Take a photo of a barcode or cover
A review by shanehawk
Emile by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
3.0
Rousseau was a unique Enlightenment philosopher in that he was of the artisan class within the Old Regime's Third Estate hierarchy. Most philosophers were of a much higher class like Voltaire. He also went against the grain by questioning whether knowledge and reason were pertinent--he thought reason could pervert thinking, it was the enemy of virtue. This was entirely against canonical Enlightenment ideas. He also argued education caused people to become more immoral which led to a life of luxury, selfishness and corruption. He stressed men should live in their "natural" world instead of the "artificial" world of the most educated and cultured societies. Rosseau greatly admired the Native Americans and thought they were the most natural and good.
Emile is both somewhat of a treatise and a novel and deals with a number of subjects, but the most talked about have to be education and women.
Rousseau said children were corrupted. He disapproved of children being raised solely by servants and this included swaddling, overprotection, breastfeeding, etc. Rousseau broke down the stages of human life into a few categories each with a different type of education. This was radical in the 17th century because children were mainly just taught memorization with no questions allowed and treated as adults in the classrooms.
Women will read the tail end of this book and think Rousseau was a sexist pig. He criticized women for not raising their children the way he describes. A fun fact is this philosopher, keen on treating children right and raising them to be good people, had four children of his own and put them all up for adoption. He also believed men were more physically strong and capable than women, a traditional view. Men only needed women because they desired them, meanwhile, women both needed and desired men to live. We castigate Islam culture today for treating women as subservient to men, but Rousseau and traditionalists of the religious type believed this to be the way of life as well. Despite some questionable views, Rousseau is not a believer that men were simply superior than women. He was more of a Cartesian feminist which was novel back then. As he grew older he espoused more traditional views however.
Overall, this was a pleasant read for my Enlightenment class. 3.5/5
Emile is both somewhat of a treatise and a novel and deals with a number of subjects, but the most talked about have to be education and women.
Rousseau said children were corrupted. He disapproved of children being raised solely by servants and this included swaddling, overprotection, breastfeeding, etc. Rousseau broke down the stages of human life into a few categories each with a different type of education. This was radical in the 17th century because children were mainly just taught memorization with no questions allowed and treated as adults in the classrooms.
Women will read the tail end of this book and think Rousseau was a sexist pig. He criticized women for not raising their children the way he describes. A fun fact is this philosopher, keen on treating children right and raising them to be good people, had four children of his own and put them all up for adoption. He also believed men were more physically strong and capable than women, a traditional view. Men only needed women because they desired them, meanwhile, women both needed and desired men to live. We castigate Islam culture today for treating women as subservient to men, but Rousseau and traditionalists of the religious type believed this to be the way of life as well. Despite some questionable views, Rousseau is not a believer that men were simply superior than women. He was more of a Cartesian feminist which was novel back then. As he grew older he espoused more traditional views however.
Overall, this was a pleasant read for my Enlightenment class. 3.5/5