display all the ideas for this combination of texts
2 ideas
| 19787 | People accept the right to be commanded, because they themselves wish to command [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: Citizens allow themselves to be oppressed only insofar as they are driven by blind ambition; ...they consent to wear chains in order to be able to give them in turn to others. It is difficult to reduce to obedience someone who does not wish to command. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Part II) | |
| A reaction: Beautiful. This produces what I call the 'military model of management', where people love tree diagrams showing chains of command, and their place in the hierarchy. Life becomes 'either give orders, or obey'. I like democratic teams. |
| 19780 | We seem to have made individual progress since savagery, but actually the species has decayed [Rousseau] |
| 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. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Part II) | |
| 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. |