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0 pointslukeasrodgers5mo ago0 comments

Here are the article's main points, as I see them:

1. The "modern American self" is best defined by (the tension between) Franklin and Rousseau. 2. Rousseau believes X and Franklin believes Y. 3. "Modern America" (society? politics? government?) flip flops between these two, though they are "almost entirely incompatible". 4. The author claims one of them scales, and says he likes it.

I engage directly with claims 2 and 3.

I think 1 is another completely absurd simplification. I do not address it, or claim 4. I don't see how that constitutes lack of engagement or quibbling. Perhaps I could have written an essay refuting OP with many citations, but I don't think that level of work is required to constitute legitimate engagement.

I guess you're probably right that my comment is more shame than content, maybe 60/40 shame to content, I should have dialed that down a bit. Fwiw I think it's fine to be simple-minded and ignorant, I am both of those things about many topics, but then your writing and argumentation should reflect your lack of knowledge and certainty. OP's article is, otoh, full of hot air.

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getnormality5mo ago

Okay, so, leaving the shame thing behind us, the two gaps that I see:

1. If someone thinks the human self is essentially good and society makes it bad, they could still be concerned with how people can behave well in society. So the fact that Rousseau wrote about that in The Social Contract doesn't seem to contradict OP.

2. If it's possible to unite intent and action in a model of a good person, there could still be philosophies that are incompatible by virtue of how they overemphasize one or the other. So again, I don't see how this contradicts the OP.

I agree that the OP is probably full of hot air, but it's a common gloss on Rousseau I think. And definitely supported by the Discourse on Inequality, which says that people have good animal instincts, but their natural expression of these is inhibited by social constructs like language-based reasoning and property.

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