Rousseau's Critique of Inequality

Rousseau's Critique of Inequality PDF Author: Frederick Neuhouser
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107064740
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 249

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Book Description
This book evaluates Rousseau's arguments concerning why inequality exists in society and why it poses dangers to human well-being.

Rousseau's Critique of Inequality

Rousseau's Critique of Inequality PDF Author: Frederick Neuhouser
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107064740
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 249

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Book Description
This book evaluates Rousseau's arguments concerning why inequality exists in society and why it poses dangers to human well-being.

A Discourse on Inequality

A Discourse on Inequality PDF Author: Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 150403547X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 89

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Book Description
A fascinating examination of the relationship between civilization and inequality from one of history’s greatest minds The first man to erect a fence around a piece of land and declare it his own founded civil society—and doomed mankind to millennia of war and famine. The dawn of modern civilization, argues Jean-Jacques Rousseau in this essential treatise on human nature, was also the beginning of inequality. One of the great thinkers of the Enlightenment, Rousseau based his work in compassion for his fellow man. The great crime of despotism, he believed, was the raising of the cruel above the weak. In this landmark text, he spells out the antidote for man’s ills: a compassionate revolution to pull up the fences and restore the balance of mankind. This ebook has been professionally proofread to ensure accuracy and readability on all devices.

Rousseau's Critique of Inequality

Rousseau's Critique of Inequality PDF Author: Professor of Philosophy and Viola Manderfeld Professor of German Frederick Neuhouser
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781316009345
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 250

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Book Description
This book evaluates Rousseau's arguments concerning why inequality exists in society and why it poses dangers to human well-being.

Discourse on the Origin of Inequality

Discourse on the Origin of Inequality PDF Author: Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Publisher: Good Press
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 76

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Book Description
Rousseau first exposes in Discourse on the Origin of Inequality his conception of a human state of nature, presented as a philosophical fiction and of human perfectibility, an early idea of progress. He then explains the way, according to him, people may have established civil society, which leads him to present private property as the original source and basis of all inequality. Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712 – 1778) was a Genevan philosopher, writer, and composer of the 18th century, mainly active in France. His political philosophy influenced the Enlightenment across Europe, as well as aspects of the French Revolution and the overall development of modern political and educational thought.

Rousseau's Theodicy of Self-Love

Rousseau's Theodicy of Self-Love PDF Author: Frederick Neuhouser
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199542678
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
Jean-Jacques Rousseau revolutionized our understanding of ourselves with his brilliant investigation of amour propre: the passion that drives humans to seek the esteem, approval, admiration, or love - the recognition - of their fellow beings. Frederick Neuhouser traces the development of this key idea in modern thought.

The Psychology of Inequality

The Psychology of Inequality PDF Author: Michael Locke McLendon
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812295730
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 220

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Book Description
In The Psychology of Inequality, Michael Locke McLendon looks to Jean-Jacques Rousseau's thought for insight into the personal and social pathologies that plague commercial and democratic societies. He emphasizes the way Rousseau appropriated and modified the notion of self-love, or amour-propre, found in Augustine and various early modern thinkers. McLendon traces the concept in Rousseau's work and reveals it to be a form of selfish vanity that mimics aspects of Homeric honor culture and, in the modern world, shapes the outlook of the wealthy and powerful as well as the underlying assumptions of meritocratic ideals. According to McLendon, Rousseau's elucidation of amour-propre describes a desire for glory and preeminence that can be dangerously antisocial, as those who believe themselves superior derive pleasure from dominating and even harming those they consider beneath them. Drawing on Rousseau's insights, McLendon asserts that certain forms of inequality, especially those associated with classical aristocracy and modern-day meritocracy, can corrupt the mindsets and personalities of people in socially disruptive ways. The Psychology of Inequality shows how amour-propre can be transformed into the demand for praise, whether or not one displays praiseworthy qualities, and demonstrates the ways in which this pathology continues to play a leading role in the psychology and politics of modern liberal democracies.

Rousseau's Political Writings

Rousseau's Political Writings PDF Author: Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Publisher: New York : W.W. Norton
ISBN:
Category : Equality
Languages : en
Pages : 348

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Book Description
This Norton Critical Edition includes the three most important of Rousseau's political writings: Discourse on Inequality, Discourse on Political Economy, and On Social Contract.

A Discourse on Inequality

A Discourse on Inequality PDF Author: Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781977626929
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 46

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Book Description
Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men commonly known as the "Second Discourse", is a work by philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau. It was written in 1754 in response to a prize competition of the Academy of Dijon answering the prompt: What is the origin of inequality among people, and is it authorized by natural law?* Rousseau first exposes in this work his conception of a human state of nature, presented as a philosophical fiction (like a work by Thomas Hobbes, unlike those by John Locke), and of human perfectibility, an early idea of progress. He then explains the way people may have established civil society, which leads him to present private property as the original source and basis of all inequality.* Rousseau discusses two types of inequality: natural, or physical inequality, and ethical, or moral inequality. Natural inequality involves differences between one human's body and that of another-it is a product of nature. * Rousseau opines that human freedom does not mean the capacity to choose, which would require reason, but instead the ability to refrain from instinct. Only with such a capacity can humans acquire new habits and practices.* Rousseau claims natural man does not possess reason or language (in which reason's generation is rooted) or society-and these three things are mutually-conditioning, such that none can come into being without the others.* With primitive social existence (preceding civil society), humans gain a "love of well-being" ("amour propre") and most of the rest of Rousseau's account is based on this. Rousseau's critique of civil society is primarily based on psychological features of civil man, with amour propre("love of well-being" ) pushing individuals to compare themselves with others, to gain a sense of self corresponding to this, and to dissolve natural man's natural pity.* According to Rousseau, "The first person who, having enclosed a plot of land, took it into his head to say this is mine and found people simple enough to believe him, was the true founder of civil society". But Rousseau then clarifies that this moment was presaged by a series of environmental and rational conditions that made it possible. For Rousseau, even the concept of private property required a series of other concepts in order to be formed.

On the Origin of Inequality

On the Origin of Inequality PDF Author: Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Publisher: DigiCat
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 76

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Book Description
Rousseau first exposes in Discourse on the Origin of Inequality his conception of a human state of nature, presented as a philosophical fiction and of human perfectibility, an early idea of progress. He then explains the way, according to him, people may have established civil society, which leads him to present private property as the original source and basis of all inequality. Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712 – 1778) was a Genevan philosopher, writer, and composer of the 18th century, mainly active in France. His political philosophy influenced the Enlightenment across Europe, as well as aspects of the French Revolution and the overall development of modern political and educational thought.

The Problems and Promise of Commercial Society

The Problems and Promise of Commercial Society PDF Author: Dennis C. Rasmussen
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271076046
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 188

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Book Description
Adam Smith is popularly regarded as the ideological forefather of laissez-faire capitalism, while Rousseau is seen as the passionate advocate of the life of virtue in small, harmonious communities and as a sharp critic of the ills of commercial society. But, in fact, Smith had many of the same worries about commercial society that Rousseau did and was strongly influenced by his critique. In this first book-length comparative study of these leading eighteenth-century thinkers, Dennis Rasmussen highlights Smith’s sympathy with Rousseau’s concerns and analyzes in depth the ways in which Smith crafted his arguments to defend commercial society against these charges. These arguments, Rasmussen emphasizes, were pragmatic in nature, not ideological: it was Smith’s view that, all things considered, commercial society offered more benefits than the alternatives. Just because of this pragmatic orientation, Smith’s approach can be useful to us in assessing the pros and cons of commercial society today and thus contributes to a debate that is too much dominated by both dogmatic critics and doctrinaire champions of our modern commercial society.