Why Rousseau was Wrong

Why Rousseau was Wrong PDF Author: Frances Ward
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1441115536
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 262

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Book Description
Why secular humanism leads to guilt, political correctness and fear of giving offence -- and how the Church can help.

Why Rousseau was Wrong

Why Rousseau was Wrong PDF Author: Frances Ward
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1441115536
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 262

Get Book Here

Book Description
Why secular humanism leads to guilt, political correctness and fear of giving offence -- and how the Church can help.

Why Rousseau was Wrong

Why Rousseau was Wrong PDF Author: Frances Ward
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1441167323
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 262

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Book Description
A significant and lively contribution to current debates about the role of religion in a society dominated by secular humanism. Post-Olympic Britain looks like a very different country from the brittle, post-riot Britain of 2011. However, despite the successes of 2012, Frances Ward argues that underlying tensions remain in our society because we have forgotten how to nurture belonging and trust. Tracing the origins of modern identity politics back to key Enlightenment thinkers, she offers an alternative model of citizenship to the excessive individualism of secular humanism. She examines the Church's role in shaping Western society in ways which are reflected in the Olympic spirit: belonging together (corporate rather than individualistic identity), about doing things as ends and not means (non-utilitarian, non-instrumental), and about developing character and virtue (rather than a sense of 'identity'). Writing in an accessible and engaging style, drawing on contemporary literature and particularly the work of Alexander McCall Smith and his fictional character Isabel Dalhousie, Ward explores ways in which twenty-first century society can be rebuilt and strengthened for the future.

Rousseau's Theory of Freedom

Rousseau's Theory of Freedom PDF Author: Matthew Simpson
Publisher: Continuum
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 144

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Book Description
Offers an interpretation of the theory of freedom in the Social Contract. The author gives a careful analysis of Rousseau's theory of the social pact, and then examines the kinds of freedom that it brings about, showing how Rousseau's individualist and collectivist aspects fit into a larger and logically coherent theory of human liberty.

Rousseau and Hobbes

Rousseau and Hobbes PDF Author: Robin Douglass
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191038024
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
Robin Douglass presents the first comprehensive study of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's engagement with Thomas Hobbes. He reconstructs the intellectual context of this engagement to reveal the deeply polemical character of Rousseau's critique of Hobbes and to show how Rousseau sought to expose that much modern natural law and doux commerce theory was, despite its protestations to the contrary, indebted to a Hobbesian account of human nature and the origins of society. Throughout the book Douglass explores the reasons why Rousseau both followed and departed from Hobbes in different places, while resisting the temptation to present him as either a straightforwardly Hobbesian or anti-Hobbesian thinker. On the one hand, Douglass reveals the extent to which Rousseau was occupied with problems of a fundamentally Hobbesian nature and the importance, to both thinkers, of appealing to the citizens' passions in order to secure political unity. On the other hand, Douglass argues that certain ideas at the heart of Rousseau's philosophy—free will and the natural goodness of man—were set out to distance him from positions associated with Hobbes. Douglass advances an original interpretation of Rousseau's political philosophy, emerging from this encounter with Hobbesian ideas, which focuses on the interrelated themes of nature, free will, and the passions. Douglass distances his interpretation from those who have read Rousseau as a proto-Kantian and instead argues that his vision of a well-ordered republic was based on cultivating man's naturally good passions to render the life of the virtuous citizen in accordance with nature.

Hypocrisy and the Philosophical Intentions of Rousseau

Hypocrisy and the Philosophical Intentions of Rousseau PDF Author: Matthew D. Mendham
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812297806
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
Why did Rousseau fail—often so ridiculously or grotesquely—to live up to his own principles? In one of the most notorious cases of hypocrisy in intellectual history, this champion of the joys of domestic life immediately rid himself of each of his five children, placing them in an orphans' home. He advocated profound devotion to republican civic life, and yet he habitually dodged opportunities for political engagement. Finally, despite an elevated ethics of social duty, he had a pattern of turning against his most intimate friends, and ultimately fled humanity and civilization as such. In Hypocrisy and the Philosophical Intentions of Rousseau, Matthew D. Mendham is the first to systematically analyze Rousseau's normative philosophy and self-portrayals in view of the yawning gap between them. He challenges recent approaches to "the Jean-Jacques problem," which tend either to dismiss his life or to downgrade his principles. Engaging in a comprehensive and penetrating analysis of Rousseau's works, including commonly neglected texts like his untranslated letters, Mendham reveals a figure who urgently sought to reconcile his life to his most elevated principles throughout the period of his main normative writings. But after the revelation of the secret about his children, and his disastrous stay in England, Rousseau began to shrink from the ambitious philosophical life to which he had previously aspired, newly driven to mitigate culpability for his discarded children, to a new quietism regarding civic engagement, and to a collapse of his sense of social duty. This book provides a moral biography in view of Rousseau's most controversial behaviors, as well as a preamble to future discussions of the spirit of his thought, positing a development more fundamental than the recent paradigms have allowed for.

A Discourse on Inequality

A Discourse on Inequality PDF Author: Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 150403547X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 89

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Book Description
A fascinating examination of the relationship between civilization and inequality from one of history’s greatest minds The first man to erect a fence around a piece of land and declare it his own founded civil society—and doomed mankind to millennia of war and famine. The dawn of modern civilization, argues Jean-Jacques Rousseau in this essential treatise on human nature, was also the beginning of inequality. One of the great thinkers of the Enlightenment, Rousseau based his work in compassion for his fellow man. The great crime of despotism, he believed, was the raising of the cruel above the weak. In this landmark text, he spells out the antidote for man’s ills: a compassionate revolution to pull up the fences and restore the balance of mankind. This ebook has been professionally proofread to ensure accuracy and readability on all devices.

The Reveries of the Solitary Walker

The Reveries of the Solitary Walker PDF Author: Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Publisher: Hackett Publishing
ISBN: 9780872201620
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
An exploration of the soul in the form of a final meditation on self-understanding and isolation.

Rousseau's Theodicy of Self-Love

Rousseau's Theodicy of Self-Love PDF Author: Frederick Neuhouser
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199542678
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
Jean-Jacques Rousseau revolutionized our understanding of ourselves with his brilliant investigation of amour propre: the passion that drives humans to seek the esteem, approval, admiration, or love - the recognition - of their fellow beings. Frederick Neuhouser traces the development of this key idea in modern thought.

The Social Contract, and Discourses

The Social Contract, and Discourses PDF Author: Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Publisher: J M Dent & Sons Limited
ISBN: 9780525026600
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 330

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Book Description
After an old university friend and fellow archeologist's murdered, forensic archeologist Ruth Galloway travels to Lancashire to examine the bones he found, which reveal a shocking fact about King Arthur, and discovers a campus living in fear of a sinister right-wing group called the White Hand.

Free to Learn

Free to Learn PDF Author: Peter Gray
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 0465037917
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 227

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Book Description
A leading expert in childhood development makes the case for why self-directed learning -- "unschooling" -- is the best way to get kids to learn. In Free to Learn, developmental psychologist Peter Gray argues that in order to foster children who will thrive in today's constantly changing world, we must entrust them to steer their own learning and development. Drawing on evidence from anthropology, psychology, and history, he demonstrates that free play is the primary means by which children learn to control their lives, solve problems, get along with peers, and become emotionally resilient. A brave, counterintuitive proposal for freeing our children from the shackles of the curiosity-killing institution we call school, Free to Learn suggests that it's time to stop asking what's wrong with our children, and start asking what's wrong with the system. It shows how we can act—both as parents and as members of society—to improve children's lives and to promote their happiness and learning.