The following is, as always, just a
fancy selection of Rousseau quotes which I feel like commenting on… If the good
reader finds some of my comments weird, what else can you expect in the company
of Rousseau? ---
“Man is
born free, and everywhere he is in chains.”
This is
probably the most famous of all Rousseau’s phrases, and I already quoted it
before. Born free means to me being born with a free mind and a free will,
and somehow losing them both along the path of life.
“What
wisdom can you find that is greater than kindness?”
Rather
sentimental, but emotionally true: unconditional kindness is indeed the
greatest wisdom. It makes life worth living.
“I may
not be better than other people, but at least I am different.”
Being
different is a precious quality of human life, as long as it does not turn us
into grotesque freaks of nature… On the other hand, who is the judge of that?
“God
made me and broke the mold.”
This is a
repetition of sorts of the previous quote, but I cannot omit it, as it comes
frequently quoted without attribution.
“Nothing
is less in our power than the heart, and, far from commanding, we are forced to
obey it.”
This is a
variation of the familiar theme of passions being superior to reason.
“He who
is most slow in making a promise is the most faithful in performance of it.”
I am
tempted to parallel this with “easy come,
easy go, regarding broken promises.” A striking parallel!
“It is
too difficult to think nobly when one thinks only of earning a living.”
Brutal,
but true. Poverty is a foul social ill; no society that institutionalizes it
can think of itself as noble. On the
other hand, poverty may be an honest pledge of a philosopher, but in “normal” people
it coarsens the heart and leads to intense social conflicts. It is for this
reason in particular that I prefer the idea of socialism to the idea of
capitalism. Don’t get me wrong, the practice of socialism may have deep flaws,
but it is the socialist idea, not the capitalist idea, which betters the soul
of a nation.
“All of
my misfortunes come from having thought too well of my fellows.”
Most
excellent psychology! I can perfectly relate to this… Overestimating the
goodness of our fellows, we are bound to be visited by misfortune. On the other
hand, underestimating the occasional goodness of humanity, we are bound to have
no visitors at all, except natural ailments and eventually death…
“Liberty is obedience to the law which one has
laid down for oneself.”
This is
perhaps a very sensible definition of liberty: one either obeys the law or
starts a revolution, in which latter case Rousseau’s definition describes
sensible liberty the day after…
“The
world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless.”
Three
cheers for irrational creativity that breaks the bars of our rational prison
cells! No rationality can properly perceive the boundless, and it takes pure
and undiluted irrationality to have a clear sense of eternity.
“True
Christians are made to be slaves, and they know it and do not mind; this short
life counts for too little in their eyes.”
Come to think
of it, most people are slaves to something, there is no need to single out “true
Christians.” In fact, “true freedom” is the rarest of all commodities… On the
other hand…
So what
is America’s “freedom, freedom!”
sloganeering supposed to mean? That America is not a Christian nation? As if
her addiction to capitalism were not enough… Mind you, we are not talking about
the reality of freedom here, but about the perception of freedom as something good.
“I have
suffered too much in this world not to hope for another.”
Couldn’t
we rephrase this as : I have suffered too
much in this world to hope for another…? Suffering calls for eternal rest,
rather than for exchanging one world for another. “Tired with all this, for restful
death I cry…”
This is the end of this entry and
of the Rousseau series as a whole.
No comments:
Post a Comment