[lit-ideas] Re: Giving Thanksgiving
- From: Eric Yost <mr.eric.yost@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 02 Dec 2010 02:54:42 -0500
On 12/1/2010 10:14 AM, Mike Geary wrote:
Who in the world takes the notion of the "Noble Savage" seriously?.... Who but
Rousseau believed that?
The Noble Savage is in the very air we breathe.
Adjust your wind chimes, align your power
crystals, light some incense, and prepare to go
back to Eden, away from all this Enlightenment
delusion.
First, I suppose, The French Revolution's radical
"Reign of Terror" was influence by JJR.
Then there's Dr. Francia in Paraguay ("El
Supremo"), who tried to set up a Rousseauian
utopia and thereby set the stage for the war that
destroyed his country (ask JLS).
Kant took him seriously, and many argue that Hegel
and Marx did too. JJR's ideas have been at the
base of many terrible political ideologies.
Popper--ask Donal--called Rousseau the "father of
totalitarianism," and Isaiah Berlin also thought
Rousseau was a jerk on that account.
Someone asked me to see Avatar when it opened and
I refused on the basis of yet-another-Noble-Savage
cliche from the mighty scriptwriters of LA.
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