Silence.
I speak. The very act of speaking, the moment in which utterance occurs, signals the silence at hand. I speak. Silence can only be conveyed. Silence can never be experienced. Silence is the absence of all, even the void. This is silence. This, the blank space between the signs, the page on which the text […]
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Silence and Speech
This week, I’d like to talk about a chant–a little ear-worm, if you will–that has been embedded in my mind for decades. It’s an unpleasant puzzle why, when I’ve forgotten other arguably more useful and less damaging things, somehow I … Continue reading →
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I found the morals!
I found the morals!
“Morality began to be introduced into human actions…” (Rousseau 115)
Not that I wanted to focus on them in this post, but I find that Rousseau speaks more of morals than Hobbes did in Leviathan…
What most interested me in Rousseau was the concept of dependence. Rousseau treats dependence as an origin of inequality. Interesting things Rousseau says about dependence:
· Makes people weak – lose ability to defend oneself
· Leads to creation of family groups which become like little states (we all know how that turns out…)
· Leads to inequality as man begins to measure himself against others rather than himself
· Leads to unhappiness in the same manner
· Led to slavery
Since a child depends on his/her mother from birth, what does Rousseau then think of children?
Is there any sort of dependence which doesn’t lead to negative results, which Rousseau has overlooked?
To what extent is Rousseau’s view of dependence similar or different from Kant’s view of dependence?
The other thing I wish to speak of is Rousseau’s treatment of women. Although he speaks mostly of men, there are a few lines which indicate the respect he has for women, which is far different from Hobbes: “Lovable and virtuous women of Geneva – the destiny of your sex will always be to govern ours…It was this that women commanded at Sparta, and thus you deserve to command in Geneva.” (Rousseau 67)
Is Rousseau’s view of women consistent throughout his discourse?
How does the idea of women governing over men fit into Rousseau’s ideas on dependence?
The final thing I wish to note is a certain line on page 128 – near the end of Rousseau’s discourse: “The jurists who have solemnly affirmed that the child of a slave will be born a slave have decided, in other words, that a man will not be born a man.” (Rousseau 128)
This idea corresponds with my post on identity from a while back – this statement being about the extent to which family lines determine identity. The judge in the statement is of the mind that family determines identity to a great extent, but Rousseau seems to disagree – to have family be the sole determinant of identity and position is to dehumanize man. Interesting!
Where are the morals?
So I just finished reading from Hobbes. (I see why it’s called Leviathan now!) Although it was difficult to get past the first 40 pages of definitions, there were some things about what Hobbes had to say about commonwealths that struck me.
What most interested me is that Hobbes seems to argue that in the absence of commonwealth, concepts such as justice and the like don’t apply. Hobbes says: “Where there is no common power, there is no law, where no law, no injustice” It’s difficult to explain, but I find myself opposed to that assertion, as I find myself opposed to many other assertions made in the portion of the book that I’ve read.
I guess what I’m wondering is: where are the morals here?What role do morals play in determining justice? I find myself connecting justice and morals in a way that defines “justice” in a little bit of a different way that Hobbes does. I have a hard time separating morals from justice and/or injustice, whereas Hobbes treats them as entirely separate. If I was a wanderer, completely separate from any commonwealth, my actions, according to Hobbes, cannot be unjust, but I still feel as though I would view them as unjust due to morals.
One of the other things that struck me, is that Hobbes tends to see issues in black and white, so to speak. There’s either war or peace, justice or injustice, love or hate, honour or dishonour, etc. There seems to be no middle ground in such issues, which is not the way I’ve seen the world in my experience. I would tend to see a middle ground in a lot of these issues such as war and peace. So, in trying so hard to define the world, does Hobbes overlook a middle ground, or am I seeing a middle ground where it really doesn’t exist?
Is Hobbes writing as he does, and using the definitions he does only to describe concepts in relation to commonwealths, or is he trying to also describe the human condition? If so, is he doing it justice?
Berlioz and … Berlioz…
I apologize in advance for the music geekiness that is about to happen here… I will try to keep my fan-girling to a minimum I noticed that there are quite a few composers mentioned in The Master and Margarita … but I want to talk about BERLIOZ. Hector Berlioz was a French Romantic composer who […]
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Faustus, Freedom, Knowledge and Distraction
Continuing with my theme of alliterative titles, today I want to explore one of the tensions between the 1604 and 1616 editions of Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus. The introduction to our text tells us that there are two broad versions of … Continue reading →
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Doctor Faustus acted out!
Not satisfied with just READING Doctor Faustus?Sometimes, reading a play is just not the same as seeing it acted out.If you’re interested, here’s a link! It is quite well acted out, so check it out!http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9cPT-HH198g Continue reading →
Wade Davis Dreams from endangered cultures Ted Talks
This is Wade Davis whom I was talking about in class. The entire talk is phenomenal but if you want to skip to the part about language it’s at 3:20ish. Apparently Wade Davis is going to be teaching at UBC … Continue reading →
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Marcel Proust and Antigone
Greg – Antigone’s Claim reminded me of the French Author Marcel Proust (1871-1922) who wrote In Search of Lost Time. In that novel, Proust discussed gender roles. He is famous for saying that his favourite characteristic of a man is feminine characteristics, and his favourite characteristics of a female is male characteristics. As a “closet”-homosexual in a […]
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