June 28, 2006
Gratuitous Philosophy Posting
(Image lifted from Wikipedia.)
I see that today is the birthday of Jolly Jean-Jacques Rousseau (as Rumpole calls him), born this day in 1712.
Three things come to mind when I think of Rousseau:
First, for somebody with such a shockingly screwed up personal life, he seemed awfully assured in his belief that he could instruct others how to manage their own.
Second, all that blathering about "Noble Savages" is just so much nostalgie pour la boue, a nasty psychiatric condition tied to self-loathing. It's infuriating that so much of Western art, philosophy and politics should have been (and should continue to be) influenced by it.
Third, whenever somebody starts bloviating in earnest about the Perfectability of Mankind, it's time to run for it because a whole lot of people are going to wind up dead and a whole lot more are going to wish they were.
As you can tell, I'm no fan.
UPDATE: Speaking of my general hatred of Romanticism, a new exhibition is opening at the National Gallery in London. Entitled "Rebels and Martyrs," it explores "'the romantic myth of the genius suffering artist' that arose in the early 19th century and is still going strong 200 years later."
Indeed. And the exhibit notes how some artistes play it to the hilt:
For some artists, the pressure of being an outsider proved unbearable.The exhibition contains two works by Paul Gaughin and van Gogh, painted in the same year, in which each artist likens his own agonies to those of Jesus Christ. Gaughin's "Agony in the Garden" shows a suffering Christ with the artist's own features. In van Gogh's "Pieta After Delacroix," the pale, dead figure of Christ has the red hair and beard of the painter.
Whenever I think of Gaughin, I'm reminded of a cartoon I saw in the New Yorker years ago. It featured a couple of upscale power women in their late 40's looking at one of his paintings of Polynesian girls. One of the women is saying to the other one, "That goddam son of a bitch!" Heh.
As a matter of fact, I wouldn't mind seeing this exhibit myself. As I say, I disapprove of most notions of Romanticism reyther intensely, but it's still nonetheless interesting to see how they've developed.
Hey, lay off the Swiss. Although Rousseau is associated with the noble savage school of thought, the quote is from some one else.
I find him pretty tedious too. The romanticizing of primitive life is in stark contrast to Hobbes' more accurate description of life being nasty, brutish, and short.
Posted by: Pigilito at June 28, 2006 11:11 AMI heartily agree, although my reading of Rousseau doesn't have him as fond of human perfection as most of his followers are (the Lawgiver and several of his comments on the ability of man to accurately put aside his personal interest in discerning the General Will, etc). But I have to take into account the results of his thought and I find those results largely repugnant.
Also, hear that new book Rousseau's Dog is particularly good at showing him to be an utter jerk.
Thank you for your time.
Posted by: Misspent at June 28, 2006 11:33 AMHow can people romanticize any way of life that does not include indoor plumbing is beyond me.
Posted by: rbj at June 28, 2006 12:56 PMIf you haven't read Paul Johnson's Intellectuals, I highly recommend it. He starts off with a masterful takedown of Rousseau and then moves on show the essential idiocy of a dozen more of my least favorite intellectuals from the eighteenth century to the present.
Posted by: utron at June 28, 2006 01:04 PMAwww, Robbo, lay off the Romantics. They are what they are, and in that, they're fascinating. The Minneapolis Institute of Art hosted an exhibit of the Romantics a couple of years ago and some of the canvases were amazing. Some were tiny, but some took up entire walls, and the breadth was breathtaking. While this current exhibit at the National Gallery was undoubtedly put together by someone who's anti-war and bent on proving that art is important (!), that doesn't mean this is one more opportunity for you to throw the baby out with the bathwater when it comes to the Romantic Period. ;)
I've always found the Romantics' work fascinating for what they did to the human form to try and make it fit into their style requirements. Square peg into a round hole and all that. Take a look at the arms and in one particular Ingres one chick has a back that is simply not possible in human form. In some ways, one can trace Lara Croft right back to the Romantics. ;)
If nothing else, they gave us Impressionism, which I still love even if everyone else hates it nowadays. They're still much more beautiful than anything modernism has given us.
Posted by: Kathy at June 29, 2006 10:06 AM
Image courtesy of the lovely and talented 