2014-07-07
19 分钟This is philosophy bites with me, Nigel.
Warburton, and me, David Edmonds.
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The 18th century thinker Jean Jacques Rousseau was many political theorist, educationist, botanist, composer, novelist, autobiographer, polemicist and recluse.
But he was, perhaps above all, a psychologist.
Chris Bertram is a Rousseau scholar at Bristol University.
Chris Bertram, welcome to philosophy bites.
Hi.
The topic we're going to focus on is Rousseau's moral psychology.
Now, just before we get on to the moral psychology, could you say a little bit about who Rousseau was?
Yeah.
Rousseau is an 18th century philosopher, but also a composer writer of novels, in fact, an all round intellectual.
He came from Geneva, born there in 1712.
He really came to prominence in middle age as an autodidact in the paris of the salons in the 1750s.
And he's famous now for a series of the social contract discourse on inequality.
Emile, which is a work of political philosophy.
He wrote a novel called Julie, and at the time, it was a tremendously exciting and semi erotic treatment of human relationships.
You read it today, it's a little bit boring, I'm afraid, but yes, his novel captivated an entire generation of the french aristocracy.