Rousseau, La nueva Eloísa

[Arcadia]

why not Cándido, Las relaciones peligrosas or Romeo y Julieta??. This woman has a problem or something.

[Arcadia]

I was informed some days ago that the Rousseau-Voltaire relation was very conflictive but with no more details. I also found out that Eloísa is with H. I have to photocopy the book.

[Atit]

i'm just starting to get into rousseau, because of a freshman political philosophy class i loved. apparently he didn't always live as he preached? i was so inamored with him that he sent me from being a Epicurean to being a Rousseauian...if i were to have to defind myself. i know thats not cool in the bohemian world but it makes for intresting thoughts.

[e_dog]

Atit, (btw way, how is your name pronounced ... on second thought, leave us guessing)

what, for you, arew the essential features of Rouseau's political philosophy, that make you identify yourself as a follower of his philosophy.

likewise what about Epicurus did you like, and what made you reject it exactly?

interested.

[Atit]

so during a very impressionable time in my life i met two people with very intresting philosophies that i'd never heard of before...these two people were Lightningrod and a mentor of mine Ned. they both had this hardon for freedom...lol. i started thinking about how it made since, Ned use to say things like "do what feels good" and both Ned and Lightningrod talked about freedom to do what you wanted to when it didn't involve the direct harm of others, i had been thinking these kind of thoughts myself but had never met anyone who advocated them so fervently as Lightningrod and Ned. they were both products of they're generation. i was also starting to read about the Beat Generation and that sort of wild freeness, i'll do what i please sort of thing really was entreging to me. i was living in sort of an opressive world, my mom didn't get me because of dyslexia and she was very strict and i felt like i had no community....Ned, Lightningrod, litkicks and the beats gave me this feeling of community. then there was this project i did on epicurious...he beleived that people would naturally make the right decisions based on doing what felt good...mixed in with moderation. this faith in people combined with what i had been hearing about freedom from my community lead me to really think epicureans were thinking the right way. also, i should tell you, when i get into something, i really get into it...its the whole searching for community thing.

so i went to college practicly a full blown social libertarian, due to my influences. i read parts of the Essential Roussea and i thought, i want to apply this to my life and film. i was working with people who wanted to be in the film industry and they beleived in structure and one director. the whole industry is set up so hierarchial and i hated that. rousseau was all about forming community and making people feel like they were equal. he was different from epicureanism as i understood it. epicureans assumed everything would fall in place, rousseau made me feel like people should want to work to make things the way they should be, not out of some sort of sence of duty (i've never beleived in a sence of duty) but out of understanding and the idea that man...goddamnit what is it called man in the begining was not as locke pictured it, people fighting and not working together...but working together, otherwise we wouldn't be able to survive. i like rousseau because there is no sence of duty like your suppose to do this because god says so or because the masses might rebel...like Machievelli implied...but you did it because of some sort of empathy or because you understood and wanted to...rousseau belevied in love and sometimes i get the feeling the other philosophers didn't beleive that love should be a valid motivation for doing things.

[e_dog]

beware the Janus-face of libertarianism.

the great equivocation of liberty is the selling point for right and left alike, in false comraderie.

you're warned.

[Atit]

yeah that was my problem...is my problem. during the election, i was friends with this guy, Colin...he was a libertarian, voted that way...lived that way. i couldn't stand some of his points though and the reasons behind them. i started seeing him as a bit of a raceist among other things. he wanted Bush to win over Kerry, even though he voted libertarian. it got me thinking, i mean social libertarians wouldn't have social programs that were government funded, it would be up to the people...but the people should be able to do that on there own, but lets face it with todays values a lot of them don't donate to privatly owned orginizations so i'm at a loss of what to think. in one since i think people should govern themselves but in another sence i know i wouldn't like the way they would govern themselves if they had a chance...what with today's values and all...which is why i think Rousseau encouraged good education from a very early age. but isn't that the epitomy of brain wash? then you get into the question of where ideas come from which brings me back to wondering if there is a right and a wrong...and then i get stuck in the same confusion all over again...wether i should go about my buisness like an epicurean, doing what feels good, in moderation, or whether i should create community and help people?