Friday, May 29, 2015

Rousseau on philosophers (including the common stereotype of Rousseau)

"Distrust those cosmopolitans who go to great lengths in their books to discover duties they do not deign to fulfill around them.  A philosopher loves the Tartars so as to be spared having to love his neighbors." -- p39, Emile, by Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

"General and abstract ideas are the source of men's greatest errors.  The jargon of metaphysics has never led us to discover a single truth, and it has filled philosophy with absurdities of which one is ashamed as soon as one has stripped them of their big words." -- p274, Emile.

No comments:

Post a Comment