|
What is the question that Rousseau is answering?
|
Has the restoration of the Sciences and Arts contributed to the purification of Morals, or to their corruption?
|
|
|
What is Rousseau's main answer to this question?
|
The advances haven’t made us better; they’ve contributed to corruption.
|
|
|
In what ways does Rousseau take this as a broad question?
|
Rousseau understands the impact of the arts and sciences on moral tastes, dispositions, judgments, conduct, characteristic of a community’s way of life. Rousseau understands arts and sciences broadly as well.
|
|
|
How is Rousseau's challenge controversial?
|
The widely held view is that these advancements have been enormously beneficial.
|
|
|
How does Hume view the ages of refinement?
|
Hume thinks the ages of refinement are the happiest and most virtuous, the advancements make people more sociable, and the advancements promote political liberty.
|
|
|
What is Rousseau's general characterization of virtue?
|
Virtue is strength and vigor.
|
|
|
What are some of the virtues that Rousseau lists?
|
magnanimity
equity (fairness)
temperance (regulation of appetites)
humanity (benevolence)
courage
patriotism
justice
wisdom
|
|
|
What are the martial virtues?
|
courage
vigor
discipline
fortitude
willingness to sacrifice for a greater cause
|
|
|
What two fundamental characteristics does a magnanimous person have?
|
1. Magnanimous person is not small-minded or petty. Petty person is going to have narrow interests and sympathies. Magnanimous person has more general scope of concern.
2. Magnanimous person is also not servile. He has a sense of dignity and self-worth, which is absent in the abject person.
|
|
|
What are some other virtues?
|
moderation
simplicity
condemns over-refinement or delicacy
|
|
|
What is a transparent person like?
|
A transparent person is one whose words and deeds matches underlying feelings.
|
|
|
What are some of the virtues of transparency?
|
truthfulness
honesty
forthrightness
directness
sincerity
|
|
|
What is civic virtue?
|
Civic virtue requires that we are willing to put public good ahead of individual/family good. Person also identifies own good as polity good.
|
|
|
What are some vices?
|
vices of opacity
immoderation or intemperance
vain curiosity
effeminate morals: enervation, cowardliness, softness, over-refinement or delicacy
lying
flattery
hatred
greed
|
|
|
What are the vices of opacity?
|
Opaque person’s words and deeds do not truthfully represent underlying feelings.
|
|
|
What are the three types of claims that Rousseau is making?
|
descriptive
causal
evaluative
|
|
|
What is Rousseau's descriptive claim?
|
Rousseau aims to be offering an accurate description of what society’s advancements are like. He's speaking about Parisian culture in the mid-1700s. By Rousseau’s standards, our present culture would be advanced in arts and sciences.
|
|
|
What is Rousseau's causal claim?
|
Advancements have caused/brought about features he’s just described. Rousseau is not claiming merely a correlation; there’s a causal relationship. He does believe advancements have at least been major cause of features.
|
|
|
What is Rousseau's evaluative claim?
|
Features described in causal claim are undesirable.
|
|
|
How do natural tendency and isolated cases relate?
|
Natural tendency is used to describe causal. Claim cannot be refuted simply by producing isolated cases where this natural tendency did not operate.
|
|
|
What is Rousseau's argument about advancements and rules?
|
Economic tasks become increasingly coordinated. Increased coordination between people must occur. In order to regulate coordination, emphasis on rules results.
|
|
|
Is this conformity to rules a good or bad thing?
|
Rousseau says it's a bad thing, but one could argue that conformity to rules is beneficial.
|
|
|
How could one respond to the features that Rousseau attributes to advanced societies?
|
One might argue some of the features Rousseau attributes to advance societies are inherent to all societies. Rousseau argues there’s lots of opacity in advance societies. One could say there’s opacity in all societies.
|
|
|
How could Rousseau respond to this?
|
He may claim that even if these things are inherent, advancements make these things worse.
|
|
|
What is a five step causal argument that Rousseau might have linking the advances to opacity?
|
1. The advances lead to increasingly more goods being available. This seems reasonable as societies advanced in science and technology are able to produce more goods.
2. As more goods become available, more people want them and come to need them. Something that begins as a luxury good becomes a necessity (air conditioners). More goods, more needs.
3. As we have more needs, we become more dependent on others. The more things you need, the more you are dependent on the people who provide them.
4. The more dependent we become on others, the more we need to secure their cooperation if we are to satisfy our new needs.
5. The more we need to secure other’s cooperation, the more emphasis there is going to be on putting the kind of face that will gain their cooperation. This more emphasis on appearance creates a tendency to be more opaque about feelings.
|
|
|
What is a causal argument linking advances to undermining civic virtue?
|
Civic virtue requires that we are willing to put public above private good and identify private good with public. In advanced societies, people tend not to fulfill civic duties like politics and defense. They tend to pay other people to do it for them, mercenaries and professional politicians. The advances lead people increasingly to pursue private fortunes and interests. As the private becomes more important in people’s lives, they increasingly disengage from civic life.
|
|
|
How does advances undermining civic virtue affect liberty?
|
For people to be free requires that they have civic virtue. Advancements cause people to pursue private interests. This causes them to disengage from public life, which endangers their freedom.
|
|
|
How far does Rousseau go when he condemns the arts and sciences?
|
Rousseau isn’t issuing a blanket condemnation of all arts and sciences. They can have some uses and do some good. Sciences have done more harm than good, but they aren’t completely rotten. He’s against a certain use of art, as in art to extol vice. This suggests a use of art to extol virtue. Additionally, Rousseau is against art for art sake. Where this means that art is not to be evaluated independently of its moral and social effects. One finding a piece of art pleasurable is not nearly as important as moral and social effects. Rousseau would condemn use of arts and sciences to stimulate and satisfy want for luxury goods or superfluities. Superfluities soon become need, and we become dependent. Rousseau is also against knowledge for knowledge sake. No use in piling up tidbits of knowledge; it’s bad. Education should be development of moral character rather than learning second languages that one will never use. There’s more important things you can be doing, like civic virtues.
|
|
|
What is Rousseau description of society that is advanced in arts and sciences?
|
In these advanced societies, people are going to have an increasingly large catalogue of needs and desires, emphasis on comfort and luxury. Tendency to intemperance, indulging one’s appetite. Our life will become softer. People will become less strong and vigorous. We’ll become more enervated. Less fortitude, courage. Decline in martial virtues. Less freedom, more dependency and servitude. Ascendancy of commercial values. Manners will come to replace morals. Forms of inequality.
|
|
|
What is Rousseau's thesis about advances bringing about acendency of commercial values?
|
Commercialization of relationships. Virtue will be sacrificed to becoming rich. People will be valued on productive and consumptive qualities rather than moral character.
|
|
|
What does Rousseau say about morals in an advanced society?
|
Manners will come to replace morals. Importance will be placed on manners. Social relations will be increasingly governed by insincerity (opacity). As we have increasing emphasis on conformity, there will be a constraining of people on people.
|
|
|
How will advances promote inequality?
|
Society will become unequal and hierarchical with competition and conflict of interest. Our motivation will become increasingly self-interested.
|
|
|
How can art be good?
|
The arts are bad for good societies and good for bad ones. They distract us from acting on our rotten characters (Clinton's evening basketball leauges).
|
|
|
What is Rousseau's thesis about advances and liberty?
|
Rousseau says advances are harmful to liberty. In order to understand this, we must explore his views on liberty, dependency, and need.
|
|
|
What does the crucial passage at page 159 say?
|
Increasing levels of dependency lead to increasing restrictions on freedom.
|
|
|
What does Rousseau understand by concept of liberty?
|
1. Liberty is not license (found in Locke as well).
2. Liberty consists in not being subject to somebody else’s arbitrary will or subjucting someone else to your arbitrary will.
3. Liberty is being subject to self-imposed law.
|
|
|
What is necessary for freedom?
|
1. No one can be above the law.
2. Something has to be true about substantive content of law.
3. Person must have legally enforceable rights to be protected against law.
|
|
|
Why is it that the rule of law is connected to freedom?
|
Laws protect people from the arbitrary will of others. It protects people from force and opinion. Laws provide some protection from the powerful to the powerless. Legally sanctioned protection against wills (bigotry).
|
|
|
Why can't anyone be above the law?
|
His actions have to be subject to legal control and restraint.
|
|
|
How can laws institutionalize injustice?
|
Rousseau’s not naively thinking that we are protected from power and prejudice when we’re in the scope of law. Laws can be used to institutionalize unfair relationships of power.
|
|
|
What is the phony social contract?
|
People agree to abide by laws because they think they will get rights.
|
|
|
What are ties of servitude based on?
|
dependency and needs
|
|
|
What are the two types of dependency in Rousseau?
|
material and psychological
|
|
|
What is material dependency?
|
We are heavily dependent on others to provide for food and clothing.
|
|
|
What is psychological dependency?
|
In this case, we depend on others for a sense of who we are/self-identity, self-worth. Opinion of other people toward us.
|
|
|
What is the causal chain explaining which things promote material dependency and why advances lead to our material dependency?
|
1. Advances makes available luxury goods. Luxury goods begin as convenience but degenerate into needs. If I need something, and you’re my supplier, I’m dependent on you.
2. With advanced societies, we have increasingly complicated economic tasks. Increasingly complicated economic tasks require the cooperation of many people to complete. Need for cooperation increases dependency on others.
3. Advances result in division of labor. Specialized labor requires need of other people.
|
|
|
What does Rousseau believe about psychological dependency in advanced societies?
|
He believes with the advances, our sense of self-worth becomes increasingly dependent on others.
|
|
|
How do power and reputation relate to advanced societies?
|
People pursue power and reputation in advanced societies. Part of the reason, power and reputation enable us to satisfy our needs. They are used as leverage, means to an end.
|
|
|
How do dependency and needs relate to servitude?
|
Dependency and needs are the soil in which servitude can flourish.
|
|
|
What is Rousseau's second most important claim?
|
Mankind is plastic and malleable.
|
|
