The Revealing Autobiography Of Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) is by any reasonable measure one of the most influential figures in modern philosophy. His radical ideas profoundly influenced literature, education, philosophy, religion, public morals, art, manners, and politics in the eighteenth century and far beyond.

To summarize rudely the main outlines of his thought, we can say that he celebrated feeling, emotion, sentiment, subjectivism, imagination, mysticism, nature, and romanticism. He practically founded the Romantic movement, inspired the French Revolution, and influenced many great writers, among them Goethe, Byron, Wordsworth, and Tolstoi.

His influence was due to the cyclical nature of ideas in history. Before him, for many generations, European philosophy had been lecturing everyone about rationalism and reason. Human emotions and affairs, implied Spinoza, Descartes, and Hobbes, could be reduced to geometric and mathematical categories. And this analogy had its uses.

But eventually we become tired of being reduced to mathematical abstractions.

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We long to spread our Romantic wings, to celebrate our individualism, to exalt the irrational over the rational, and to go where our imaginations take us, unfettered by the constricting bonds of reason. It is only natural to want to plunge into that primeval forest of the mind, and explore its darker regions. Rousseau knew this, too, and provided a voice for the age.

Rousseau is not a favorite of mine, I have to say. With the perspective of time, we can see more clearly now how his ideas easily lent themselves to excess and frivolous abuse. Our modern age now rebels against his excesses, just as he rebelled against the excesses of what preceded him. But it is important to read things that we do not agree with.

It was for this reason that I took up his autobiography, the Confessions. There is no better way to get the measure of a man than to read him in his own words. And the Confessions do not disappoint: they are a sincere, revealing portrait of a brilliant but deeply flawed man. What comes through is the author’s sensitivity, sincerity, anger, and—it must be said—his paranoia.

At the beginning he states his purpose:

My purpose is to display to my kind a portrait in every way true to nature, and the man I shall portray will be myself…I have displayed myself as I was, as vile and despicable when my behavior was such, as good, generous, and noble when I was so. I have bared my secret soul as you yourself has seen it, Eternal Being! So let the numberless legion of my fellow men gather round me, and hear my confessions.

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Who can resist this kind of soul-bearing honesty? From this point forward, Rousseau launches on a series of perceptive observations about himself and humanity, all of it backed up by practical experience. Here he relates an experience that ignited his passionate sense of honor and justice:

The course of my education was interrupted by an accident, the consequences of which have influenced the rest of my life. My father quarreled with M. Gautier, a French captain with relations on the [local political] Council. This Gautier was a braggart and a coward who, happening to bleed at the nose, revenged himself by accusing my father of having drawn his sword against him in the city. When they decided to put my father in prison, however, he insisted that, according to the law, his accuser should be arrested also; and when he failed to get his way he preferred to leave Geneva and remain abroad for the rest of his life rather than lose both liberty and honor by giving in.

Rousseau was acutely sensitive to women and their charms. But he was also supremely aware of their psychological workings. This passage, describing the unpleasant consequences of his withholding affection from a woman, clearly demonstrates this knowledge:

That privation which I had imposed on myself and which she had pretended to approve is one of those things that women do not pardon, whatever show they make of doing so; not so much on account of the resulting privation to themselves, but because it seems to imply a certain indifference to their favors.

Take the most sensible, the most philosophical, the least sensual of women: the most unpardonable crime that a man in whom she is not otherwise interested can commit is that of not possessing her when he has the chance of doing so. This rule can admit of no exception…

All in all, the Confessions are a powerful testament. His honesty is so apparent that it can be disconcerting; he frankly admits that his memory may be hazy, and that much of what he believes to be true may only be retrospective self-delusion. He never made much progress in formal education. Perhaps this fact contributed, in some way, to his rootless tendencies, his lack of discipline and moderation, and to his elevation of emotion over reason. Education is not just for the purpose of learning information; it is also meant to temper and harness the unwieldy soul of zealous youth.

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The book provides a window into the soul of one of the most complicated and strange figures of modern philosophy. The record is not perfect, of course; the book’s second part is marred by tasteless criticisms of his contemporaries, and imagined conspiracies against his own character.

But this sort of thing comes with the territory. We cannot expect geniuses to be paragons of stability. Rousseau retains his place in the history of western thought precisely because of his anti-rationality.

Read More: The Many Ways Education Delays Adulthood

168 thoughts on “The Revealing Autobiography Of Jean-Jacques Rousseau”

  1. Mock on, mock on, Voltaire, Rousseau;
    Mock on, mock on; ’tis all in vain!
    You throw the sand against the wind,
    And the wind blows it back again.
    And every sand becomes a gem
    Reflected in the beams divine;
    Blown back they blind the mocking eye,
    But still in Israel’s paths they shine.
    The Atoms of Democritus
    And Newton’s Particles of Light
    Are sands upon the Red Sea shore,
    Where Israel’s tents do shine so bright.

    1. That’s Blake, not an admirer of either Rousseau or Newton on the other end of the spectrum.

  2. “Confessions” has been sitting on my book shelf for far too long. You’ve convinced me to take it up following my current re-read of the Iliad.

  3. Great piece. Thanks. I will definitely look into him. As a man with interest in the also great Swedish philosopher E. Swedenborg, it would be nice to see ROK produce an article about him as well.

  4. Most people will probably disagree, but I think the world today is too constricted with the so-called rationality. Everything is about reason, logic, and technological “progress,” but where is the human spirit? Are we just supposed to be drones that work and consume for the rest of our lives? We could use some of his irrational spirit.
    Anyways, thanks. The book is now on my to-read list.
    PS. There appears to be few different translations. Any suggestions?

    1. Yes, I agree. Reason has its uses, but there are limits to it. If you attempt to live your entire life just labeling, abstracting and effectively killing anything in your mind, not much is left. That said, I believe that it is not emotions that are the culprit of a lot of pain. I think it is the suppression and / or fear of emotions that makes us the slave of just that emotion. When your mind is obsessed with denying an emotion, it is quite easy to become “triggered”.

        1. At the same time we have to control the animal instead of it controlling us (like the snowflakes). Acknowledge your emotions… be aware of them… feel them for what they are.. .just don’t let them rule your life. As with most things… it’s all about balance.

    2. I agree entirely. We’ve produced a technocrat based society that has reduced our instinctive, natural drives to a mere cipher of themselves. Likewise our imaginations have become debased by the encroachment of this functional rationality into every facet of our lives.
      The rationality we have today is of an instrumentation and abstract quality. It refers to people as units, thoughts as data to be analysed, the act of creating something only has value as something that can “measured as an output”. Our society is saturated with HR and psychometric specialists who’ve debased the dignity of the worker, who’ve destroyed and undermined the old fashioned principles and values of the work-place by filling them with people that resemble soulless automations. Politics, commerce, the media is filled with these cliche ridden half-humans who have sold their souls to the lowest bidders. God bless them!

      1. In the series “Cosmos”, Carl Sagan talks about rationality and its origins and says that rationality came into existence through the Pythagoreans and their “rational numbers”. They were totally devastated when they found out that not all numbers are rational – that is, a number that can be expressed as the ratio between two integers. In that context, you would think that rationality has been “disproven” long ago.
        Unfortunately, I have been unable to verify this claim through online research.

        1. Well, you know what they say about online research! The concept of rationality has evolved or perhaps devolved to a point where it doesn’t resemble the spirit or the essence of the Greek meaning. The ancient Greeks wouldn’t for example be able to comprehend the modern “rational” idea of infinity, especially in terms of spacial representations. This modern “rational” concept would be terrible and abhorrent to their sensibility and order. Similarly, the Pythagoreans who had an Orphic tradition won’t understand our notions pertaining to evil in the way they would of described such acts in their times.

    3. And one can see the complete loss of human spirit in the new generation.

    4. On Saturdays (while living in Canada) I go to the senior level of the Polish system of education – their ‘Polish’ subject is real education (a view of all literary periods from antiquity to the present) as opposed to my Grade 12 English (writing an essay on tragedy).
      Anyways, the point is – my Polish teacher grouped the latest periods as:
      1) Developing as a sort of reaction to ones in #2
      Middle Ages – – – Baroque – – – Romanticism – – – – Modernism/Neo-Romanticism/ (for Poland) Young Poland
      2) Developing as a sort of reaction to ones in #1
      Renaissance – – – Enlightenment – – – Positivism (may be a different term in English but late 19th century)
      Number 2 are the overly rational ones, and number 1 are the others – more irrational, spiritual,etc.
      I feel exactly the same as you actually – Romanticism is one of my favourite periods and life now is so rational, the drone analogy is excellent. Should be a more spirited, irrational backlash coming soon (though I am no scholar 🙂 ) – feels like something the world needs. As you said, where is the human spirit?

    5. I agree and I think we both are exploring that sentiment. The rational atomizing of man into basic economic units as we have known in post modern societies is a large part why this is on the rise again.
      “Let teachers and priests and philosophers brood over questions of reality and illusion. I know this: if life is illusion, then I am no less an illusion, and being thus, the illusion is real to me. I live, I burn with life, I love, I slay, and am content.”
      Conan The Barbarian

      1. I’d be interested to know the extent to which Rousseau’s concept of the noble savage influenced Robert E. Howard’s concept of the noble savage when he created Conan.

    6. It depends. When I look around me in my generation I see a bunch of fools that completely disregard rationality.
      But I do know what you mean. None of them is who they are because of “human spirit”.
      They are that way because they suppress themselves and their thoughts.
      It is all only senseless nihilism.

    7. Always pick the original, in the original language, when it’s one you can read.
      This is true of every book, and a real necessity when it comes to verse (there is no real way to translate poetry).

  5. Those who knew him said he was a nearly-insane monster who left his illegitimate kids at the local church, where most probably died in orphanages.

  6. Rousseau was one of the firts egalitarians. Rousseau was one of the first theorics of democracy. Rousseau was indirectly responsable for the French Revolution. Rousseau praises the “noble savage”, etc, etc, etc.
    Rousseau planted the seeds of the modern world. This modern world filled with equality, democracy, feminisn and race mixing. He was a disgrace and he will be forever an enemy of that is good and beautiful.
    If I have a time travel machine, my first travel would be to kill him.

    1. Really, the very first thing you would do with a time machine is to kill Rousseau? That seems awfully extreme. I mean, you could buy a shit ton of Apple Stock back in the 70’s or invent the walkman or check out dinosaurs or go see how hot helen of troy was….I mean, I wouldn’t want to kill Rousseau at all…however, even if I did I think that given a time machine I would definitely come up with at least a years worth of stuff to do before I got around to going back to 18th century Geneva and murder a political philosopher and man about town.

        1. I suppose. But is Killing a foppish philosopher in Geneva really number one?

        2. I’d kill him too. And then Voltaire. And then fun, until Marx is born.

        3. Yeah, that prick is responsable for a lot of our predicaments now.
          After him in the list are Marx, Engels, Freud, and the whole Frankfurt School.

        4. I’m much more selfish. I’d just go back in time, but undervalued property in Manhattan and a ton of stocks that will grow big.
          I’ve no great love for the world, but better the devil you know

        5. We can make a temporal hit squad, but I got dibs on Rousseau. Also, i got dibs on knives, I like it close and personal.

        6. The “Frankfurt school” seems to be used as a general boogie man.
          Freud was a genius.
          In fact most of these people were (not so much Engels). What people did with this scholarship is pretty nuts.
          As for the modern predicament we are in, yeah a lot of it sucks but history has its own momentum. In the end it’s not that bad

        7. Yeah, I wouldn’t go beyond the beginning of my lifespan, simply to ensure my own birth. Then I’d rake in money from the markets.

        8. And sports betting. And real estate and shit.
          You know there is plenty wrong with the world, but fuck it. There are also a lot of perks

        9. You take the good with the bad. I’ve read books by Frankfurt school theorists. They don’t all think with one mind and they are interesting even if a little off and Freud ive read quite a lot of. Really brilliant stuff.

        10. I think some of Adorno’s late works are brilliant critiques of late 20th century disenchantment with a world that’s become completely administered and technocrat in nearly all aspects. Adorno certainty wasn’t even a socialist, his outlook was conservative and based on the middle class bourgeois values of late 19th century Germany.

        11. Very much agreed.
          Adorno was a really interesting genius.

        12. People tend to talk about the Frankfurt School like it was a bunch of people who got together and pushed a single idea as part of some big conspiracy when in reality it was a bunch of philosophers with some similarities and a lot of differences that used similar methodologies. I never understood why they are used as such a general boogieman

        13. I guess it’s just ignorance. The same scorn is heaped on Freud, generally by folks who’ve never read a single page of him.

        14. Yes…and with Freud and Frankfurt guys it is always the same thing like they were mustache twisting villains who all had dinner together and we’re coming up with plans to ruin the cohesive family.
          Even Marx…I mean, He was applying Hegelian theory to economics. That was revolutionary. He couldn’t have predicted what was next. He was playing with ideas.
          Ideas of smart men, even when they lead to bad things or are things you disagree with, are important and valuable I’d think

        15. It does not matter what they actually said, but how actually have been interpreted.

        16. Thank you for falling in the leftard-created conspiracy theory to mock of conservatives.
          The right wing never created a causal conspiracy on cultural marxism, just connected dots which lead to the nightmare we are living right now, and called it cultural marxism.
          Cultural marxism is a political label being mocked by the left. It directly menaces their current control of language. With attitudes like yours, you are justifying SJW speech.

        17. It does not matter. These people set the theoretical foundations for current SJW movement.

        18. You are saying that they set a theoretical foundation for the current sjw movement without ever having read any of it.
          Maybe you aren’t right? Maybe you are but it isn’t the way you think? Maybe it is exactly the way you think but it wasn’t their intention.
          I don’t understand how you have have an objection to something you have no idea about. That would be like me telling you what I think about a movie I hadn’t seen.

        19. Dude, you don’t get it… I don’t need to read what they actually say, I don’t even care. I just know how these people have been used used and monopolized by our enemies. Rosseau’s ideas do not belong to us.

        20. But you don’t even know what their ideas are?
          For years people didn’t read Nietzsche because he Nazis used a bastardized version of his writings that he would have hated to justify their Nonsense.
          Being afraid or hostile towards ideas that you don’t even know written by long dead academics you have never read is literally the definition of ignorance.

        21. Why not create our own from scratch? No need to de-bastardize anything. Life is short, man, and I would like to see SJW movement die before I do.

        22. I don’t want to change the world — just try to enjoy as much as possible, keep my dick wet and die in a quiet room.
          Yeah the world is burning but the end of the world is working out well for me.
          One of the cool things I get to do is read books by people who were fantastically smart because no one has invented time machines and gone back in time to kill them because they are scared of ideas

        23. So you seem to have just taken who he influence from Wikipedia. Can you please explain what ideas he gave to Marx or Engels?

        24. Frankfurt School were basically just the first SJW’s, there wasn’t any conspiracy, but they did influence modern leftism, nothing big that people seem to make them out to be. I don’t see how Joseph relates Rousseau to them in anyway though.

        25. I honestly cannot imagine the Nazi’s liking even a weakened version of Nietzsche. I mean, he defended the Jews, he rejected Western Morality, etc.

        26. Again, what specifically in Rousseau’s philosophy do you dislike. Point out some actual specifics.

        27. “Ideas of smart men, even when they lead to bad things or are things you disagree with, are important and valuable I’d think”
          Strongly disagree. If you set an aggressive dog loose on people you’re responsible for whatever happens. The same with ideologists who failed to take in account the fact that, as Joseph de Maistre put it, there are in this world a lot of dogs who just wait for an excuse to tear everything down.

        28. I’ve read some Marcuse, and I think he’s right about the Frankfurt Schule.

        29. That some of them laid a conceptual framework for cultural Marxism? Of course. And some didn’t. He is making a point about a whole bunch of long dead thinkers and scholars with zero first hand knowledge of what any of them thought or wrote and ascribing to them a motive and single purpose.

        30. By that token you would need to blame the authors of the bible to the atrocities committed in its name, Einstein for the deaths resulting from the atomic bombs and 80’s heavy metal for a bunch of suicides.
          Playing with philosophical ideas is how the world has, historically, moved forward. The crazy thing is that a lot of these ideas were in fact correct conceptually.
          Look at Nietzsche. He fully understands that object truth is a myth. Feminist response is to say “since truth is a simalacram and gender is a social construct it is evil lets tear it down”
          Is this Nietzsche’s fault? Another totally valid response would be to say “the simulacrum works, let’s double down the severity in which we reinforce it”
          I don’t blame people for thinking about the world only the morons who decide to blow things up based on those thoughts. Those morons include both the people trying to destroy the world and the knee jerk morons like the OP who want to blow up in return.
          It is this rabid anti-intellectualism, anti-intelligence movement that has caused all of the problems on both sides. A bunch of people fighting wars over shit they don’t understand or don’t bother reading? And then blame the people who wrote the stuff? Nah dude, that’s no bueno

        31. Right. But there it was. Nietzsche’s sister was married to one of the founders of the Nazi party. N himself was in a coma. And all that stuff was redacted to emphasize the blonde beast and for decades he was seen as the herald of the master race what with his unermench it was so long before unedited versions were released and read.

        32. For Marx the dialectic was communism. But it is more complicated than just thesis, antithesis and synthesis because their are millions and millions happening simultaneously. Marx was a Hegelian through and through. Whether he was a good one is up for debate. I don’t think so. He was, however, a clever and creative one.

        33. But like any group of young, smart academics coming to their own together they also carried greatly in their opinions and argued with one another about things.

        34. Yeah I think you’re kind of right there.
          But honestly did you went through the SCUM manifesto before criticizing the 3rd wave feminism ? Read Simone de Beaver before laughing at the gender theory ? There are some books in this world from which you already see the awful results in our society, so you intuitively know that the authors are full of shit, and frankly life’s too short to read them. That’s my point of view.
          That’s why, often, I’m guilty of getting straight to the critical work done on such authors, rather than to their actual work. A lot of time saved.

        35. Time saved, but so much missed out on. If you don’t enjoy reading them then spend time doing other things. That said, it is hard to criticize when you haven’t read. And yes, I read all of it…the manifesto, das capital, all the de beaver shit, Hannah arendt and all of it is brilliant — even the stuff I disagree with. There is a conversation that has been going on for thousands of years with the smartest people in the world and morons have constantly, throughout history, mis understood, misappropriated and all around made huge assholes of themselves in the name of it.
          Too many people go out into the world with some sort of shitty opinion based on their own feelz and then cherry pick quotes from shit that is way beyond their ability to comprehend and then love or hate it based on that. This happens with the feminists and sjw’s, the victim culture of everywhere from black Detroit to Northern Ireland, the joo blamers, the cross burners, the transdoodle protesters…to me it is all the same, a bunch of morons running around demanding that everyone believe the thing that makes them feel like they don’t have a 2 inch dick for 5 minutes.
          To hell with them all. Not a single one of them has contributed someone of any value, just said boo or yay to bastardized misunderstandings of better men.
          It is why I don’t distinguish between hardcore feminists and the storm front people. Same shit. Just a bunch of sad ignorant fucks who wouldn’t know what side of the bed to piss on if someone didn’t tell them.

        36. Yes, you raise some very good points ; Wagner should not be killed for inspiring Hitler, nor the Beatles for inspiring Charles Manson.
          If I remember well it was the Dorians, the guys who founded Sparta, who used to put a rope around the man presenting a new law in front of the assemblee. If the idea was deemed having more inconvenients than advantages, the dude was immediately stranggled on sight. Say what you want about the Spartans, these silly gay hardcore conservatives, but they won the Peloponnesian war.
          I think we should apply the same standards to philosophical works : if you question a traditional order that is far from perfect but still works, if you propose an utopy as replacement, whatever happens afterwards must be on you.
          I think the work of modern intellectuals would be of better quality if they actually feared the possible bad consequences of their intellectual mistakes , like not taking in account human nature, which is what I reproach to Rousseau and Marx.
          Say what you want about the Bible by the way, but if there is one thing that it does, it is taking human nature in account.
          Also, when I compair the classical works, or the medieval and early renaissance ones with the modern and post-modern ones, I find the modern thinkers quite silly, immature, confused and confusing, like children that have lost their father, and I’m not under the impression that “we’ve moved forward”. It’s as if with the fall of the traditional world and the absence of verticality, their intellectual backbones disappeared and now they’re all crawling in every directions, looking for answers that were already given a long time ago by some incredibly smart bearded bisexual old man wearing a toga, or by some castrated monk writing to his platonic girlfriend.

        37. I can see what you are saying, but laws are different than theories remember. If I propose a new theory you won’t see those effects for years, may centuries, maybe never and even if you do see them you can still argue whether or not it is a direct relation. The freedom to investigate into the truths of the universe is something we need in order for a society to progress.
          I agree about some modern and post-modern writers. But look at Kant (and I am a big Kant guy)….the level of complexity in there is mindfuckingly beyond what pretty much anyone up until him could have imagined…but it all relied on system, after the war about Hegel which broke things up into analytic philosophers and continental ones (a division that has had more of a tremendous impact on the modern world than can possibly be expressed) the whole idea of truth winds up being questioned.
          When truth is shown to be an agreed upon reality rather than a correspondence reality some people have some serious choices to make. Some people chose one way and the out come makes you think you should have hanged the guy who first understood that truth isn’t real. But what is this doing? Just reinforcing the point in the first place that we can manipulate the truth.
          I wouldn’t really want to say we have moved forward or we have move backwards….we have just moved…forward and backwards are just interpretations. It is the conversation itself, taken as a whole, that is important not the meandering thoughts of one or another guy.

        38. Can’t disagree with that.
          I definitely need to start reading Kant. Although I’m always reluctant to read powdered wig wearing philosophy.

        39. Powdered wig > skinny jeans. I am always tempted to just start dressing like an upper class Prussian at the turn of the 19th century.
          Kant is an enormous undertaking. I read Kant constantly along with as much secondary literature as I could for a decade. I mean, I did other things too…but there is so much to unpack in Kant that I could spend a life time.
          Without exaggeration, my attempt to reconcile Heraclitus, Plotinus, Kant and Nietzsche would have killed me if I didn’t stop.

        40. “Ideas of smart men, even when they lead to bad things or are things you disagree with, are important and valuable I’d think” I love that line.
          “No universal history leads from savagery to humanitarianism, but there is one leading from the slingshot to the megaton bomb” Adorno…I love this quote too…want he’s saying is that either savagery and violence are the vectors that we had to travel along in our pursuit to master nature even more, which is of course another form of repression, but, one which made us more human and civilized eventually or that universal history is the modern enlightenment myth that says man and the history he creates is more rational that it really is.

        41. I wish I had your courage. But some are simply repulsive to me. I’ve tried Bourdieu, for example. His style is just awful, and the pompous gibberish has no power on me. Same with Marx, really. And Rousseau…
          I had tons of fun studying Schopenhauer in my German studies in College though.
          I prefere to build my castle before exploring the lands of the enemy, using material that I like and which I don’t hear every day (I come from a family of leftist intellectuals). I love the few I can grasp of the classics, Harry Stotle and Plato, and enjoy what I started reading St augustine. I also mostly read on history and obscure traditionalists from he XIXth century like Evola and Guénon, or raging political activist like Maurras, or mystical crazy geniuses like Blaise Pascal, Léon Bloy or Otto Weininger. I mostly use my reading as an escape out of the modern world.
          But, really, there are some stuff that I can’t bear reading, some ideas that are so absurd to me that I sometimes want to burry the book in my garden. I guess I’ll have to befriend philosophical explorers like you in order to avoid getting too one-dimensional.

        42. Feminism? Marx wasn’t a fan of feminism. He actually thought it was foolish that women would want to work when they don’t need too – the economy is already over saturated with workers.
          Egalitarianism? Well that wasn’t a central piece of Rousseau’s philosophy – though he did support it. If you wanted to go back in time and kill the original person who thought up “egalitarianism”, you are gonna have to go back kill someone way farther back than Rousseau.
          Democracy? Again, way more people than him supported that idea, like Voltaire, and that Idea goes all the way back to before the Hellenic era.
          Race Mixing? Where did either Rousseau promote this because I have not heard of him even talking about other races.

        43. “For Marx the dialectic was communism.” The Dialectic is 3 things, I assume you mean it’s the Synthesis, but what is the original thesis and anti thesis?
          Marx wasn’t a Hegelian, here he is in his own words: “My dialectic method is not only different from the Hegelian, but is its direct opposite. To Hegel, the life-process of the human brain, i.e. the process of thinking, which, under the name of ‘the Idea’, he even transforms into an independent subject, is the demiurgos of the real world, and the real world is only the external, phenomenal form of ‘the Idea’. With me, on the contrary, the ideal is nothing else than the material world reflected by the human mind, and translated into forms of thought.”

        44. 1) Nietzsche hated his sister and family. 2) His Sister’s husband – Bernhard Förster, while he shared many of the ideals of the nazi party, he died in 1889 – 31 years before the creation of the Nazi party. 3) He wasn’t in a coma, he was just mentally unstable.

        45. The use of a triad in the dialectic is a device of explaining it, a cartoon if you will, to people who are new to it. It is a rhetorical device. The material dialectic itself is way more Than just this than this than that which is part of those. It is, always, many more than three and always just one.
          Marx also directly says he is a student of Hegel and aside from what he says, the way he works out the dialectic is methodologically indentical.
          He wasn’t a Hegelian as if Hegel was a gang leader and everyone has to follow him and Marx obviously thought he pushed Hegel further than Hegel could go, but he was must definitely a Hegelian philosopher.
          Even in the quote you have here (which is funny because he calls himself the opposite) he is merely saying how he has taken what Hegel did and reapplied it…in a way Marx obviously thinks is superior…which is actually the definition of being a Hegelian.

        46. Yes Nietzsche hated his sister and his family but this fact wasn’t a public one until much after his life ended
          Yes Forster killed himself before the Nazi party but his direct influence on its creation is one to one. He didn’t share ideas with the party he was on of the Sparks that started that flame in large part thanks to Nietzsche’s most incooperstive help…help I think he would rather have burned his work than he is be given for
          Nietzsche was more than unstable. At the end he was totally uncommunicative, incapable of tending to himself both physical and mentally. Late stage syph is really bad. He was way past the wacky letters stage after his collapse in Turin and by 95 was basically a toddler with a dope mustache

      1. If I had a time machine I would only use it if I had a time machine simulator where I could test my actions first to determine the outcome, the smallest changes far back enough in the wrong places could wipe out your entire family line. Then again I subscribe to multiverse theory since its the best solution to time paradoxes.

        1. The real question is, if you had a time
          Machine simulator why bother using the time machine?

        2. Riches, bitches and the eradication of my enemies from the timeline. I’m thinking progressively going back further in time first seducing their mothers, grandmothers, etc.

    2. But was he actually an egalitarian? As I recall, he was quite fond of individuality – the opposite of egalitarianism. I think that his ideas were just used and associated with these things, by both sides, without this necessarily being his intention. It is easy to paint someone as a one-sided person representing some ideology when in reality he may have been quite more intelligent and reflective than those who want to categorize him into “leftist / egalitarian” want to admit.

      1. He was an egalitarian in the sense of giving men equal rights. Not in the sense of Socialist Egalitarianism.

    3. As for the noble savage, I can only recommend everybody to watch the documentary “Tribe”, visiting various indigenous tribes around earth, to make up your own mind. I must say it quite surprised me and made me question the general “betterness” of civilized life.

      1. That sounds interesting. Do you think it was a fair (at least as fair as it could be) depiction without a political slant?

        1. It has been a while since I saw it. I would say it was okay. It is still basically this personal diary of his, so naturally his own opinions, values and sentiments shine through all the time. But you also get a good picture of the general way these people live and can make up your own mind. If there is any political undertone, it is more like him speaking to the camera “Hey, this really made me question this and that and I find these people marvelous”. But overall he makes the impression of not quite knowing his place in the world and it seems to me like he is not trying to mask that with proselytizing and propaganda.

        2. I will def check this out. Thanks for the tip.

      2. This modern world and a “civilized” world are not the same thing.
        We live in a world rotten to the core. The enemy (yes, the Tribe) is working hard to build what you have around: drugs, alcoholism, pomiscuity, hypergamy, homosexualism, democracy, race mixing, etc, etc, etc.
        Of course, there are certain tribes of non whites in which one could live in a certain way “better” than in NY. In this case “better” means close to the nature, open spaces, hunting for your food, etc. But you can have the same experience, only much better, living in a farm in the middle of Siberia with white people.

        1. The fact that I have an opinion you dislike makes me nuts?
          You talk like a SJW.

    4. Good point Joseph. I have admired some of his points and writing, but he is mostly associated with the romanticism movement. Romantism is the modern equivalent of liberalism.

      1. He is not related with Romanticism at all but firmly in the Enlightenment.
        Romanticism is Chopin, Schubert, Liszt, and the sort – all in the early 19th century.
        Liberalism I would associate more with the Enlightenment and the French Revolution (both BEFORE Romanticism), while Romanticism was a sort of rebellion from that – a large focus on spirituality and irrationality; in music and literature you see ballads and returns to tradition and timeless folk music. Beautiful, especially Chopin for me (beautiful ballad here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pe-GrRQz8pk ). Nationalism was big.
        I would place Rousseau firmly with Spinoza and Descartes; Hegel and Kierkegaard could maybe be considered Romantic philosophers but this wasn’t a philosophical period.

        1. Also read the opening paragraph of this: http://www.iep.utm.edu/rousseau/
          Rousseau is definitively placed as part of the Enlightenment. The man influenced Kant in ethics – KANT the biggest Enlightenment rationalist of them all! Though yeah, don’t want to argue forever.

        2. Rousseau was sort of a “proto romanticist” in his philosophy, he didn’t really share much ideas with his contemporaries besides that he supported democracy. As for his music, he is part of the transition between Baroque and the newly emerging Classical (which is specifically between 1750’s-1820’s).
          P.S. Franz Schubert is Classical, not Romantic.

        3. And in what way did he influence Kant? They have pretty different philosophies?

        4. He influenced Kant in the way my high school teacher influenced me. It doesn’t mean I share beliefs with the man, just had my eyes open to new possibilities.
          There are a bunch of people here cherry picking quotes and starting with an agenda. Frankly, the vast majority of them are idiots and I suppose feel smarter involving or blaming people who they don’t understand or bother trying to understand. All they need is a few quotes here and there to fuel their already stated purposes.
          They are essentially the exact same thing as the feminist morons and SJW’s that they hate so much only from a different angle

        5. yes, what exactly on ethics? Because Kantian ethics are pretty much universalist, while Rousseau was basically an early relativist.

        6. “He influenced Kant in the way my high school teacher influenced me. It doesn’t mean I share beliefs with the man, just had my eyes open to new possibilities.” That doesn’t make him part of the enlightenment, he was still counter to enlightenment ideals. As for the people claiming he is was a Social Justice Warrior, that is less accurate than calling him part of the enlightenment.

        7. I agree.
          I never called him an SJW. In fact I didn’t put him as part of any group. I am merely arguing that going back in time and shooting him his probably a dumb idea

    5. “This modern world filled with equality, democracy, feminism” One of these things are 100% incompatible with the other first thing. Second thing, Rousseau despised modern society. This article was pretty crappy because it didn’t explain anything about what he actually thought, but here is a pretty good video on him: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81KfDXTTtXE
      I would also like to point out that he wasn’t really egalitarian. He thought that the development of civilization has basically brought unhappiness.

      1. If you are not a troll (or a Cass operative) and If you really think that a) equality, democracy and feminism are not 100% compatible with each other, b) Rousseau despised modern society, and c) he wasn’t really an egalitarian you really, really, really need to read more.
        I heard that the Huffington Post is sunny these days…

        1. Feminism has a goal of getting WOMEN rights and getting WOMEN privileges. This includes things that will be bad for men (such as quota’s and the right to vote without signing up for the draft).
          Egalitarianism means two things. First, in the political science meaning, it’s a political doctrine that people should have the same rights. The second is in the context of philosophy is the idea that believes in minimization of economic inequality. While the first one applies to Rousseau, the second one doesn’t and neither of them were central pieces of his philosophy – which mainly involved the concept that civilization is morally and socially bad for humans.
          “I heard that the Huffington Post is sunny these days…” I not a fan of the Huffington post and I have no idea what this means, so please elaborate.

  7. I read about 75% of this book years ago, but, alas I never finished it for some unknown reason, possibly his propensity towards self pity and playing the “poor victim” became repetitious. However, I agree with many of his sentiments, especially about the role of educating our sensibility, which is an important and sadly neglected part of our mentality today.
    What I especially admire in his writings are his depictions of cities which he detested like Paris which he described as a filthy and foul human sewer on his first arrival there when he entered it early one morning. His equal abhorrence at the atomized sterility of the enlightenment where people are reduced to things and implements within an abstract scheme like the “economy” or employees as resources (in our own times) that can be used like abstract objects has become even more pronounced in our world, than his.
    I feel an anger brewing and shimmering more and more in my bones when I see the modern world. I see a world that has become at one level gross and sensuous and at the other abstract, cold and machine-like. A world that’s essentially soulless and lacking in any meaning beyond “getting and spending” and consuming more of the same toss that’s churned out of the Devil’s cauldron, and, this is partly what he rebelled against, although he’s mistaken in thinking that the majority of people are “naturally good” by design. People will live like plants, animals or robots if it suits their own ends and that’s what our world now produces in abundance.

    1. I think that on an absolute level, everything is inherently good. I think bad comes into existence through judgment of the mind.

      1. I’m not sure about this observation- I think we inhabit a degraded and illusory realm which somehow needs forms of conscious lives for its continued existence. I have serious doubts regarding its moral composure, and, perhaps partly badness and corruption comes into our minds through not knowing ourselves and the larger scheme of things.

        1. Well what Tom Arrow said isn’t an actual statement. That is a summery of Rousseau. This is why I am baffled at the fact that this article was put on here.

      2. This saying is rubbish, go meet more of your neighbors or people in general.

        1. I think that on an absolute level, everything is inherently good. I think bad comes into existence through judgment of the mind.

          Long story short: Eye is on the eye of the Beholder and associated BS which in the real world has been proven to be false.

  8. good article. Also, I have a framed print of the Wanderer in the sea of fog by Casper David Friedrich on my wall! Best painting ever.

  9. I used to think of Rosseau just an abstract representation of socialism and leftist ideology. But after having forced myself to read at least the Wikipedia article on him some time ago, I realized he was a much more multidimensional person than that. It has been some time, but I think he wrote something on education of children which I quite liked the summary of.

  10. Rousseau was a huge proponent of men’s only clubs as a civilized atmosphere where men can go and unwind without the distracting influence of women.

    1. If women want a golf course so damn bad, they should go build their own.

      1. Don’t be silly, they can’t build a golf course. Golf courses aren’t deicious dinners.

        1. I knew an Arab man, he told me ‘Men are the best chefs, women aren’t even good in the kitchen, they’re only good for one thing.’

        2. It is absolutely true.
          That said, while it might not always taste best I think there is something to be said for coming home and having a hot meal served to you. In fairness, this has never happened to me so I might just be idealizing it.

        3. Being pampered by a beautiful woman with a home-cooked meal after work is almost as good as it gets.

        4. It seems like it would be. Even if the food could have been made better, the very act, if done right, seems like it would be very nice

        5. I think for us men it is not just the food…..though that is a lot of it!
          It’s the willingness to please as a feminine compliment to a masculine man. The act of selflessness.
          Yet I don’t think we are even asking for much here. Men who give their lives and their largess are acting in a much greater selflessness.

        6. No, it is a wonderful thing after a long day’s work or hunting. I cannot explain the absolute sense of wholeness and well being you experience, you have to be there.

        7. Well, when we talk of very high level couisine, it’s of course about IQ and brain power again :D..

        8. it should be said….if a woman is doing her job that is to say she is a stay at home wife and mother and by that i mean actually works around the house cleaning cooking and attending to all the things that need attending to that keep a house up and running….she will by default become a good cook. why? because one of her key jobs as housewife is to keep her family well fed and eating good food. well fed and eating good food means eating good home cooked meals and not processed shit.
          so women can become good cooks. a women who is a GOOD housewife will become a good cook. she will thus teach her daughters to be good cooks.
          whether or not they are better than male chefs is a whole other conversation but the fact is women should be at the very least good cooks because that is a basic tenant of house keeping and taking care of your family affairs at the house.
          quick and easy food is a byproduct of not wanting to cook after an 8-10 hour day of work and a by product of bad habits from childhood. however if women were being good women men wouldnt need to grab something quick to eat as their women would be cooking because they would be at home where they belong.

        9. Yes, it is supremely galling to hear women complain about the “misogyny” of expecting them to help and be eager to please, when men work ten times harder to pay bills, tend the yard, maintain the house and car, etc., etc.

      2. Don’t be silly mate,women go where the fun is. You know that saying, girls come for free because drugs cost money!

    2. Can anyone even name a person who is a proponent of men’s clubs today?

      1. I am. And I will in fact see this come back into vogue.

      2. Like the Hand of the King said, “No, we can’t make you leave, but neither can you make us stay.”

    3. Sadly though, his ideas laid the groundwork for removing men only clubs.
      He is the Godfather of SJWs.

  11. I prefere Joseph de Maistre to Rousseau. By far. Rousseau’s Social Contract philosophy apllied to the real world is what gave us these huge omni-wanting-to-be-potent governments.
    And Rousseau’s Confessions are the most boring thing I’ve ever had to read. I was quite young at the time, but still, who wants to read about a boy getting spanked.

    1. Thanks for introducing me to Maistre. I have never heard of him before but has some interesting ideas.

  12. Shhhhhhh! Look kids, this is what happens when you study philosophy/literature and don’t turn into a SJW! Witness as they discuss the most useless ideas with much heart and passion on a website dedicated to banging chicks!
    Marvellous

    1. Nah… Philosophy is the best shot any human has at knowing one’s self. After you’ve banged, and indulged a good soul seeks more.

  13. Great post and write up! However, “Reveries of the Solitary Walker” is my preferred writing by Rousseau. His mature musings on life after he is through with the masses helped inspire me to follow my own path. Plus, there is no cliche in Rousseau he articulates a philosophical soul unlike any other Modern. I still need to read “Emile”.

  14. Rousseau’s ideology is a mixed bag; some of his ideas are in line with those of modern leftists, while others are more reasonable. I very much like his writings on the virtues on “natural man” and pre-industrial life (quite similar to those by Ted Kaczynski). The sections of “The Social Contract” which deal directly with governance and democracy, however, reveal an uncomfortably collectivist side to the man. He portrays the so-called “general will” of the sovereign as being of supreme importance and near infallibility, giving very little consideration to individual and property rights as did other thinkers of the time like Locke.

    1. rousseau’s ‘general will’ is the totalitarianism of the majority, the idea that a people can have a single will (not that different from the geist that was to follow with hegel perhaps but without the historical teleology). Hugely problematic, but the point was that the people were sovereign as opposed to some monarch. Now the totalitarianism that have followed – in the twentieth century – have consisted of commies claiming that their ideas incarnate something like the people’s general will (dictatorship of the proletariat), or ‘the volk’ in the case of Hitler, but each instance neither represented the will of anything other than a few debased intellectuals (in the first case) or a deranged nazis (in the second). The general will is indeed a flawed concept but can democracy really do without it? The problem isn’t with the idea that the people are sovereign, but with the fact that groups always want to claim leadership in the name of the sovereign people.

  15. I usually place Rousseau firmly in the Enlightenment and the age of reason. The Romantic period begins in the early 19th century; the only noteworthy philosophers are Hegel and (later) Kierkegaard. At least music wise, Romanticism was turn of the century, at least 20 years after Rousseau’s death.

    1. I wouldn’t really call him an Social Justice Warrior, I would associate him more with the same school of thought as the Unabomber.

      1. That’s what “proto” means. And Mark is right, albeit without the ad hominem.

        1. Proto means they share ideas. But even though I disagree with most of his ideas, he was basically the anti thesis to Social Justice. One of his central ideas was that people in modern society over compare themselves to others and people think they have it worse than they do. This is held true to the highest degree possible by Social media. People see all the “great times” other people are doing and thing there lives suck, but in actuallity they probably have a quality of life on par with yours: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81KfDXTTtXE
          http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2013/08/19/213568763/researchers-facebook-makes-us-sadder-and-less-satisfied
          SJW’s on the other hand wouldn’t even exist without social media.

    2. This place stuns me sometimes. This kind of stuff is an example. Are there no editors here?

  16. Bravo QC.
    When I first read Rousseau’s discourses and especially on the inequality of man I remember loving it. His eloquence and the fact that it resonated within had me pondering his ideas for some time.
    Some of the sentiment I’m sure you can find in the content I write about. I know that he never used the term “Noble Savage” but the idea alone and what that means to me is probably a huge facet of my blog. One in which I’m currently disseminating my own form of.
    Men in general are the true dreamers and romantics which can cause great loss and suffering to us. When the ideals we longed for don’t match up with cold and unforgiving reality, we must adapt to it and strive to reach higher A romanticism of the past can be foolish and dangerous even.
    My view is this:
    The will to live attached to the rational use of empirical data with any idealism directed towards higher planes.
    I will have to read his Confessions one day.

  17. JJQ’s “vision” is the unrestricted sexual marketplace and unrepentant crass individualism.
    I don’t regard him as a vision but as a curse.

  18. Rousseau was an amazing composer and musician, but I disagree with quite a bit of his philosophy. He had some sort of idea that there was a “simpler time” where people were the world was some sort of Utopian hunter-gatherer society, sort of like what the Unabomber preaches.

    1. Imagine preaching that in the 18th century. Most of us here would give our firstborn to be in the simplicity and patriarchy of the 18th century. He was hearkening back to another age before his time.
      The human soul is truly restless.

      1. 1) Rousseau was full of shit. 2) Patriarchy doesn’t exist.
        The problem he identified is kind of true, but his idea of pre civilization being some sort of magical la la land is completely nonsensical. He also was a moral relativist, and somehow thought when pre industrial people did bad it was morally acceptable because it was simply “part of nature”. What is that even supposed to mean?

        1. Why is everyone so afraid of moral relativism.
          Kierkegaard had it right about anonimity. 100 years ago you would have had to prove that you had some kind of gray matter as well as background to make a comment like that. Now great ideas of great men are replaced with the opinions of dipshits. Smh. This is he real tragedy.

        2. I am not really super against moral relativism. I think morals are partially relativistic but are mainly Universal. I only pointed out moral relativism for the context of his idea of morality somehow not applying to pre civilization humans.
          ” 100 years ago you would have had to prove that you had some kind of gray matter as well as background to make a comment like that. Now great ideas of great men are replaced with the opinions of dipshits.” That breaks your own logic about moral relativism.

        3. Not sure why you think so.
          Relativism doesn’t mean everyone is right. The fact that one would have to make oneself familiar with the history of wisdom and prove himself capable of joining the conversation was important.

  19. I’ve studied lots of Romantic era literature.
    As far as masculinity goes the romantic era is a mixed bag.
    Some early romantics got into some liberal and or social justice causes.
    But later romantics put the breaks on social justice and chaotic leftist dogma and became powerful (if somewhat socially disconnected) individuals.
    Nothing wrong with that.

  20. JJR, legend.
    “Peoples once accustomed to masters are not in a condition to do without them. If they attempt to shake off the yoke, they still more estrange themselves from freedom, as, by mistaking for it an unbridled license to which it is diametrically opposed, they nearly always manage, by their revolutions, to hand themselves over to seducers, who only make their chains heavier than before.”
    This is a perfect description of women today. If you want to see these seducers of practicing feminists that chain young women you need look no further than the present day captains of feminism that major in clever hashtags but minor in cultivating free thought.

  21. Rousseau’s an acquired taste … this yearning for the golden age is as old as … the golden age. Kant famously missed his afternoon walk because his nose was buried in the “Confessions.” Just sayin’. Probably Byron took this thing to the extremes.

  22. “A child spends six or seven years thus in the hands of women, victim of their caprice and of his own. And after having made him learn this and that – that is, after having burdened his memory either with words he cannot understand or with things that are good for nothing to him; after having stifled his nature by passions that one has caused to be born in him – this factitious being is put in the hands of a preceptor who completes the development of the artificial seeds that he finds already formed and teaches him everything except to know how to live and make himself happy. Finally, when this child, slave and tyrant, full of science and bereft of sense, frail in body and soul alike, is cast out into the world, showing there his ineptitude, his pride, and all his vices, he becomes the basis for our deploring human misery and perversity. This is a mistake. He is a man of our whims; the man of nature is differently constituted.”
    Reading this makes me think Rousseau wouldn’t approve of single motherhood or the current public education system.

    1. “Reading this makes me think Rousseau wouldn’t approve of single motherhood or the current public education system.”
      to be fair…..single motherhood and public education are factually terrible things regardless of your political views.

  23. “He never made much progress in formal education. Perhaps this fact contributed, in some way, to his rootless tendencies, his lack of discipline and moderation, and to his elevation of emotion over reason. Education is not just for the purpose of learning information; it is also meant to temper and harness the unwieldy soul of zealous youth.”
    I’d remove the “perhaps”.
    There is no questioning your suggestion.
    And yes, it’s very good to read writers and thinkers of all kinds, starting from those whose preferences our preferences don’t tend to match.
    Of course, provided they are picked among the few in good faith.
    I think Rousseau’s theoretical and intellectual flaw was a certain naivete: in what was the nature vs nurture debate of his time he picked a 100% nurture theory to be his, and, as if that were not enough, found the origin of human lowly instincts in the corruption caused by society and civilisation.
    Living and having conversations with the trees and lake around his residence didn’t, arguably, help him realize much with respect to common people.

  24. He was a dirtbag that gave away his own chidren, and an inspiration to socialists.

  25. Quintus, I don’t know whether I should admire you for your generosity and breadth in finding things to admire in such a man (and own myself a pious scold), or whether I should question your own sanity.
    I tried reading Rousseau’s Confessions, but after reading a good bit I threw the book down in disgust and said, “Well, no surprise that Europe kept sliding into the abyss.” I’m a man of many flaws; I don’t fault Rousseau for having flaws… but, for throwing himself at them and at the Romantic urge to think that owning and affirming them amounted to some kind of sublimely moral “authenticity,” I found it hard to respect him. St. Augustine’s work is suffused with the spirit of compunction and repentance, with whole-hearted confidence in God the Pardoner and Guide of even errant souls, and of grateful praise to the Same – in other words, it embodies the full meaning of the Latin term confiteor. Rousseau’s work seemed more shameless to me – or, at least, devoid of the same spirit of compunction or self-amendment in favor of impotent lamentation.
    I can see how too steep an immersion in logic turns the soul dead and steely. I’m dealing a lot with logic at the moment, preparing for Seminary studies. For me, mystery and contemplation, and a love for the seasonable customs of the Liturgy and folk practice have provided the balancing effect, putting me in touch with beauty and things that transcend what can merely be quantified or analyzed. Rousseau threw himself at vice in reaction to frigidity of soul, but I wonder how much it corrected the prior error, and how much it simply led to the next, inevitable step in the decadence of the West. Tell me where you think I’m misjudging the man, being too hard on him.

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