Abstract
This article intends to expose how J.J. Rousseau, in his Emile, adopts the assumption that liberty is a natural given, thus something innate in men and intact in children. That being so, a pedagogue who wishes to educate starting from this assumption – that liberty is a natural given – and seeking for virtue would only find it much later, and perhaps only through artifices such as stating that it is God’s will that makes man virtuous. In doing so, even after convincing us that it is not possible to educate without reference to values accepted by one’s cultural tradition, Rousseau fails to show how cultural tradition is transmitted, or even how cultural tradition could be renovated and employed as basis for further development of cultural traditions. As an effect of this first rejection and future, late acceptance (and even during epochs posterior ethical transcendence), Rousseau established the separation between educational and cultural fields, a separation whose ultimate, broad implication is the commonly accepted idea of anticultural education along with child-centered education.
Highlights
The Singularity of RousseauRousseau’s name is often heard in discussions on account of his relevance in the gallery of men to whom Western societies pay reverence
Beyond the immediate finality of education – acquisition of knowledge and adaptation of the individual to society – the ultimate objective of education is liberty. This goal can be maintained as ultimate even in the context of an educational system whose authoritarian plan is sketched while bearing in mind the ultimate objective of producing liberty
While trying to understand Rousseau’s choice for domestic education, one should bear in mind that the thinker did not accept that private vices, emancipating themselves from moral, were the substance from which public prosperity would be obtained inside the universal war of all against all, nor that the ultimate effect of such war would be order instead of chaos or anarchy; instead, Rousseau was an adept of theories that attributed a fixed nature to man, not a malleable one
Summary
The Singularity of RousseauRousseau’s name is often heard in discussions on account of his relevance in the gallery of men to whom Western societies pay reverence.
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