PHIL 101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Direct Democracy, La Nature

• School: Eastern Oregon University
• Department: Philosophy
• Course: PHIL 101
• Professor: Albert Smith

Document Summary

Already with his first work delivered to the dijon academy, the discours sur les arts et les. Sciences (1750), rousseau pointed out his fundamental disagreement with the enlightenment project, as understood by the en-cyclists and materialists of his time. He became one of the most determined critics of modern civilization, based on scientific and technological progress. ethical and humane. "our spirits have been corrupted as the arts and sciences have progressed. The sciences and arts are born of human vices (ambition, vanity, selfishness) and corrupt human nature, because they do not care about morality. One of rousseau"s strongest convictions was always the natural goodness of man; the human being is not by nature good, and only becomes bad through the intervention of culture, the arts and sciences, and especially political organization. Like hobbes, rousseau also presents us with a fictitious state of nature, as a total abstraction of society.