The Enlightenment in All but France Was Still an Absolution Monarchy
If rousseau had actually proposed any real solutions at the end of his bookke, if he had called for the overthrow of the monarchy and the church, he would have ended up in jail. In a way, his concept of human nature priortise freedom, but it was also fundamentally anti social. According to rousseau, it's almost society itself, social ties and obligations that are what oppress us fundamentally. The second every person isn't totally self sufficient, you are oppressed. From the moment it appeared advantageous to any one man to have enough provisions for two, equality disappeared. Property became indispensable,. vast forests became smiling fields, which man had to water with the sweat of his
The European Enlightenment was heavily influenced by Native American critiques of European culture.
That European intellectuals reacted against this by developing the theory of “stages of human progress” where we went from from egalitarian hunter-gatherers to pastoralists to farmers to market civilization.
That Jean-Jacques Rousseau synthesized the Native American critique and the stages of progress theory into a seemingly egalitarian critique of European social hierarchies which resigns us to accept hierarchy as the price of civilization.
That this synthesis was the birth of the “intellectual left”.
That the concept of human equality has no meaning and should be discarded [these guys *really* needed to listen to this podcast before writing this…]
Patreon: Help me make this podcast/channel all it can be, and help it be less torture and destructive for my income for me to produce these! They takes 2-6 weeks full time to put together during which time I’m not earning any money, so I need your help to continue!
Audio Podcast : click the link on your device to open the audio podcast in your mobile app, or else search for “worbs” on your podcast app. Full transcripts available on the episode pages.
