Yet another selection from class. I wasn’t exactly looking forward to this one though the length was going to be a nice break compared to the rest of the reading list so I was actually pleasantly surprised when I read this. I think what little previous interactions I have had with Rousseau have involved his later work in which he comes off as a sexist, misogynistic ass that romanticizes nature and “man’s natural state” way too much. Imagine my surprise when in this, he states that men and women would have been the same in their natural state, and it was as early groups and societies formed that women took on their care giver roles. In fact, I know his later stuff is sexist so I’m not even sure how you can believe that naturally women are no different from men and yet view them as inferior and super feminine creatures later? I mean, yes, culture may have turned them into that, but the question is more how can you endorse that they should be that in your later writings?
http://notesfromtheofficersclub.blogspot.com/2014/03/book-24-discourse-on-inequality.html