Jean Jacques Rousseau

Gebundenes Buch

On the Origin of Inequality

Beschreibung

If we look at human society with a calm and disinterested eye, it seems, at first, to show us only the violence of the powerful and the oppression of the weak. The mind is shocked at the cruelty of the one, or is induced to lament the blindness of the other... -from the Preface Are such concepts of race, class, and wealth inherent to the human condition, or are they results of the development of "civilization"? One of the most important thinkers of the Enlightenment, which laid the groundwork for the modern mind-set, argues that it is only with the creation of agriculture and urban society that inequalities formed. Controversy swirls around the text-some of today's thinkers continue to consider it profound; others contend that it relies on an unsupportable "noble savage" foundation. In either case, this 1752 is one of the greatest works of 18th-century philosophy. Swiss philosopher JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU (1712-1778) was a dramatic influence on the French revolution, 19th-century communism, and much modern political thought. His works include Discourse on the Arts and Sciences (1750), Discourse on Political Economy (1755), and The Social Contract, Or Principles of Political Right (1762).

Autor

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (28 June 1712 - 2 July 1778) was a Genevan philosopher, writer and composer. His political philosophy influenced the progress of the Enlightenment throughout Europe, as well as aspects of the French Revolution and the development of modern political, economic and educational thought. His Discourse on Inequality and The Social Contract are cornerstones in modern political and social thought. Rousseau's sentimental novel Julie, or the New Heloise (1761) was important to the development of preromanticism and romanticism in fiction.[2][3] His Emile, or On Education (1762) is an educational treatise on the place of the individual in society. Rousseau's autobiographical writings-the posthumously published Confessions (composed in 1769), which initiated the modern autobiography, and the unfinished Reveries of a Solitary Walker (composed 1776-1778)-exemplified the late-18th-century "Age of Sensibility", and featured an increased focus on subjectivity and introspection that later characterized modern writing. Rousseau befriended fellow philosophy writer Denis Diderot in 1742, and would later write about Diderot's romantic troubles in his Confessions. During the period of the French Revolution, Rousseau was the most popular of the philosophers among members of the Jacobin Club. He was interred as a national hero in the Panthéon in Paris, in 1794, 16 years after his death. Rousseau was born in Geneva, which was at the time a city-state and a Protestant associate of the Swiss Confederacy. Since 1536, Geneva had been a Huguenot republic and the seat of Calvinism. Five generations before Rousseau, his ancestor Didier, a bookseller who may have published Protestant tracts, had escaped persecution from French Catholics by fleeing to Geneva in 1549, where he became a wine merchant

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Cosimo Classics
• Seitenzahl: 100
• Erscheinungstermin: 1. November 2005
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 209mm x 132mm x 9mm
• Gewicht: 208g
• ISBN-13: 9781646797714
• ISBN-10: 164679771X
• Artikelnr.: 64673329