Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Outside Reading)

January 31st, 2022

For my leadership elective class, we've been reading Jean-Jacques Rousseau and trying to understand how Rousseau was a leader during his lifetime. We've done this mainly be interacting directly with his writings like his Discourse on the Inequality of Man and Discourse on the Arts and Sciences. As most of us have probably read the Social Contract and learned that Rousseau thought that humans were inherently good, I think it is quite clear that his writings relate to our conversations about oral cultures.

In Rousseau's First Discourse, he talks about the idea that the arts and sciences have actually ruined society and that "natural man" was happier before these things entered his life. While he does not specifically reference the advent of writing, you can tell that he, at the very least, would consider members of oral cultures closer to natural man than those of written cultures. I think more specifically that Rousseau's ideas that are counter to the Enlightenment are interesting because he discusses the idea that it might not be the best thing to have a highly educated and literate society. Might people be happier without these things? It reminds me about some of the stories that we have heard where indigenous people are introduced to modern technology and pop culture and they are unable to maintain the traditions that they have had for hundreds of years.

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