/lit/ - Literature

>long off-topic rant
>Twitter OP image
>uh... please don't uh... respond to my OP... books for this feel?

>pic of Rousseau showing all you punks how a real man dresses for winter.

>>21403754
>long
Zoomer concentration span detected
>off-topic
U R teh newfag
>rant
Lol no. Can you even read?

>>21403747
I would argue it’s more a realisation of the forms of direct democracy advocated by anarcho-syndicalists like Chomsky. You don’t need to go quite so far back to find a comparable political framework

>“Whoever refuses to obey the general will shall be compelled to do so by the whole body. This means nothing less than he will be forced to be free”

>>21403747
>Is that all a liberal democracy is? Voting?
lolno
>book recommendations
The Source materials:
-Aristotle, Politics
-Hamilton, Madison and Jay, The Federalist Papers.
-Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France.
-Mill, On Liberty.
-Tocqueville, Democracy in America
-Robert Michels, Political Parties
The quick rundowns (baby's first pop political theory books)
-Zakaria, The Future of Freedom.
-Parvini, The Populist Delusion.

>>21404066
>>21404066
I'm tending to think it's more an example of the "individual will" or "will of all" (an expression of what individuals think is best for themselves) as opposed to the "general will" (a selfless expression of what is best for the state or society as a whole).

Is there any practical examples of the "general will" being measured and utilized in history? I think a load of French intellectuals (Foucault, Sartre, etc) thought the Iranian revolution was an expression of the "general will" ...... briefly

>>21403747
No not really. Rousseau’s ‘general will’ is describing an ideal state that is manifested when each person makes their own choices independently and isolated from the rhetoric of orators and each other. (Yet somehow can still receive news and is educated enough to consume it)
He writes about the general will only being discoverable if you poll people in isolation. Social media is the opposite of this.
Government by an AI (Legislator) with intimate knowledge of each persons individual wants known to it fully and honestly but not shared with others would be able to know humanities ‘general will’ in the Rousseauian sense.
The God Emperor Leto Atredies II from Dune is much closer to the ‘general will’ than a Twitter poll.
An Catholic Priest from the 13th century is much closer to knowing his local community’s general will due to confession.

Your making a common mistake that Rousseau advocates for ‘democracy’ in the same sense that Aristotle used the word. In fact ‘the people’ are not really in charge, but all are compelled to submit to a ‘general will’ that will be discovered by a Legislator. The Legislator may not be an individual, but instead a process or procedure. However in our time with our technology, any process will be run by managers from some Ivy League university. So really following the ‘general will’ involves submitting to a kind of distributed oligarchy which Aristotle would have called an Aristocracy.
See >>21404067

TLDR, Twitter will not save you.

>>21404093
>>21403747
Aristotle, the Federalist Papers, and Mill are good. You could either read Burke or go straight to Rousseau’s Social Contract as his writings heavily influenced both the French and American revolutions.
On the American side you can read Jefferson’s letters.
I would also recommend Hobbes Leviathan as he deals with the same issues as Rousseau a century earlier and comes up with a very different solution (on paper).
Parvini’s book is good, I haven’t read the others.
But a good one that came out this year is The Ideology of Democratism by Emily B. Finley.

>>21404136
The legislator is optional in Rousseau's idealised society in the unlikely event of disputes regarding what the general will actually is.

JOHN RAWLS UP IN THIS BITCH!
Original position > Rousseau's "state of nature"

>>21403747
>THAT PIC
OMG IT'S HAPPENING. FIRST KANYE WITH THE JEWS AND NOW MUSK WITH THE TRANNIES. IT REALLY IS HAPPENING ISN'T It.

>>21404093
Posting your Ls again?