Professor Griswold took us out for a free dinner at Chef Chang's. He told us that his father sold pots and pans, so did his grandfather. Today's our last class. In his closing remarks, Professor Griswold talked about love, self-sufficiency, self-dependence and dependence on other people, self-falsification, redemption (what are we redeeming ourselves from?), being esteemed by others and being estimable, the difference between pleasing others and being esteemed by others, two kinds of philosophers being philosophers of systems and philsophers of aporia, death, needs versus desires, an unending self-explication that is nonetheless open-ended, Rousseau's writing of paradoxes. Rousseau is full of paradoxes.
James, Andrew, Austin, Adriana, Ashish, Griswold, and I were on one table. Alex, Ben, Chrissy, Ryan, Hannah, Bonnie, and Matt were on the other table. James was the first person to speak to me. Adriana and I talked briefly about rabbits.
This is it. For April.
Isabella Tianzi Cai
PH412 Philosophy of the Enlightenment
April 27, 2009
After reading Emile Book V, I remain skeptical of Rousseau’s treatise on education because of the following reasons. Is a method as carefully modulated as his method absolutely needed for the education of a good man in society? I do not criticize his being methodological, but I would like to argue that in an interactive medium, people’s lives by and large rest on a few important decisions and perhaps some significant moments, both of which seem to come about by chance too. I suppose that among the readers of Emile, only a small number will truly understand Rousseau, so what if those who have not fully grasped Rousseau try to raise their children according to his advice? My understanding of what is natural, interestingly being informed by Rousseau in this case, warns me of trusting him completely. He may teach me how to think, but he cannot teach me what to think. Even if what I think turns out as what he would like me to think in the end, I shall not regret wasting the time to discover such truths. In addition, why does Rousseau write a book for the new-born? What happens to the corrupted souls in society? If after all the painstaking effort, Emile were to deviate from Rousseau’s intended path for him, would Rousseau disown Emile? I also cannot figure out why Rousseau did not raise his own children. Did he love them or hate them? Was he simply indifferent to them? While it is a wise choice to separate young Emile and Sophie for some years, nothing explains Rousseau and his children’s separation. If Rousseau is a proponent of individualism—as we can see, he wants Emile and Sophie to remain friends in their marriage, and each shall retain an independent mind—could he have favored an extreme form of individualism for his children? Lastly, I worry that Rousseau has not understood the relationship between his character and his philosophy after writing Confessions, so he can be said to have only touched on individualism. Here is a deconstructionist question: are not the past, the present, and the future personality-driven?
Isabella Tianzi Cai
PH412 Philosophy of the Enlightenment
April 27, 2009
After reading Emile Book V, I remain skeptical of Rousseau’s treatise on education because of the following reasons. Is a method as carefully modulated as his method absolutely needed for the education of a good man in society? I do not criticize his being methodological, but I would like to argue that in an interactive medium, people’s lives by and large rest on a few important decisions and perhaps some significant moments, both of which seem to come about by chance too. I suppose that among the readers of Emile, only a small number will truly understand Rousseau, so what if those who have not fully grasped Rousseau try to raise their children according to his advice? My understanding of what is natural, interestingly being informed by Rousseau in this case, warns me of trusting him completely. He may teach me how to think, but he cannot teach me what to think. Even if what I think turns out as what he would like me to think in the end, I shall not regret wasting the time to discover such truths. In addition, why does Rousseau write a book for the new-born? What happens to the corrupted souls in society? If after all the painstaking effort, Emile were to deviate from Rousseau’s intended path for him, would Rousseau disown Emile? I also cannot figure out why Rousseau did not raise his own children. Did he love them or hate them? Was he simply indifferent to them? While it is a wise choice to separate young Emile and Sophie for some years, nothing explains Rousseau and his children’s separation. If Rousseau is a proponent of individualism—as we can see, he wants Emile and Sophie to remain friends in their marriage, and each shall retain an independent mind—could he have favored an extreme form of individualism for his children? Lastly, I worry that Rousseau has not understood the relationship between his character and his philosophy after writing Confessions, so he can be said to have only touched on individualism. Here is a deconstructionist question: are not the past, the present, and the future personality-driven?
