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/lit/ - Literature

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14423654 No.14423654 [Reply] [Original]

now that the dust has settled: who was in the wrong here?

>> No.14423769

both wrong

Voltaire believed men could be perfected with progress in technology, civilization and knowledge.

Rousseau believed men could be perfected by going backwards, that is the noble Savage, before civilization.

Man is condemned to be trapped in the same cycle no matter the age or country.

>> No.14423802
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14423802

>>14423769
noble savage you say?

>> No.14423815

Read Diderot.

>> No.14423827

>>14423654
Voltaire is the agent of the devil; Rosseau of stoner hippies.

>> No.14423888

>>14423769
>Rousseau believed men could be perfected by going backwards, that is the noble Savage, before civilization
You should actually read authors before talking about them.

>> No.14423904

>>14423769
rousseau didn't believe in the noble savage

>> No.14423917

>>14423888
I honestly think there are very many backwards thinking individuals within academia, specifically political science.

Once you actually read everyone, you realize that Rousseau approved of civilization, Machiavelli was actually a very good man recommending good advice, and Hobbes was a logician, making a practical science out of simple state-citizen relations.

All around terrible way to summarize these thinkers, modern day academics have done

>> No.14424268

>>14423654
Rousseau is much better thinker than Voltaire, that's for sure, and is certainly 10 times more a genuine political scientist than Voltaire was philosopher

>> No.14424310
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14424310

>>14423917
even contemporary philosophers make this mistake. i remember reading an early chapter of 'the expanding circle' by peter singer, where he starts babbling about how wrong rousseau and hobbes were about mankind before civilisation, as if either of these thinkers were making an anthropological claim. as for political scientists, well... it's like the scorpion and the frog—"I couldn't help it. It's in my nature".