Rousseau's Views Research Articles

ROUSSEAU AND HO CHI MINH'S VIEWS ON THE CONSTITUTIONAL AND LAWFUL STATE – FROM THEORY TO PRACTICE IN VIETNAM

Inheriting the humanistic and revolutionary spirit of the French Enlightenment, especially from Rousseau, in the twentieth century, President Ho Chi Minh, on the foundation of Marxism-Leninism, solved the problem of the liberated nation, human rights, and civil rights with realistic social revolutions, contributing to the common progress of humanity according to the ideals of freedom and equality for all people and peoples. The socialist state of Vietnam, from the first days of its founding, has been a constitutional and legal state in accordance with all principles of a legitimate state. Thanks to its legitimacy, the Vietnamese state had gained the strength and legitimacy needed in the struggle to protect national independence from hostile forces. Facing the requirements of socio-political reality, Vietnam, on the theoretical basis of Ho Chi Minh's thoughts, has made efforts to consolidate and perfect the state to ensure civil and human rights in the country, contributing to promoting peace, cooperation, and progress of the world. Researching a variety of thoughts from Rousseau's views on the legal and constitutional state to Ho Chi Minh's thoughts and drawing out the core values and orientations for building the administrative system in Vietnam today is the purpose of the article.<p> </p><p><strong> Article visualizations:</strong></p><p><img src="/-counters-/soc/0032/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /></p>

Dangerous or Goodly Passions: The Role of Emotion in Parliament and Politics

Dangerous or Goodly Passions: The Role of Emotion in Parliament and Politics

Rousseau's silence on trans‐Atlantic slavery: Philosophical implications

AbstractFor Jean‐Jacques Rousseau, freedom functions as a foundational value for his entire political philosophy. Parallel to this emphasis is his deep and abiding condemnation of “slavery”, at least the slavery that he claims marked the social existence of his European contemporaries living under unrepresentative monarchical systems. However, the striking aspect of Rousseau's work is his virtually complete silence concerning the institution of chattel slavery of his day. Despite his ubiquitous condemnation of the “slavery” of his “civilized” contemporaries, Rousseau wrote next to nothing about the actual enslavement of millions of people who pervaded the social landscape of the European–African–American triangle in the 18th century. In this paper, I trace out the various passages in Rousseau that could be seen as touching on the subject of contemporary slavery practices and show how very scant they were. I also discuss his views on the relation between climate, character, and persons' fitness for democratic forms of government (and hence freedom). I combine these points to draw particular lessons about the dangers of neglect and exclusion inherent in Rousseau's views of democratic freedom, suggesting how similar dangers lurk for contemporary visions of democracy inspired by his views.

Back to Nature: Sebuah Tinjauan Filosofis tentang Konsep Pendidikan Rousseau

Rousseau's fundamental views or assumptions which discuss anthropology and epistemology lead to how children learn. These assumptions on human nature are related to the rapid development of human civilization, especially in this modern era. The purpose of human life which was originally good is reduced only by various developments of civilization so that humans increasingly leave their integrity as humans who are free, autonomous, and of good nature. This fact made Rousseau aware that the culture which had been admired and proud of by many people in Europe was in fact not the pinnacle of human life but a reflection of the decay of civilization. Culture, art, and science, along with technology, seem to have destroyed humanity and have created unhealthy dependence and injustice. One of the philosophers who criticized the situation of human civilization and proposed a revolutionary educational system in the early modern era was Jean Jacques Rousseau. Emile is one of Rousseau's most revolutionary works on education. In his book, Emile, Rousseau puts his thoughts on education back to nature in the book. Rousseau's view of education is broken down by age group and emphasizes a return to nature. Emile, as the main character, grows up in accordance with natural conditions and learns by the Rousseau method which emphasizes learning according to development and natural inquiry processes. It aims to achieve fundamental changes in education to free the individual from the shackles of civilization. Civilization is not only detrimental to society; it also harms the individual. Education should encourage children's self-expression and development.

Zeal without Fanaticism: Jean-Jacques Rousseau on the Religion of the Citizen

AbstractJean-Jacques Rousseau is well known for his love of the ancients. His use of examples from Sparta and republican Rome emphasized what he found lacking in modern times. This article attempts to establish how Rousseau's views on the ancients are related to his religious-political thought, particularly as it relates to his description of citizen religion in the last chapter of the Social Contract. While Rousseau admired many aspects of citizen religion, he rejects it for two reasons: reasons of humanity in the Geneva Manuscript and reasons of self-interest in the Social Contract. This article attempts to understand how the two can be reconciled through the view of citizen religion's contribution to patriotism and fanaticism.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Adam Smith: A Philosophical Encounter by Charles L. Griswold

Reviewed by: Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Adam Smith: A Philosophical Encounter by Charles L. Griswold Lauren Kopajtic Charles L. Griswold. Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Adam Smith: A Philosophical Encounter. New York: Routledge, 2018. Pp. xxi + 275. Cloth, $78.36. In this intricate, careful, and compelling book, Griswold stages an extended encounter between two towering figures of Enlightenment thought: Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Adam Smith. While Rousseau and Smith were known to each other, they had nothing like the "encounter" that Rousseau and David Hume had, for example. Smith commented on Rousseau's views, particularly those found in the Discourse on the Origins of Inequality, in his 1756 "Letter to the Authors of the Edinburgh Review" as well as in his The Theory of Moral Sentiments, and Rousseau shows up in Smith's correspondence with Hume, but beyond that there was little actual interaction between the two philosophers. However, Griswold's work is not to focus on the history of a relationship but to show what can be learned about the respective views of Rousseau and Smith by bringing those views into sustained dialogue. More specifically, the main purpose of staging an encounter between Rousseau and Smith is to illuminate their respective views on what Griswold broadly calls "the question of the self." As Griswold elaborates, this question is itself a "complex web" composed of interlacing strands of thought on several topics: "what we are by nature (in particular whether sociability is natural or acquired), who we have become, whether we can know ourselves or each other, how best to articulate the human condition, what it would mean to be free, and whether there is anything that can be done to remedy our deeply imperfect, if not degraded condition" (xvii). Many of these questions are obvious ones to ask of Rousseau's writings, but one of the achievements of Griswold's book is to show just how aptly they are asked of Smith's writings as well. Building on his own excellent work on Smith in Adam Smith and the Virtues of Enlightenment, as well as the scholarship that book has helped to foster, Griswold shows that Smith was just as keenly interested as Rousseau in questions of the self, [End Page 819] self-knowledge, intersubjectivity, sociability, illusion, self-deception, and hypocrisy—despite taking often strikingly different positions on these questions and topics. This review cannot do justice to the intricate conversation Griswold stages between these two figures on these topics. In each of the five chapters, Griswold focuses on a strand in the complex of questions about the self, moving between the writings of Rousseau and Smith, and then concluding the chapter with a dialectical exchange that often moves beyond the published writings. The goal is not to answer a question or resolve a dispute, and there is no declared winner in the exchange. The goal is rather to deepen, explore, and complicate the question at hand. This lack of resolution may be unsatisfying to some readers, but it is both truer to the questions Griswold is examining, and more germane to a broader goal of the book. This broader goal, which begins to appear as the dialectic advances into further complexity, seems to be to provide a case study in how and why conflict and disagreement occur and continue. As Griswold reveals, Rousseau and Smith are not just in disagreement about substantive philosophical questions; they also disagree in large-scale metaphilosophical ways. Rousseau tends to think in "starkly binary terms"—seeing any opacity as utter impenetrability, and any artifice as total fabrication (254), whereas Smith tends to think in terms of spectra and degrees—looking for practical, commonsense, "good enough" solutions to real problems. But it is not clear how much more can be said to sharpen these metaphilosophical differences. Indeed, if Hume were asked to comment on these differences, he might say that Griswold has uncovered a temperamental and sentimental difference in the philosophies of Rousseau and Smith, where the differences in their respective views on "human life and … happiness" are best explained by the different sentiments of the sect to which each belongs (Hume, "The Epicurean," n. 1). What we might say, following Griswold's own comments...

J. J. Rousseau, Emile and Religious Education

J.J. Rousseau, thinker of the Age of Enlightenment, breaks a new ground in education with his work Emile. In his novel, Emile is the name of the child he has grown up imaginatively. Rousseau, describing Emile's life and his relationship with his instructor from birth to adolescence, discusses teacher-student relationship, and he defends that children are innate, pure and noble, and that they must be protected from the negative effects of society. This vision, called the return to nature and aiming to protect children from society's artificiality and self-esteem, is recognized as Naturalism in education world. The basic idea of this movement is that child development is carried out without undue interference and limitations. Parents and educators should be good observers, helpers for providing appropriate experiences, and should be in a position that allows children to grow according to their natural abilities. Rousseau, recommending Robinson Crusoe lifestyle, is opposed to compulsory and restricted education. Rousseau himself, who seems to have influenced many thinkers such as Daniel Defoe, Pestalozzi, Froebel, Dewey, Vygotsky and Piaget, has also been influenced by others. Emile is thought to have been influenced by the work Hayy Ibn Yaqzan written by Avicenna and Ibn Tufail centuries ago. Rousseau also mentions religious and moral education in his work. To him, it is more meaningful to teach children how to choose truthfully, how to choose by using their minds and experiences and to respect their free will, rather than giving them a religious education shaped and modified by society. Although it is not possible to practice today, important points to be taken into consideration in religious education draw attention. In our theoretical article, we have tried to investigate the still-influential Naturalism movement and Rousseau's views on religious-moral education, and contribute to the field. We aim to create an awareness of this subject which has not been researched by any independent study.

Rousseau's Views on Teaching

Contemporary critique of progressive education tends to lump Rousseau together with Pestalozzi, Froebe!, and A.S. Neill who advocate a noninterventionist role for the teacher in education. This paper argues that such an interpretation of Rousseau's views on the role of a teacher is mistaken. Rousseau's views on the teacher's role in education are not compatible with the conventional laissez-faire approach of child-centered education; his views are not that simplistic. Rather, they represent a sophisticated attempt to balance the requirements of freedom with the need for control in education.

Love, money and madness: Money in the economic philosophies of Adam Smith and Jean-Jacques Rousseau

In this paper, the economic philosophies of Adam Smith (1723–1790) and Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) are discussed, with special reference to their respective views on money. It is argued that self-love plays an important role in their philosophies of money. For Smith, self-love is the foundation of economic activity and a means to quantify exchange relations. Rousseau, in turn, rejects money because of the possibility that it may give rise to destructive and narcissistic forms of self-love—which he calls amour-propre. It seems that Smith's and Rousseau's views of money are in opposition to each other; however, both argue that their view of money becomes unsustainable, if not qualified, by the embedded tension present in self-love. For Smith, self-love must remain in tension with sympathy for the economy to function, as discussed in his Theory of Moral Sentiments. Rousseau concedes that in society both amour-propre and amour de soi (passionate, sacrificial love) are necessary. This tension introduces a moment of madness that may have important implications when contemporary philosophies of economics engage issues such as economic inequality and poverty.

“Like a Fanciful Kind ofHalfBeing”: Mary Wollstonecraft's Criticism of Jean‐Jacques Rousseau

The article investigates the philosophical foundations and details of Mary Wollstonecraft's criticism of Jean‐Jacques Rousseau's views on the education and nature of women. I argue that Wollstonecraft's criticism must not be understood as a constructionist critique of biological reductionism. The first section analyzes the differences between Wollstonecraft's and Rousseau's views on the possibility of a true civilization and shows how these differences connect to their respective conceptions of moral psychology. The section shows that Wollstonecraft's disagreement with Rousseau's views on women was rooted in a broad scope of philosophical disagreement. The second section focuses on Rousseau's concept of nature, and I argue that Rousseau was neither a biological determinist nor a functionalist who denied that nature had any normative significance. The section ends with a discussion of Wollstonecraft's criticism of Rousseau's application of the distinction between the natural and the artificial. The third section focuses on Wollstonecraft's critique of Rousseau's claim that there are different standards for the perfectibility of men and women. The article concludes with a critical discussion of the claim that Aristotle would have provided Wollstonecraft with the philosophical tools she needed for her criticism of Rousseau.

ROUSSEAU, HAPPINESS, AND THE ECONOMIC APPROACH TO EDUCATION

Since the 1960s, the influence of economic thought on education has been steadily increasing. Taking Jean‐Jacques Rousseau's educational thought as a point of departure, Tal Gilead critically inquires into the philosophical foundations of what can be termed the economic approach to education. Gilead's focus in this essay is on happiness and the role that education should play in promoting it. The first two parts of the essay provide an introduction to Rousseau's conception of happiness, followed by an examination of the economic approach to education and the notion of human capital. In the course of this discussion, Gilead shows that increasing happiness is one of the economic approach's major aims. In the third part of the essay, he uses Rousseau's views to interrogate significant aspects of the economic approach to education. He then continues by highlighting some of the educational implications that stem from Rousseau's critique. Gilead maintains that Rousseau's ideas can provide valuable suggestions regarding how education might contribute to the promotion of happiness. The article concludes by proposing that while Rousseau's ideas on the matter should not necessarily be embraced, contemporary policymakers can learn some important lessons from them.

Rousseau and the Love of Animals

This article examines Jean-Jacques Rousseau's views on the need for an ethical treatment of animals, placing them within the context of the early modern debate on this topic, and the tradition of "love of animals" known as "theriophily." It discusses the broad extent of Rousseau's views on this issue, and their importance, specifically because of his wide influence. However, an emphasis is put on the clear anthropocentric limits of Rousseau's sensitivity to animals, and of a similar limit discernible in the history of theriophilic attitudes toward animals in general.

Botanical exchanges: Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the Duchess of Portland

In 1766 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, in exile from France and Switzerland, came to England, where he made the acquaintance of Margaret Cavendish Harley Bentinck, Duchess of Portland. The two began to botanise together and to exchange letters about botany. These letters contain salient statements about Rousseau's views on natural theology, gardens, botanical texts and exotic botany. This exchange entailed not only discussions about plant identifications and other botanical matters, but most important, reciprocal gifts of books and specimens in the manner of gentlemanly scientific correspondence of the period. Rousseau volunteered his services as the Duchess's ‘herborist’ or plant collector, and collected specimens and seeds in her behalf; these were destined for her own extensive herbaria and other natural history collections. Rousseau, who elsewhere denied female talent for science, admired the Duchess's knowledge of natural history, acknowledging his own as inferior. Their correspondence ended when the Duchess sent him the Herbarium amboinense of Georg Rumpf (Rumphius), an important work of exotic botany. Rousseau considered exotic botany to be the antithesis of the domination-free nature from which he derived solace and inspiration.

Rousseau on Agenda-Setting and Majority Rule

This essay examines the tension between agenda-setting and majority rule in the writings of one of the earliest and most original theorists of participatory democracy, Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Exploring Rousseau's views on lawmaking and the complexities associated with legislative initiation, specifically, this essay challenges the notion that representatives or legislative experts in a democracy inevitably reduce popular participation to acclamation. Contrary to authors who believe that Rousseau surreptitiously devolves political power to an elected elite who predecide a legislative agenda for a passive majority to vote upon later, I argue that the philosopher delegates authority to initiate the laws to representatives without undermining either the sovereignty or the robustness of citizen self-rule. This argument reveals, in part, why contemporary participatory democracy is not inherently “immobile” owing to the self-reinforcing benefits of democratic participation within a well-balanced constitution.The author wishes to thank Mads Qvortrup, Benjamin Wong, and APSR's Reviewers.

Rousseau's Other Woman: Collette in Le devin du village

The life and work of Rousseau the musician and aesthetician has been forgely neglected in the debate about Rousseau's views on women. In this paper, I shall introduce a new text and a new female figure into the conversation: Collette, the shepherdess in Le devin du village, an opera written by Rousseau in 1752. We see an ambiguity in Collette—the text often expresses one view while the music expresses another. When we take Collette s music seriously the following picture emerges: the natural desire of women to be free, a fairly active female agency, an incipient rebellion against the social role of women, and a final acceptance of the role of wife. This view of Collette supports the thesis that for Rousseau women are not naturally subordinate to men but are taught to be subordinate because it is required for the maintenance of the patriarchal family, the cornerstone of civil society. We see many glimpses of Collette's true, unsocialized, nature, especially in the melodies she sings, it is in song, the first and hence most natural language of humans, that we see Collette's longing for freedom. But she ends by singing the praises of civil society, albeit a rural society, and thus implicitly accepting the subordination she is destined to suffer at Colins hands.

Rousseau's Other Woman: Collette in Le devin du village

The life and work of Rousseau the musician and aesthetician has been forgely neglected in the debate about Rousseau's views on women. In this paper, I shall introduce a new text and a new female figure into the conversation: Collette, the shepherdess in Le devin du village, an opera written by Rousseau in 1752. We see an ambiguity in Collette—the text often expresses one view while the music expresses another. When we take Collette s music seriously the following picture emerges: the natural desire of women to be free, a fairly active female agency, an incipient rebellion against the social role of women, and a final acceptance of the role of wife. This view of Collette supports the thesis that for Rousseau women are not naturally subordinate to men but are taught to be subordinate because it is required for the maintenance of the patriarchal family, the cornerstone of civil society. We see many glimpses of Collette's true, unsocialized, nature, especially in the melodies she sings, it is in song, the first and hence most natural language of humans, that we see Collette's longing for freedom. But she ends by singing the praises of civil society, albeit a rural society, and thus implicitly accepting the subordination she is destined to suffer at Colins hands.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau's views on adult education

Although Rousseau describes inEmile only his scheme for childhood education, he presents us in this work with some direct statements which can be applied to explain more fully the nature of adult education. The author surveys Rousseau's ideas on the role of the general will in adult educational philosophy, subject matter, methodology and negative education, as well as the relationships between the family, student, teacher, community and the state. He concludes that the modern Rousseau would not limit education to males and would recognize that the four Rousseauian periods of educational development — infancy, childhood, youngster, adolescence — is followed by a fifth: adulthood. Adult education is the logical continuation of the four previous phases. Throughout each phase education must permit intellectual and moral growth and always allow for creativity and diversity. Only then can adults become positive contributors to their society.

Changing Agendas

Changing Agendas Ruth B. Bottigheimer (bio) Engines of Instruction, Mischief, and Magic: Children's Literature in England from Its Beginnings to 1839, by Mary V. Jackson. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989. Frances Fairchild and Margery Meanwell inhabit the pages of Mary Jackson's study, along with Goody Two-Shoes and Primrose Prettyface. In prose with a bite, Jackson pithily characterizes authors of seventeenth- to early nineteenth-century English children's literature who, like Sarah Trimmer, viewed their world "through a lens ground between the stones of religious and social orthodoxy" (132). This observation follows from and is amply demonstrated by Jackson's thesis, that children's literature was rooted in the conditions and imperatives of the adult world, and its corollary, that children's literature was regarded as a tool to shape the young to the needs of the adult world (xi). Some years ago Geoffrey Summerfield's Fantasy and Reason: Children's Literature in the Eighteenth Century (University of Georgia Press, 1984) covered much the same ground. Summerfield's emphasis on the lives of children's literature authors complements Jackson's study, but his tone differs profoundly from Jackson's, for his work reflected and incorporated the newly awakened awareness of the 1970s about the socializing intent of children's literature, against which he reacted with acerbic criticism. Three major clusters of literature for children dominate Jackson's analysis: those works that express John Locke's vision of the child; those that incorporate Rousseau's views; and those occasioned by the French Revolution and Terror. At a stroke, Jackson suggests, John Locke's thoughts on human understanding erased original sin from the pedagogical imperative by declaring the child's mind to be a blank slate. Hard on its heels, charity and Sunday schools developed in England and introduced forms of reading material that incorporated and implicitly expounded Locke's vision of the growing child. In Jackson's view, Enlightenment concepts thus entered English awareness simultaneously from two directions: [End Page 162] from the top down via intellectuals and from the bottom up through children's literature, like that used in charity and Sunday schools. Effective agents of instruction, the schools of the Sunday School Movement had 23,421 pupils in 1,327 schools in 1723, numbers that continued to grow for the next eighty years. Enough has been written about Rousseau's Emile to last a lifetime, but far too little attention has been paid to his enraging creation Sophie, whose education was designed to produce the perfect wife for Emile. Jackson redresses that omission and in the process pinpoints the eighteenth-century moment in which children's literature became gender-specific. In an insightful discussion (96-99) of humor and irony, "license, freedom, an entitlement of sorts" (96), she concludes that girls were soon to lose this entitlement, as their idealized literary counterparts became the earthly angels their readers were supposed to imitate (139), in part, at least, modeling themselves on Rousseau's ideal, Sophie (149ff.). Not all doors closed on docile maidens, however, for society rewarded Sophie-clones with highborn husbands, at least in tales about Primrose Prettyface and her mid- to late-eighteenth-century English ilk. But the French Revolution and the Terror that followed put an end to plots with poor-but-worthy children rewarded with "estate and esteem," for an intractable conservatism within the middle classes produced a new literature for English children designed to maintain class distinctions and to restrain class crossovers like those that had benefited poor Primrose Prettyface. Charity and Sunday school education had fostered a "growing conviction of the rights of the individual among the lower-middle classes and artisans" (169), a conviction suddenly perceived as bloodily dangerous when tumbrels lumbered toward Parisian guillotines. Hence, from the 1790s onward, Jackson asserts, artists and literary figures joined the conservative middle classes and the recently liberal aristocracy in favoring a new direction for the content of children's books. "Many attitudes and ideals that had flourished in trade books during the freewheeling transitional years were now suspect as potential seeds of revolution. The books of Newbery and his colleagues from 1740 to 1765, and socioeconomic developments between 1750 and 1785, had...

The Failings of Rousseau's Ideals of Domesticity and Sensibility

ROUSSEAU'S VIEWS ON WOMEN have long been the subject of discussion and debate. All his major works deal in one way or another with the nature, role, and education of women and with the broader issues of sexual politics -the analysis of gender differences and of power relations between the sexes. The view of women that emerges from the study of Rousseau's writings is a complex and contradictory one, full of ambivalence and discontinuities. It is not surprising then that his views have given rise to widely divergent interpretations among both his contemporaries and our own. With the burgeoning of feminist literary and social criticism in the past two decades, Rousseau's sexual politics have become the subject of renewed interest and controversy. Although some critics consider Rousseau's views on women a particularly striking (and unambiguous) example of misogyny and paternalism,' other scholars have defended him against such charges, arguing that his views are con-

Rousseau, Antifeminism, and Woman's Nature

IN THE LAST DECADE, Rousseau's views on the natures and social roles of the sexes have attracted considerable attention. There is no disagreement in the literature over whether Rousseau educates the sexes to lead different lives. Women are to be confined to the private sphere, consumed with the duties of wife and mother, ever sensitive to the opinions and needs of others, and limited to indirect access to power. Men are trained in craft, taught to judge independently, prepared to be citizens and soldiers in participatory democracy, and allowed to express their thoughts and desires openly. Rousseau is clearly an advocate of sex roles, given that a role is ... an institutionalized sex role only if it is performed exclusively by persons of particular sex and societal factors tend to encourage this correlation.' No difference between people other than sex so completely determines how individuals will be educated in Rousseau's scheme. While it is obvious that Rousseau advocates traditional, radically sex-roled society, there has been much dispute about why he does so, for it seems to conflict with other parts of his philosophy. Some have held that Rousseau is simply and thoroughly inconsistent in educating women to be submissive and dependent, given his emphasis on the value and importance of equality, self-sufficiency, and freedom.2 It has been said that Rousseau's position is explained by his fear of women's power over men,3 that it reflects his belief in women's inferiority,4 and that it is simply sign of the times in which he wrote.5