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Effects of culture on society
Introduction jean jacques rousseau
Culture and its effects
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In his Discourse on the Arts and Sciences, philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau addresses a possibility seldom discussed by neither his predecessors nor contemporaries; the idea that arts and sciences have corrupted man. Prior to the introduction of the arts and sciences, man, in the State of Nature, was natural and easily identifiable. While human nature was still flawed, as has always been the case, there was a degree of security in knowing that a person’s character could be immediately seen and interpreted. Now, as a result of the influence of the arts, there exists a set of rules and behaviors, which serve only to deceive others from knowing a person’s true nature. As a result of this, society, which Rousseau refers to as a herd, are now bound by conformity to act similarly in certain situations.
Societal conformity, rather than change the hearts of men, serves only to conceal the true intentions of individuals. Without such authenticity, the vices of betrayal, fear and blasphemy, rather than appear at face value, remain hidden, yet ever present. Acting under the camouflage of honest sincerity, perpetrated by conformity, vices have effectively constrained morality to the point where a person’s actions and feelings are no longer one in the same. Rousseau has been so convinced of this correlation between advancement and depravity that he feels the corruption of humanity to be in direct proportion to its advancements of the arts and sciences. This bold claim, supported by the examples set by the fall of great empires such as Egypt, Greece, and Rome, reveals a curious tendency for great powers to succumb to debauchery and immorality.
Having thoroughly explained his belief that the arts and sciences led to corruption, and, subsequ...
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...st and Second Discourse together, it becomes apparent that Rousseau feels conformity, as established by the arts and sciences, can be more easily resisted in a democracy. A democratic state, allowing for, and nourishes, the notions of individuality, solidarity and hope, acts as an excellent counter to societal conformity. While certainly not immune to conformity, citizens of a democracy are at least granted the chance to challenge society, and thereby, preserve their individuality. Despite this freedom to do so, however, individuals often struggle to resist the conformity brought about by the arts and sciences.
Works Cited
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. "First Discourse." The First and Second Discourses. New York: St. Martin's, 1964. 39-40. Print.
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. "First Discourse." The First and Second Discourses. New York: St. Martin's, 1964. 48-50. Print.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau has been referred to as the father of the romanticism movement due to his philosophical writings challenging the status quo at the time. To help set the cultural scene surrounding him, he lived in Paris just prior to the French Revolution where turmoil was in the atmosphere. During this time in France’s history monarchs reigned, the Catholic Church was the leading religion, and those who were considered commoners were viewed as less than human. I believe Rousseau’s environment led him to ponder and write about assumptions regarding human nature, the government’s role in relation to humans, types of will people have, and educational methods. His works had some comparative and contrasting features
Shakespeare, William. "Hamlet." Madden, Frank. Exploring Literature. 4th ed. New York: Pearson Longman, 2009. Print 539-663
"Has the progress of the arts and sciences contributed more to the corruption or purification of morals?" Rousseau criticized social institutions for having corrupted the essential goodness of nature and the human heart. Rousseaue believed that by becoming "civilized", society has actually become worse because good people are made unhappy and are corrupted by their experiences in society.. He viewed society as "articficial" and "corrupt" and that the furthering of society results in the continuing unhappiness of man.
...eing mandated for protection. Rousseau’s conception of liberty is more dynamic. Starting from all humans being free, Rousseau conceives of the transition to civil society as the thorough enslavement of humans, with society acting as a corrupting force on Rousseau’s strong and independent natural man. Subsequently, Rousseau tries to reacquaint the individual with its lost freedom. The trajectory of Rousseau’s freedom is more compelling in that it challenges the static notion of freedom as a fixed concept. It perceives that inadvertently freedom can be transformed from perfectly available to largely unnoticeably deprived, and as something that changes and requires active attention to preserve. In this, Rousseau’s conception of liberty emerges as more compelling and interesting than Locke’s despite the Lockean interpretation dominating contemporary civil society.
In his “Discourse on the Origin and the Foundations of Inequality Among Mankind,” Jean-Jacque Rousseau attributes the foundation of moral inequalities, as a separate entity from the “natural” physical inequalities, which exist between only between men in a civilised society. Rousseau argues that the need to strive for excellence is one of man’s principle features and is responsible for the ills of society. This paper will argue that Rousseau is justified in his argument that the characteristic of perfectibility, as per his own definition, is the cause of the detriments in his civilised society.
SparkNotes: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778): The Social Contract. (n.d.). SparkNotes: Today's Most Popular Study Guides. Retrieved February 9, 2011, from http://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/rousseau/section2.rhtml
...ion with the general will. This may sound like a contradiction but, to Rousseau, the only way the body politic can function is by pursuing maximum cohesion of peoples while seeking maximum individuation. For Rousseau, like Marx, the solution to servitude is, in essence, the community itself.
The charge of sexism on Rousseau and the badge of feminism on Wollstonecraft render their arguments elusive, as if Rousseau wrote because he was a sexist and Wollstonecraft because she was a feminist, which is certainly not true. Their work evinced here by the authors questioned the state of man and woman in relation to their conception of what it should be, what its purpose, and what its true species. With an answer to these questions, one concludes the inhumanity of mankind in society, and the other the inhumanity of mankind in their natural, barbarous state. The one runs from society, to the comforts and direction of nature; the other away from nature, to the reason and virtue of society. The argument presented may be still elusive, and the work in vain, but the point not missed, perhaps.
Firstly, each individual should give themselves up unconditionally to the general cause of the state. Secondly, by doing so, all individuals and their possessions are protected, to the greatest extent possible by the republic or body politic. Lastly, all individuals should then act freely and of their own free will. Rousseau thinks th...
Montaigne, Michel de. The Complete Essays of Montaigne. Trans. DonaldM. Frame. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1958.
Shakespeare, William. “Hamlet.” The Norton Introduction to Literature. Ed. Kelly J. Mays. 11th ed. New York: Norton, 2013.1709-1804. Print.
Phelan, James. “The Concept of Voice, the Voices of Frederic Henry, and the Structure of A Farewell to Arms.” Oxford University Press. 10 (1991) 214-232.
...ieves that the knowledge is contributing to society. The scientist’s own drive to obtain knowledge versus the society’s need to obtain knowledge differ in the degree of limitations since the society’s moral judgments have more limiting factors on the methods to create the knowledge society demands rather than the artistic or scientific drive to obtain that knowledge.
Matthew Arnold’s Culture and Anarchy (1869) divulges into the concerns he has for the ‘moral and spiritual’ future of society, due to the pressures of the machines and therefore the essence of civilisation was declining. Arnold believed the ‘high cultured’ should be the ones to enforce idealism, to create “the best that has been thought and said in the world”. He saw culture as the strive to perfection and that due the popular culture rejecting this, there would be anarchy. In other words, ‘anarchy’ operates as a synonym for popular culture for Arnold. He believed that education from the elite would be the best pursuit for ‘perfection’ for the “raw and uncultivated”, because the masses wouldn’t know what’s good for them. Not only this but how mass society
Being that a human wants to be held in a higher esteem than another human in the same society, he also wants to be valued more, thus establishing inequality. At this point amour-de-soi is not entirely out of the picture but almost entirely obsolete. The place where humans went wrong, in terms of solidifying their own demise, is when they began to rely on each other, rather than rely on themselves for sustenance, the introduction of metallurgy and agriculture accentuates this. Once metallurgy and agriculture arise the small physical inequalities that were not a problem before are taken advantage of. A stronger person is able to plow and harvest the fields and therefore are more able to exponentially abuse their advantage over time. Now that humans are able to harvest land deduction leads humans to claim the lands as their own, thus the need for laws and justice. Progress and technology put some ahead of others and also creates divisions within a particular society. Harmful artificial inequalities follow from benign natural inequalities. Amour-propre’s role in founding inequality is solidified in the last part of Rousseau’s theory with the foundation of society. Because the rich have an illicit incentive to harm others, but have the most to lose from constant war, they are able to seduce the