Reviews for Discourse On The Sciences And Arts (First Discourse) And Polemics, Vol. 2

The average rating for Discourse On The Sciences And Arts (First Discourse) And Polemics, Vol. 2 based on 2 reviews is 2.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2013-08-08 00:00:00 Christina Rhodeback Unless you've studied Rousseau in college (and I didn't), you probably aren't prepared for what he has to say in his "Discourse on the Sciences and Arts." To put it mildly, good old Jean-Jacques probably wouldn't be a fan of GoodReads, and he definitely would look askance at the tremendous amount of time I've wasted this summer reading, thinking about my reading, and posting my thoughts on GoodReads. For a man thinking and writing at the height of the Enlightenment, Rousseau has little positive to say about either of these activities. I, on the other hand, not much interested in the ideology or morality expressed in religion, have labored for much of my life under the delusion that reading makes me a more thoughtful, more sensitive, more compassionate and ultimately a better person, enlightening my consciousness and freeing me from ignorance and bigotry, and by extension serving to make the world a better place as a whole. And I would expect that most of my friends on GoodReads would voice similar opinions. In general, the fine folks I've met on GoodReads find in literature a powerful force for expanding virtue and extending kindness and helping make our society a more just and equal place to live (well, if you discount all the mommy-porn out there...and, yeah, the creepy monster sex books, too, I guess). But here's what Rousseau has to say: The mind has its needs, just as the body does. The latter are the foundations of society; from the former emerge the pleasures of society. While government and laws take care of the security and the well being of men in groups, the sciences, letters, and the arts, less despotic and perhaps more powerful, spread garlands of flowers over the iron chains which weigh men down, snuffing out in them the feeling of that original liberty for which they appear to have been born, and make them love their slavery by turning them into what are called civilized people. Need has raised thrones; the sciences and the arts have strengthened them. You earthly powers, cherish talents and protect those who nurture them. Civilized people, cultivate them. Happy slaves, to them you owe that refined and delicate taste you take pride in, that softness of character and that urbanity of habits which make dealings among you so sociable and easy, in a word, the appearance of all the virtues without the possession of any. Ouch! So, according to Rousseau, for all the reading I've been doing this summer, I'm no better off than if I had stayed in bed all day. For Rousseau, all this so-called "enlightenment" is nothing more than a degradation in virtue as we strive to leave ignorance behind: There you see how luxury, dissolution, and slavery have in every age been the punishment for the arrogant efforts we have made in order to emerge from the happy ignorance where Eternal Wisdom had placed us. The thick veil with which she had covered all her operations seemed to provide a sufficient warning to us that we were not destined for vain researches. But have we known how to profit from any of her lessons? Have we neglected any with impunity? Peoples, know once and for all that nature wished to protect you from knowledge, just as a mother snatches away a dangerous weapon from the hands of her child, that all the secrets which she keeps hidden from you are so many evils she is defending you against, and that the difficulty you experience in educating yourselves is not the least of her benefits. Rousseau probably would equally disapprove of the amount of time I have wasted in bookstores (back when they existed in this fair land of ours) and libraries: When the Goths ravaged Greece, all the libraries were rescued from the flames only by the opinion spread by one of them that they should let their enemies have properties so suitable for turning them away from military exercise and for keeping them amused with sedentary and idle occupations. And remarkably, in his discourse he even comes out against the printing press: Considering the dreadful disorders which printing has already caused in Europe and judging the future by the progress which evil makes day by day, we can readily predict that sovereigns will not delay in taking as many pains to ban this terrible art from their states as they took to introduce it there. Rousseau looks back fondly to a time before mommy-porn and monsterotica: People had not yet invented the art of immortalizing the extravagances of the human mind. But thanks to typographic characters and the way we use them, the dangerous reveries of Hobbes and Spinoza will remain for ever. Go, you celebrated writings, which the ignorance and rustic nature of our fathers would have been incapable of, go down to our descendants with those even more dangerous writings which exude the corruption of morals in our century, and together carry into the centuries to come a faithful history of the progress and the advantages of our sciences and our arts. If they read you, you will not leave them in any perplexity about the question we are dealing with today. And unless they are more foolish than we are, they will lift their hands to heaven and will say in the bitterness of their hearts, "Almighty God, You who hold the minds of men in your hands, deliver us from the enlightenment and the fatal arts of our fathers, and give us back ignorance, innocence, and poverty, the only goods which can make our happiness and which are precious in Your sight." Whew...maybe you'd be tempted to think this is all quite ironic in a post-modern kind of funny way, but that's just because, like me, you're a happy slave luxuriating in your arrogant dissolution. Ah well, it makes me wonder how Rousseau managed to remain friends with Diderot (he of the Encyclopedia, which by definition is a mutant hybrid of the arts and sciences put into play by the terrible printing press for the purpose of systematically expanding knowledge), and what Rousseau would have to say about the hour I just wasted writing this review...

Review # 2 was written on 2015-07-21 00:00:00 Joseph Polansky I don't know how did he deserve the prize. The first Part of the discourse just talking like elderly people have nostalgia for the golden past comparison with misfortunes happening nowadays