display all the ideas for this combination of texts
16 ideas
| 19775 | People must be made dependent before they can be enslaved [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: It is impossible to enslave a man without having first put him in the position of being incapable of doing without another. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Part I) | |
| A reaction: Ah yes. The key to running a slave plantation is not the threat of violence, but control of the shelter and food supply. |
| 19784 | Enslaved peoples often boast of their condition, calling it a state of 'peace' [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: Enslaved peoples do nothing but boast of the peace and tranquillity they enjoy in their chains and they give the name 'peace' to the most miserable slavery. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Part II) | |
| A reaction: It seems to be a sad truth that enslaved peoples are less upset about their condition than outside observers are, especially in modern times, where slavery is usually deemed unacceptable. Slavery might be the best you can hope for. |
| 19785 | If the child of a slave woman is born a slave, then a man is not born a man [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: The jurists who have gravely pronounced that the child of a slave woman is born a slave, have decided, in other words, that a man is not born a man. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Part II) | |
| A reaction: The hidden premise of this enthymeme is that man is born free. A key issue of liberalism is the status of children. Are the children of religious believers automatically members of that sect? Can I be born a West Ham supporter? |
| 19746 | Like rich food, liberty can ruin people who are too weak to cope with it [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: Liberty is like those solid foods or full-bodied wines appropriate for strengthening robust constitutions that are used to them, but which overpower, ruin and intoxicate the weak and delicate who are not suited to them. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Intro letter) | |
| A reaction: Rousseau vision of a successful society involves robustly self-sufficient citizens (as in the American ideal), rather than people who are free, but easily led into dependence (in a 'nanny state'). |
| 19786 | Three stages of the state produce inequalities of wealth, power, and enslavement [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: Stage one gives law and property (producing inequalities of rich and poor), stage two gives a magistracy (producing weak and strong), and stage three is legitimate power becoming arbitrary (producing master and slave). | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Part II) | |
| A reaction: This is the final answer to the prize essay question (with Idea 19772). What a beautiful analysis - and he didn't even win the prize this time! |
| 19788 | The pleasure of wealth and power is largely seeing others deprived of them [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: If one sees a handful of powerful and rich men at the height of greatness and fortune while the mob grovels in obscurity and misery, it is because the former prize the things they enjoy only to the extent that the others are deprived of them. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Part II) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be an accurate picture of ancien régime France, and it still applies to modern plutocrats. The pleasure of a nice house is not that it is very good, but that it is better than other houses. Inequality gives a lot of pleasure! |
| 19777 | Persuading other people that some land was 'owned' was the beginning of society [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: The first person who, having enclosed a plot of land, took it into his head to say 'this is mine' and found people simple enough to believe him, was the true founder of civil society. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Part II) | |
| A reaction: A wonderful riposte to Locke, who thought political legitimacy was based on property! Locke is way too simplistic about whether someone has a true right to their property. Highy dubious claims become ossified after a generation or two. |
| 19782 | What else could property arise from, but the labour people add to it? [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: It is impossible to conceive of the idea of property arising from anything but manual labour, for it is not clear what man can add, beyond his own labour, in order to appropriate things he has not made. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Part II) | |
| A reaction: A thorough endorsement of Locke's labour theory of value. It is not clear to me why you have to 'add' something in order to achieve ownership. Don't you own firewood just by picking it up? Golfers give ownership of a lost ball to the first one to see it. |
| 19781 | Land cultivation led to a general right of ownership, administered justly [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: From the cultivation of land, there necessarily followed the division of land; and from property once recognised, the first rules of justice. For in order to render everyone what is his, it is necessary that everyone can have something. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Part II) | |
| A reaction: This looks rather obviously correct. You don't plant crops if you are not protected in your right to reap what you have sown, and you would expect to re-sow from the proceeds. Other people will want you to do this. |
| 19754 | If we have a natural right to property, what exactly does 'belonging to' mean? [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: Others have spoken of the natural right that everyone has to preserve what belongs to him, without explaining what they mean by 'belonging'. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Pref) | |
| A reaction: This is aimed at Locke. What Marxists will challenge is the legitimacy of property ownership, granted by patronage, enclosure, exploitation and conquest. These start as injustices, but that fades after a few generations. Locke has a labour-theory. |
| 19750 | Writers just propose natural law as the likely useful agreements among people [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: Writers begin by seeking the rules on which, for the common utility, it would be appropriate for men to agree among themselves; they then give the name of 'natural law' to these rules, with no other proof than their presumed good results. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Pref) | |
| A reaction: The arguments for natural law strike me as quite good, but pinning down its content looks incredibly elusive, and at the mercy of cultural influences. |
| 19770 | Primitive people simply redressed the evil caused by violence, without thought of punishing [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: More primitive men regarded the acts of violence that could befall them as an easily redressed evil and not as an offence that must be punished; they did not even dream of vengeance, except as a knee-jerk response. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Part I) | |
| A reaction: This may be Rousseau at his most optimistic, trying to deny a rather more aggressive streak in people, seen in children's playgrounds. |
| 19783 | A state of war remains after a conquest, if the losers don't accept the winners [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: The conqueror and conquered peoples always remain in a state of war with one another, unless the nation, returned to full liberty, were to choose voluntarily its conqueror as leader. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Part II) | |
| A reaction: Tricky if part of the conquered nation accepts the conqueror, and the other part doesn't, as in France in 1940. In a permanent conquest the state of war seems to fade away, as in England in 1066. |
| 11150 | It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain an idea without accepting it [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain an idea without accepting it. | |
| From: Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) | |
| A reaction: The epigraph on a David Chalmers website. A wonderful remark, and it should be on the wall of every beginners' philosophy class. However, while it is in the spirit of Aristotle, it appears to be a misattribution with no ancient provenance. |
| 3037 | Aristotle said the educated were superior to the uneducated as the living are to the dead [Aristotle, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle was asked how much educated men were superior to those uneducated; "As much," he said, "as the living are to the dead." | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 05.1.11 |
| 19753 | Both men and animals are sentient, which should give the latter the right not to be mistreated [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: Since being sentient is common to both animals and men, that should at least give the former the right not to be needlessly mistreated by the latter. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Pref) | |
| A reaction: This is why utilitarianism led to the founding of the RSPCA in Britain. There is a disturbing picture of people smashing up animals for fun, if they can only persuade themselves that the animals are not sentient. I've heard fishermen claim that. |