Lady B, amoeba, bull elephants,& the bourgeois Illusion was Re: Catherine,can't you read? was Re: No Sex Please - We'rePost-Human!

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Sat Feb 17 07:49:47 PST 2001


Chris Brooke wrote:
>
> >> in what way does that dependence 'define us as human'?
> >
> >Read Rousseau, _discourse on inequality_. I dont
> >think your vision of us all living likebull elephants
> >in lordly isolation is very attractive.
>
> Does Rousseau think mutual dependence "defines us as human"?

I mostly agree with you. The _discourse_ is a rich & complex (but also not wholly coherent) work. And the whole work radically qualifies the fragments I have in mind. But those fragments do also image very sharply what Caudwell called the bourgeois illusion. E.g., ". . .the simple, unchanging and solitary way of life that nature ordained for us." Whatever rousseau himself meant by this, however it fits into _his_ thought, it states the implicit premise of both left & right libertatianism. Caudwell is extremely good on this.

Carrol



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