Tuesday 8 February 2011

Semester 2, week 1 notes

  • Rousseau loved mountains and enjoyed walking. He lived on a Island close to Vienna, this was because his ideas were often controversial, so therefore he was often run out of towns.
  • Rousseau believed in nature and that civilisation had corrupted us. He believed we once were 'Natural', 'Free' people before there was civilisation.
  • He believed that people who were not from a civilisation were pure and innocent human beings. He thought that humans should be more like animals, because he thought that animals were innocent, pure and beautiful creatures.
  • He once came across the people of Tahiti and thought they were all happy, free people so he believed that people should be more like them.
  • One of his most popular quotes is ' Man is born free but everywhere is in chains '.
  • He believed that civilisation began when a man put down  his stick/fence and said 'this is my land'. He believed that what should of happened was that someone should of picked up that stick and said 'dont be stupid, this is not your land, this is our land'. 
  • He thought that babies were beautiful because they had not yet been tampered with by civilisation. He also thought that we could not go back into our purest form, which was in nature. 
  • He believed in a ' General Will ' were he thought that as long as everybody agreed on something, there would be no loss in freedom for anyone. 
  • Thought to be Rousseau
  • The dangers of the ' General Will ' is that if someone doesn't agree with it, then they will not be truly free in Rousseau's eyes.
  • The legacy of Rousseau was the Declaration of the rights of man and of the citizen, which was used at the end of the French Revolution.
  • Wordsworth said that the revolution seemed to bring Rousseau's idea of natural man to reality. This was the romantic movement in action.
  • Starting from 1972 the reign of terror began. In 1972 Paris was attacked by Prussia, which meant that the citizens of Paris were armed.
  • In 1973 the Guillotine was invented and it was thought that everybody should be executed the same way. So that year the King was executed by the Guillotine just like any normal citizen would be, whereas before the King would have been executed by Sword and normal citizens would have been executed in which ever way thought possible.
  • Mary Wollstonecraft believed that education was the key, she believed that there is nothing different between a man and a women when they are born. She believed that as long as women were educated , they could be equal to men. She admired and believed in John Locke's theory about human beings being born like a blank slate. She also had a love hate relationship with Rousseau..........

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