Sir, – Vincent Browne (Opinion, June 27th) writes in praise of Jean-Jacques Rousseau; what next, Robespierre and the Terror?
Rousseau’s theories are very much a product of their time. They have little relevance in the modern world except as a historical footnote in the evolution of philosophical theory, a fact that Vincent Browne and Rousseau have in common. – Yours, etc,
Sir, – I find it inexplicable that someone like Vincent Browne can praise Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Opinion, June 27th). Rousseau’s views on women and the family were, even by 18th-century standards, reactionary. He praised as political and social models the militaristic slave-state of Sparta and the highly patriarchal and warlike Roman Republic. His political theory of sovereignty, and how to balance individual liberty with the collective good, was so convoluted as to be utterly unworkable. Moreover, even Rousseau himself admitted that his political ideal of participatory democracy would be viable, if at all, only in a small city-state; thus one fails to see the relevance of his philosophical mutterings to a modern nation-state.
All this of course is aside from Rousseau’s hypochondria, persecution complex, egotism, ingratitude, possible insanity, and horrible treatment of his family.
He is certainly not someone we should turn to for guidance, political or personal, in our current woes. – Yours, etc,