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There is obviously still enough ego in America to claim that C. Rogers was the first to argue that men are fundamentally good. Frenchman Jean-Jacques Rousseau f
by mcbetz 12y ago
There is obviously still enough ego in America to claim that C. Rogers was the first to argue that men are fundamentally good. Frenchman Jean-Jacques Rousseau formulated that already in the 18th century in his "Second Discours" - Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discourse_on_Inequality http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discourse_on_Inequality)
- etqwzutewzu 12y agoRousseau was not French but Swiss. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Jacques_Rousseau http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Jacques_Rousseau
- mcbetz 12y agoRight, my bad. I got taken away by his name, location of death and which country he influenced the most.
- zem 12y agothis is a deeply ironic comment, seeing as how mencius instilled that idea into confucianism back in the 3rd century bc. (rousseau might have introduced the idea to western philosophical thought; i don't know very much about him.) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mencius http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mencius
- mcbetz 12y agoThanks for the addition, I have not heard about Mencius before but will certainly check him out. Surely the idea of goodness is older than Rouseau, yet his work is probably the beginning of a new stream in western philosophy.