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Pill Pod 126 - Based Rousseau (Patreon)

Published:
2023-06-09 14:07:36
Imported:
2026-06
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Content

One of those guys we rarely think about but who single-handedly pulled the track lever in the history of philosophy, it's Rousseau. We read Discourse on the Origin of Inequality this week and appraised its significance. 

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Comments

EeeW

One of the key points of the early chapters of Dawn of Everything is pointing out the fact that Rousseau and many enlightenment thinkers were reacting to the consistent and coherent critic of European society by North American Indigenous thinkers. Without Kondiaronk there would be no Rousseau. A major point of the Davids' book is that while Rousseau describes the fall from grace to be an inevitable consequence of the development of human society, it's not inevitable. Framing it as inevitable is a European attempt to recuperate the Indigenous critic.

EeeW
>>110367338

Also, the obvious example of adjective order is a red big ball. That obviously sounds strange to any native speaker. We all know it's a big red ball.

Nathan Blazina

When the fires happened here in good ol Alberta, the sky had an orange tint for a while.

Qoheleth

“fat” and “ugly” are both opinions so I don’t think it matters which is first lol

Qoheleth

looking forward to the Dawn of Everything coverage. Heard there was some debate about their coverage of things in the book by others in anthropology. Not necessarily the anti hierarchy stuff. But the channel “What is Politics” talked about it

Ashley H

I'm pretty sure I've heard of the adjective order fact. I think sometimes I'll be thinking of adjectives on the spot and they sound out of order after I get the whole sentence out, and then I repeat it in a way that feels better. Also please play the neologism game again.

Akepa

Omg the adjective order is my favorite way to slightly mess with people 😂 Easiest in smaller examples: Dirty old bird vs old dirty bird 😛

Isaac Suárez

I like Rousseau. I think the notion that he should be banished from our political theory for being a “totalitarian” has deeply impoverished post Cold War political theory. Isaiah Berlin in this, as in so many other instances, has made us all dumber through his erudition lol.

hoppi

I love how pills is like "this is mindblowing" and 100% of the rest of the podcast has their mind not blown - with the longest breaks in between interactions this format hast seen so far

anacidcommie
>>110386584

Fat is not an opinion. Even fat activist types will identify as different kinds of fat as an objective, physical aspect of themselves.

anacidcommie

First I was like "Pills simping for a humanist, Enlightenment philosopher, really?" But yeah, considering his influence on Marx and critical theory, that anti-modernist stance before the French revolution, the influence you can see on the German Romantics, psychoanalysis, etc is definitely more than enough to make him based. Erik is judging him way too harshly with a contemporary lens here. I don't get the desire for "right wing intellectuals" tho. By definition, they are ideologues who are appealing to tradition based on nostalgia, feels and especially the preservation of existing power structures. You can't take anyone who says the French Revolution was a disaster seriously in terms of their political opinions, especially if in the same breath they're going to go on about individual freedom. Like, sure the revolution wasn't perfect, but considering what they were trying to do and how France became beset on all sides by armies of monarchies realising the danger a Republican France posed by its very existence, the paranoia and subsequent Terror, while excessive, was understandable. Anyway, it's like Marx said, we make no excuses for the terror, and despite how LARPy it is to say today, he was right about it. Revolution will never be peaceful and you have to can't expect the implosion of a society-wide superego to not have excessively violent consequences.

Joe Green
>>110390687

Oh man, I watched the first three episodes of that critique. He does that internet thing of substituting snark and smugness for actually making an argument. I would say that over the course of three hours (so far) he's made a handful of useful points, but also they're points Wengrow has addressed directly or tangentially in various interviews. Overall, though, Wengrow (and Graeber in the actual book) admits that they are not claiming to have gotten everything factually right, but primarily attempting to poke enough holes in the narrative to get us thinking more creatively about how to solve our problems. Essentially that their conclusions may not be 100-percernt correct, but their conclusions are enough to prove that the traditional interpretations are not 100-percent correct- either. Of course, anyone with a Marxist bent is always going to have an issue with Graeber, though.

Qoheleth
>>110386584

then “ugly” must be objective as well since it has been found certain facial features are typically viewed more aesthetically pleasing than others. Maybe at some point people with those facial features will triumphantly take on the label of “ugly” as an objective physical aspect of themselves

Joe Green

Can't wait for you guys to delve into The Dawn of Everything. It's an interesting book that has gotten a lot of interesting responses. It's far too long and dense for any true right winger to read, let alone think about. So most of the serious critiques have been from "the left." Which is notable, because the core thesis of the book is that we can and should be more creative in how we think about addressing the problems of society. But many leftists have responded to that fairly benign and obvious point by crying out nonsequiters like, "BUT THERE ARE EGALITARIAN HUNTER GATHER SOCIETIES." My best guess is they don't like that core idea, because they're still stuck on nearly 200 year old solutions that haven't worked all that well. On one youtube channel, the talking head even says that the ideas in the book are indicative of the failures of the Occupy movement. But the book was written clearly, in part, as an attempt to process and cope with the failures of Occupy. The problem with Occupy was that it wasn't creative enough. It still relied on many of the old assumptions the boom is attempting to question. Anyhow, Graeber's not really a critical theorist or a philosopher, so we'll see how well he comes out of y'all's discussion.

Qoheleth
>>110390687

thank you for the thought out reply. I don’t have my mind wrapped around all the details yet but that makes sense

Waya Dalimber
>>110367338

Can you recommend some more readings on early American Indigenous thinkers critiques of European society?

EeeW
>>110367338

The Dawn of Everything is really my first exposure to this historical fact. I would recommend reading the early chapters of that where they talk about it and then taking a look at the stuff they cite.

Zachary Manenti

Pol Pot ( mass murderer leader of Cambodia) was a ‘ Rousseauian’ . Applied Rousseau. Maybe why everybody dropped J-J. R after those revelations? Also Pils! Doesn’t Derrida do a substantial critique/deconstruction of Rousseau? Would be v interesting in context. Also Derridean Avital Ronell also does a Decon of Rousseau. I’m w Eric and Victor overall… but the decon of R is most interesting bc its neither a right or wrong good or bad Rousseau. go for it! IMO Allan Bloom was one of the early symptoms of the kind of right wing internet philosophy we have today. He kinda paved the road ‘intellectually.’ Agree he was more erudite than the autodidactic idiots, but ultimately just another (neurotically insecure… adjective order?) conservative fantasizing about a time that never, and will never, exist, as if it did. But he helped weaponize the intellectual conservatism that feeds the moronic Lindsay Graham types et al of today. P.s. Eric quotes R: ‘we desire knowledge only bc we wish to enjoy’. I think Victor was onto something in bringing up Lacan. And might not ‘the passions’ be a stand in for Desire? There is a Hobbesian aspect of Lacan too arguably…to come to terms w human dissatisfaction…. Also, i think the gist of a deconstruction of J-J R is that despite his claiming ‘the savage ‘ is better, clearly he himself is really the exemplar of passion-reason, and thought/ language/ideas. (also cd be read ‘dialectically’ as Rousseau and his writing is the historical fact that contradicts his own theory/writing) p.p.s. the rustic hut of Ted Kaczynski…

Alex B

How could life be longer, kinder or more sweet when the otherworlds have been razed?

ageOfBumFires

Lol Eric "don't go outside and touch any grass today... Unless it's cannabis" 💨💨🥍 23:30-24:00 compassion, intolerable to watch another's suffering, animal rights... A raccoon fell out of the tree behind my house and broke it's fucking legs. I rushed it to a wildlife rehab. I had to, I looked into it's eyes and I saw my eyes, I saw and heard it's pain and I felt my own. There was no other option in my heart, there was no rationalization, it was me and I was it and I needed to aid a creature that suffered. I'm assuming Rousseau influenced Bakunin's Mutual Aid theory. Been a while since I read Mutual Aid but I image Rousseau's in there. 53:00 As someone who in hindsight realizes this is how I tend to prefer working and living, around the house, in the garden, etc., I really like the idea of designing *things* (hand tools, structures more aptly sized for a human being not 3500sq ft monstrocities, vehicles such a as bicycles) such that they can be created and/or maintained by *one person*. Not to say multiple people couldn't help and work together, but in essence the thing in it's entirety requires at minimum one person. We live in an age where practically no one can repair their own transportation, house, body, clothes, can't produce or procure their own food. Everything as service, everyone lacking the basic ability to keep themselves alive 😅. How could that not result in some deep seated anxiety, particularly for the poor who in most cases are expressedly prohibited by law from living as such (building codes, vehicle codes, zoning laws, housing boards). I'm helping a neighbor who just got evicted by his landlord camp on an abandoned hillside foundation, completely out of sight, and you would think by the authorities/nebbie neighbor response that I was committing genocide... for fucks sake a man is living simply by his own means, bothering no one, forced into this position by a system which requires a certain percentage of poverty and oppression, and this simple self sufficient living simply cannot stand for them. Brainwashing.

Echoes from Elsewhere

Makes sense Pills was stoked reading Rousseau given his Kantian roots. Kant loved Rousseau. And, I knew a scholar of Kant who said he discovered Rousseau during his PhD on Kant, and almost wanted to shift his entire dissertation towards Rousseau