much, Linda! (Go post that as a review on iTunes!)
I’m looking for an opportunity for how we can use “fifteen minutes of quotes and drivel” as a slogan for some segment or something… 🙂
Re: iTunes review:
Done, 5 stars!
Hey Guys,
Another great episode! One thing – when you got to talking about property and how Rousseau mentioned the necessity that one “mix his labor with the land” in order to legitimately claim property rights. You guys mentioned Hume & Adam Smith, but I’m pretty sure Rousseau is taking this idea directly from John Locke.
From Wikipedia:
Locke uses the word property in both broad and narrow senses. In a broad sense, it covers a wide range of human interests and aspirations; more narrowly, it refers to material goods. He argues that property is a natural right and it is derived from labour.
Locke believed that ownership of property is created by the application of labour. In addition, property precedes government and government cannot “dispose of the estates of the subjects arbitrarily.” Karl Marx later critiqued Locke’s theory of property in his social theory.
Stop being so dismissive of Hegel! HAHA. Keep up the good work!
Paul
Hi Paul,
Thanks for the compliment and the correction! I have a vague memory of that in Locke — we need to do an episode on something by him soon (and another on Hegel!).
Wes
I know that none of you guys are going to read this, but you really shouldn’t have moved onto The Social Contract. That book became important after he died, but in his own lifetime he himself admitted that he didn’t hold The Social Contract in high regard. For answers to the problems described in his Discourses, you should really read Emile, which he considered the final part of a trilogy with the preceding Discourses. And Emile is well worth reading, and shows Rousseau flowering into a very powerful thinker on ideas of identity and the Self, topics which consume the rest of his writing career. He’s remembered as a political philosopher because of The Social Contract, but his other works, like Emile and The Confessions, reveal a highly original and powerful thinker.
Thanks, Dan. I’m sure I’ll get to Emile eventually…
We considered Emile (a book my mom loves and never stops recommending) but I think we ran up against the problem of length and having to choose excerpts — but that’s something we’ll figure out eventually.
Wow, replies! I must be some kind of internet necromancer. Or you’re notified whenever people comment. But thanks.
Emile is a really long book (or set of books, I guess), and it might be worthwhile just splitting it up over multiple episodes over an extended period of time if you decide to tackle it someday.
I like the ‘cast, but just wanted to point out that the Carribs were actually an indigenous people of the Caribbean area (not that I’m defending Rousseau’s racist “defence” of them, but just that calling the “Carribs” he is not necessarily being racist.
Wes’s “What’s the Matter with Kansas” comment about the weak identifying with the strong reminded me of this quote from John Steinbeck:
“Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.”
Nice — thanks.
It’s not racist to describe how a Carib culture actually lives.
Hi there,
I really enjoyed this one (and in general the episodes where the topic is more related to sociology, politics, ethics etc).
I want to suggest that in all the discussion one thing was missing: our knowledge of evolution. Rousseau was writing pre-Darwin, but now we know much more about how human groups evolved from groups of primates. So it’s not the case that there were well formed humans walking about in a pre-social state, and then (by the development of property) society formed. “We” were social creatures long before.
Of course you all know this, and I hesitate to even mention it, but I thought it would have been a critical point to consider.
Cheers,
Filipe.