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Author Archives: F. E. Guerra-Pujol
Rule of Law Symposium
I will resume my series on Smith and Rousseau in the next day or two because I will be speaking at a symposium on the rule of law at the University of St Thomas Law School today.
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Rousseau’s theory of original sin
As we saw in a previous post (see here), three passages in Rousseau’s Second Discourse may have resonated with a young Adam Smith. Yesterday, we saw the first of these three fragments; today, we will take a closer look at … Continue reading
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Tagged adam-smith, original-sin, Property, rousseau, second-discourse
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Rousseau’s just-so story
Yesterday, I transcribed three separate passages from Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Second Discourse, and I then asked: why would someone like Adam Smith have singled-out those three specific selections in his 1756 letter to the Edinburgh Review? For reference, Smith’s translation of … Continue reading
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Tagged adam-smith, division-of-labor, History, just-so-story, Philosophy, rousseau
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Three passages in Rousseau’s Second Discourse that may have resonated with a young Adam Smith
I will begin my survey of Jean-Jacques Rousseau below the fold with three not-so-random fragments or extracts from his celebrated Second Discourse:
Monday music: La Belle Dame Sans Regrets
I have too much going on today, so I will resume my series on J.-J. Rousseau in my next post; in the meantime, enjoy …
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Rousseau preview
In summary, if Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote the Second Discourse (1755) to explain how men lost their natural liberty in the remote past, he wrote yet another book, Du Contrat social (1762), to explain how they might recover their freedom in … Continue reading
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Friday funnies: Voltaire’s stinging critique of Rousseau’s Second Discourse
As I mentioned at the conclusion of my previous post, I will begin exploring some of the ideas of the great Jean-Jacques Rousseau next week; in the meantime, below is an amusing quote from Rousseau’s nemesis, Voltaire. By way of … Continue reading
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The inescapable and inexorable ascendancy of the tyranny of the majority?
John Stuart Mill and Alexis de Tocqueville are in agreement that the “tyranny of the majority” poses the greatest danger of all to individual liberty, but what is to be done? We already saw Mill’s proposed remedy (the harm principle) … Continue reading
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Mill’s blind spot; de Tocqueville’s danger
I introduced John Stuart Mill’s libertarian harm principle (or what I prefer to call “Mill’s proviso”) in my previous post: people should be free to think, speak, and act as they please as long as no else is harmed. But … Continue reading
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prior probability 