Modern anthropological research may be settling the great debate between the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes and the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Was the state of nature a “war of every man against every man” in which life was “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short,” as Hobbes wrote? Or did “savages” live in utopian bliss, thanks to “the tranquility of their passions and their ignorance of vice,” as Rousseau believed?
Thursday, May 23, 2013
Gee, What Do You Think?
Here's the question being undertaken by two recent scholarly books:
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1 comment:
I thought the great debate was Hobbes v Locke. I would position Mill, rather than Hobbes, across Rousseau.
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