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Full Idea
Evidence confirms that the savage state is the youth of the world, and all subsequent progress has been in appearance so many steps toward the perfection of the individual, and in fact toward the decay of the species.
Gist of Idea
We seem to have made individual progress since savagery, but actually the species has decayed
Source
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Part II)
Book Ref
Rousseau,Jean-Jacques: 'The Basic Political Writings', ed/tr. Cress,Donald A. [Hackett 1987], p.65
A Reaction
This strikes me as an attack on the new rising philosophy of liberalism, and a plea for communitarianism. We should judge humanity as a whole, and not just look at some individual lives which seem to be going well.
| 19780 | We seem to have made individual progress since savagery, but actually the species has decayed [Rousseau] |
| 19839 | The flourishing of arts and letters is too much admired [Rousseau] |
| 14852 | Culture cannot do without passions and vices [Nietzsche] |
| 4495 | The high points of culture and civilization do not coincide [Nietzsche] |
| 20108 | Every culture loses its identity and power if it lacks a major myth [Nietzsche] |
| 20948 | Human cultures are organisms which grow, and then fade and die [Spengler, by Bowie] |
| 23846 | Culture is an instrument for creating an ongoing succession of teachers [Weil] |
| 23414 | Liberals say state intervention in culture restricts people's autonomy [Kymlicka] |
| 9600 | If languages are intertranslatable, and cognition is innate, then cultures are all similar [Williamson] |
| 15662 | The 'culture industry' is an advertisement for the way things are [Finlayson] |
| 20679 | We stabilise societies with dogmas, either of dubious science, or of non-scientific values [Harari] |
| 21432 | Culture is the struggle to agree what is normal [Gibson,A] |