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PREVIEW-Episode 23: Rousseau: Human Nature vs. Culture

July 29, 2010 by Mark Linsenmayer 27 Comments

http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/traffic.libsyn.com/partiallyexaminedlife/PREVIEW-PEL_ep_023_7-11-10.mp3

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 31:21 — 28.8MB)

This is a 31-minute preview of a 1 hr, 29-minute episode.

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Discussing Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Discourse in Inequality (1754) and book 1 of The Social Contract (1762).

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 and here.

End song: "Love Is the Problem" by New People from The Easy Thing (2009).

Looking for the full Citizen version?

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Filed Under: Podcast Episodes Tagged With: Hobbes, human nature, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, labor theory of value, natural rights, nature vs. nurture, noble savage, philosophy podcast, political philosophy, social contract

Comments

  1. Geoff says

    July 29, 2010 at 8:01 pm

    Great episode, great song. Cheers Lifers.

    Reply
    • Mark Linsenmayer says

      July 31, 2010 at 12:41 pm

      Thanks, Geoff!

      Reply
  2. Linda OReilly says

    July 30, 2010 at 11:11 pm

    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.

    Reply
    • Mark Linsenmayer says

      July 31, 2010 at 12:31 pm

      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… 🙂

      Reply
  3. Linda OReilly says

    July 31, 2010 at 6:46 pm

    Re: iTunes review:

    Done, 5 stars!

    Reply
  4. Paul says

    August 21, 2010 at 4:03 pm

    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

    Reply
  5. Wes Alwan says

    August 21, 2010 at 4:10 pm

    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

    Reply
  6. Dan Randlett says

    September 12, 2011 at 7:26 pm

    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.

    Reply
    • Mark Linsenmayer says

      September 13, 2011 at 12:26 am

      Thanks, Dan. I’m sure I’ll get to Emile eventually…

      Reply
    • Wes Alwan says

      September 13, 2011 at 3:33 am

      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.

      Reply
      • Dan Randlett says

        September 13, 2011 at 11:06 am

        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.

        Reply
  7. Jeremiah says

    December 1, 2011 at 10:08 pm

    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.

    Reply
  8. Tim says

    January 17, 2012 at 4:51 pm

    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.”

    Reply
    • Wes Alwan says

      January 17, 2012 at 6:12 pm

      Nice — thanks.

      Reply
  9. adampjr says

    September 4, 2012 at 12:56 pm

    It’s not racist to describe how a Carib culture actually lives.

    Reply
  10. Filipe says

    January 28, 2013 at 4:59 am

    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.

    Reply
  11. Anna Young says

    October 22, 2017 at 8:51 pm

    Why do you have to sound like Beavis and Butthead in the beginning? Your podcast may be good, but I never made it there after listening to you for about 5 minutes. There is no reason to pronounce french names and words as if there was something funny about them, there is no reason to try to sound dumber than you actually are. There is enough of it on public radio now. Respect your listeners, don’t think you are smarter than they are.
    Also, if you are selling this, the sound should be better, not like a tin can.
    Good luck.

    Reply
    • Mark Linsenmayer says

      October 22, 2017 at 10:13 pm

      You’re going to give us shit about an episode recorded 7 years ago? Come now!

      Reply

Trackbacks

  1. Should children be exposed to Philosophy? | The Partially Examined Life | A Philosophy Podcast says:
    August 9, 2010 at 2:52 pm

    […] a fan of Montaigne’s Essays, having just finished our episode on Rousseau (who is known to have had some views on Education) and being a philosophile myself, I’m […]

    Reply
  2. Karen Amstrong, Russ Douthat, and the Functions of Religion | The Partially Examined Life | A Philosophy Podcast and Blog says:
    September 24, 2010 at 11:24 am

    […] and looks for evidence of this enlightened view in ancient thinkers. Now, we’ve seen in Rousseau and Nietzsche at least that trying to support a philosophical point through historical survey […]

    Reply
  3. The Duh of Charlie Sheen: getting high off your high horse | The Partially Examined Life | A Philosophy Podcast and Blog says:
    March 6, 2011 at 5:04 am

    […] representatives of everything good and their oppressors of everything evil. (This is why Rousseau rightly pointed to the ability to empathize as a root of evil just as much as of good). And no matter how I try to […]

    Reply
  4. Partially Examined Life Podcast Topic #42: Feminism | The Partially Examined Life | A Philosophy Podcast and Blog says:
    July 25, 2011 at 3:45 pm

    […] Gilman’s Herland(1915) is a utopian novel about a society of all women. Gilman thought that when classic philosophers describe human nature as essentially selfish or competitive, they’re drawing on their experience of men. Their view […]

    Reply
  5. Autonomy and Moral Development: Piaget/Kohlberg/Gilligan | The Partially Examined Life | A Philosophy Podcast and Blog says:
    September 13, 2011 at 11:20 am

    […] affect moral development. I found this bit in Piaget spoke to the consideration of socialization in our Rousseau discussion: The relative powerlessness of young children, coupled with childhood egocentrism feeds into a […]

    Reply
  6. Rousseau, Aristotle, and Freud on Political Narcissism | The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast | A Philosophy Podcast and Blog says:
    July 14, 2012 at 6:01 am

    […] Rousseau was not a cheerful fellow. According to Terry Eagleton, he’d be even less cheerful if he were alive to see what has happened to the public sphere and educational system in Europe: … would no doubt have been appalled by the drastic shrinking of the public sphere. His greatest work, The Social Contract, speaks up for the rights of the citizenry in the teeth of private interests. He would also be struck by the way the democracy he cherished so dearly is under siege from corporate power and a manipulative media. Society, he taught, was a matter of common bonds, not just a commercial transaction. In true republican fashion, it was a place where men and women could flourish as ends in themselves, not as a set of devices for promoting their selfish interests. […]

    Reply
  7. Democracy and its discontents | Le Salon Brussels says:
    April 11, 2014 at 7:24 am

    […] to the second discourse of Rousseau by Steve Smith at Yale (45 min) is here. There’s also a podcast (1h15) over at the entertaining philosophy podcast The Partially Examined […]

    Reply
  8. PEL Special: Combat & Classics #11 on Rousseau's "Discourse on the Arts and Sciences" | The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast | A Philosophy Podcast and Blog says:
    August 7, 2017 at 7:00 am

    […] for more Rousseau? PEL has also covered the second discourse (on […]

    Reply
  9. How legitimate is Jean-Jacques Rousseau? – wokeusa says:
    December 1, 2017 at 9:19 pm

    […] (https://partiallyexaminedlife.com/2010/07/29/episode-23-rousseau-human-nature-vs-culture/) […]

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