Monthly Archives: November 2016

Jean-Jaques Rousseau remains an influential figure not only for his writing, but as an interesting individual.

Interestingly, Rousseau seems to be just as interested in himself as anyone else. This seemingly contradicts with his idea of “amour propre”, or self love. Some may ask why Rousseau believes that he can spout ideas freely why contradicting himself, as he does it quite often. Rousseau had five children put in an orphanage, then later wrote a book on how to take care of and educate children. However, I believe that Rousseau is not a hypocrite; he views himself as a reflection of the human species and diagnoses it’s ills based on his own problems.

As the dubbed “Father of Romanticism”, much of his inspiration relies on innate emotional reasoning. Part of the strength in Discourse on Inequality is the feeling of nostalgia he is able to create for the past despite using little evidence to prove how good or bad it was. Rousseau’s knowledge relies not on facts and data, but on a sense of “knowing” that isn’t the least bit quantifiable. Rousseau sees with his heart, favoring what is moral over what is “progress” to the aristocracy of his time. He forms his opinions on his state because people seem to lack this sense of reasoning, favoring solid facts over what we should know is right. He looks inward to address society, and if he finds problems within himself, chances are that other people face similar ones.

Rousseau may seem self indulgent at times, writing autobiographies and such, but this doesn’t disprove his ideas– in a way, it gives them credibility. Rousseau doesn’t stand from afar telling the world that they have problems to fix. He recognizes that he himself is a part of society; a reflection of it’s ills, and a unique voice to help fix them.

You know how people are constantly telling you not to listen to what other people say, and it’s only what you think about yourself that matters? I know I’ve been told it a million times, but, and I think Rousseau would agree, that little saying doesn’t work.

Much easier said than done, am I right?

Ideally, it would be perfect to completely block out the opinions of others and just listen to yourself, but that’s not a good idea! Now, I’m not sure I wholeheartedly agree with Rousseau’s idea that we are shaped solely through the opinions of others, but we do need those opinions! Naturally not all of those opinions others have about you are going to be good, but a lot of the times it comes as a surprise when you hear good things about yourself coming from an outside perspective. I think as humans we need others to be there to reaffirm us or to be honest with us when the time comes, but it doesn’t mean that what they say defines who we are and who we perceive ourselves as.

I’m a firm believer in the saying that we’re always going to be our own worst critic, namely because that’s the case for me and for a lot of the people I know. Could you imagine being stuck with your own criticizing thoughts 24/7, with no external input? That would be hellish. Sometimes you need those external views to be able to step back and look at yourself through someone else’s eyes, and maybe you’ll learn a thing or two you didn’t know. That doesn’t mean that how that person sees you defines who you are, because that thing they saw was already there. It just means that they brought it to light, and that now you can see it too and integrate it into your conscious mind.

All in all, it’s really just a combination of ourselves and the people around us that help us to understand ourselves better.

Weird, right?

Something Jean-Jacques Rousseau mentions in A Discourse on Inequality is the term Amour propre. Amour propre is a translated in French as “self-love” and is the concept that one’s esteem is dependent on the opinion of others. As Rousseau explains in his book, the savage man is concentrated on himself and what it takes to survive, while the civilized man is someone who cares about the opinion of others. As man turns from savage to civil, he is forced to compare himself with the others around him. With this, civil man is often inconsistent in the way he presents himself and they way he truly is. In modern society, this is the common way to survive, as one must be able to compete with others to dominate and achieve what one wants in life. It’s unfortunate that a modern life style entails a lack of authenticity at times in order to strive forward.

The topic of “Amour propre” can be related to social media and the ability to be someone else behind a screen. Being able to make an account on Facebook or Instagram allows one to be able to post and share information about oneself with others. Social media can be a place to escape for those who want to be perceived differently than the way they are seen in the real world. In some cases however, people are too afraid to post exactly what they want and tend to pretend to be someone else on social media because of the constant worried about the way others will perceive them. It is due to modern society that people like “civil man” have lost their realness and feel the need to display themselves differently.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote his most notable works during the Enlightenment period, but it would be his influence on the next era of artful thinkers which would earn him the title ‘the Father of Romanticism’. Romanticism was born after a time when satire, criticism, scientific thought, and conformity were the order of the day. It replaced the bitter thoughts of previous periods with ones of individualism, a love of nature, and of freedom. Rousseau’s influence on the coming era was most prominent with his autobiography titled Confessions. It told the story of his life starting at a young age until he reached the later years of his life. Rousseau wished to be wholly truthful in the retelling of his life’s history and left little out of his writing. He went to describe his behaviour as a mischievous child, and in his years following adolescence, his various sexual experiences. The description Rousseau gave of his life, and the little reservations he had about retelling it, would have influenced the Romantic period greatly as his autobiography did not follow the societal rules and constructs of the Enlightenment period. Rousseau’s works helped to pave the way for future Romantic period writers like Edgar Allen Poe, William Blake, John Keats, and Mary Shelly who without Rousseau may not have had the chance to free their own creative minds.

The problem with the discourse on inequality amongst men:

There is a glaring fault of logic in Rousseau’s Second Discourse. I will illustrate it using an analogy, then explain why they are comparative.

A Discourse on the reasons Jason Lieblang became a professor:

Jason began his life the son of a bread maker in the midst of the prairies in Canada. He had 3 siblings, triplets, all 10 years older than himself. When he was 14, he read his first book. He was immediately hooked, and from then on couldn’t stop reading. Book after book was ingested by Jason, from English literature to graphic novels, he devoured all. He dropped out of school and became a bread maker with his father and mother, but regretted it before long. He had no education, a love of books, and a professional relationship with yeast. When Jason turned 20, having made just enough money to buy a train ticket to Vancouver, he left home and came to the west coast. Befriending the head of the university in a chance encounter at a second hand sport store, Jason was offered a position teaching German (which he had never studied). He took the job, and managed to keep a lesson ahead of students by taking online classes, eventually, and relatively quickly, taught himself the language in turn. From here, Jason was himself a professor.

Ok, now: why this is the same as the discourse on inequality. THE PREMISES ARE INVENTED. Every reason, every inferential move, every fact is false. I don’t know the first thing about Jason’s childhood, nor do I know why he wanted to become a professor, and I particularly have no clue about his education. Doesn’t this remind us of Rousseau? In the same way that Jason was a “bread maker”, original/natural man was a peaceful being, in human form, who never conflicted with the others in his species. Hold on? Why and when and how did he come up with this? We might forgive him due to it being the 18^th century when it was written, but then, I’m not a nice guy, so I won’t forgive him! If you’re righting a discourse on inequality and are determining when and where it arises from, you can’t begin the chronology with a lie! My whole argument, even if in the end correct (Jason does indeed become a professor), was predicated on invented facts which will be disproven, in the same way we know the state of nature as described by Rousseau just didn’t look the way he describes. There was brutality, unhappiness, relationships, and families from the beginning of the human society. It seems logical to assume property existed in some way; in the sense that if I set up camp somewhere, I will defend it, and it is my property- at least while I’m living there- and will fight anyone who challenges that right.

His argument is wrong because his starting point is wrong. EVEN IF he is right about property being the foundation for inequality, his ARGUMENT to get there is entirely faulty and has to be rejected.

Nature is not kind, Jason did not make bread.