Discourse on the Arts and Sciences

Civilization’s Degrading Effect on Man In The First and Second Discourses, Jean-Jacques Rousseau presents his argument that man’s progress has removed him from his natural state, and that this removal has been to his detriment. He asserts that vanity, avarice, and other sins are not part of this natural state, but rather products of the progression of the arts and sciences. Rousseau describes natural man as better than civilized man because, “His desires do not exceed his physical needs, the…

etc.). Osborn and Osborn (1997) define persuasion as “the art of convincing others to give favorable attention to our point of view” (p. 415). This definition gives us two components of persuasion, namely it acknowledges the artfulness of persuasion and delineates the ends of persuasion—to convince others to think favorably of our point of view. Specifically, Persuasive…

his Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts, Rousseau answers the question “Has the restoration of the sciences and the arts contributed to the purification of mores or to their corruption?” (Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts). He goes on to argue that the pursuit of science desensitized people to their natural, good state, and instead caused them to become slaves to meaningless burdens. Rousseau believed man was born inherently good, but by being introduced into society and the sciences,…

criticism was marked, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, by critics’ efforts to “undermine the text of colonial authority as well as to install a distance from the concepts of anticolonialist theory” (Parry, 2004: 67). It was referred to as ‘colonial discourse analysis’. Postcolonial criticism emerged with Edward W. Said’s Orientalism, it acquired the name ‘postcolonialism’ in the late 1980s. It is concerned with historical, political, cultural and textual outcomes of the encounter between the…

The medieval times was on its way to self-destruction when the rise of the Protestant rebellion and development of science came about. Along with Martin Luther and other revolutionaries, Rene Descartes challenge the church with his ideologies. Descartes legacy is the essential bias that allows the moral norms of the popular culture to continue. His pursuit to find certainty became the route of the modern rationalization of the people. At one point, society thought the earth was the center of…

individuality through fashion. However, our cultural discourse constitutes an image of our race. Therefore, as Kaiser (2012) asserts, are we just “subjected to labels and stereotypes” or do we have free will to navigate and differentiate ourselves from others? Bourdieu (1977) analyses this issue by defining the term ‘habitus’ from his perspective. He demonstrates the subject of how people naturally attach to this ‘social order’ through our cultural discourses of class, race and ethnicity.…

Death is not merely biological phenomena. Biology, medicine and its related disciplines studies death and dying scientifically. Social sciences like sociology or socio psychology and Human sciences like cultural anthropology, history, religious studies and literary theory investigates the death as a human phenomenon. Philosophical perspectives on death and dying are made up of some important categories borrowed from humanistic perspectives. (Pihlström, 2009: 278) This theme is willingly…

Rene Descartes’ Discourse on Method was written with the premise in mind that there is a sequential approach to guiding one’s reason in order to maximize certainty of knowledge and discovery. Using an autobiographical method, Descartes deliberately does not push his method upon the reader, nor frame it as the best and only method that exists. Using an explanatory model, and detailing his exact thought process throughout the Discourse, he allows the reader to follow him on his journey and decide…

In The Humanistic Tradition the author, Gloria Fiero presents Martin Luther as the voice of the religious reform movement against the abuses of the Church of Rome. Martin Luther's revolt against the church was an attempt to put an end to “the misery and wretchedness of Christendom” (Friero, Pg. 475). Hence he insisted that the way to find peace with God was through having heartful faith in God. Thus this idea contradicted some of the corrupt behaviors that the church was practicing such as…

appearances of intelligence and politeness. More so, we have become obsessed with the appearance of good. Rousseau blames this occurrence, at least partially, on the sciences and the arts. It does seem that there is an element of truth in this claim. While there is truth to claim perhaps in today’s society, it does not seem that knowledge and art have really made up all that lousy. As history has progressed, Rousseau repeatedly points out that when a culture was a simple culture, they were a…