How does Rousseau's ideas (against rationality) connect to the idea of ruins?

In Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s book, The Basic Political Writings, he discusses his beliefs on morality, rationality, sciences and arts, inequality, the political economy, the social contract, and the state of war. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the Genevan philosopher born in the 18th century, strongly believed in the ideology that progress corrupted the morality of man.

In “Discourse of the Science of the Arts”, he says his philosophy was based on the belief that reason was not natural and potentially harmful to mankind. An excerpt of “The Basic Political Writings” reads, “Astronomy was born of superstition, eloquence of ambition, hatred, flattery, lying; geometry of avarice; physics of vain curiosity; all of them, even moral philosophy, of human pride. Thus the sciences and the arts owe their birth to our vices; we would be less in doubt about their advantages if they owed it to our virtues,” (p. 14). He was very skeptical of scientists finding rationality in everything and argued that men were discovering the world out of ‘vain curiosity’.

Rousseau’s philosophy against rationality relates to the ruins of empires because empires rely on expansion and progressing. In “Discourse of the Science of the Arts: Part Two”, he said, “Peoples, know then once and for all that nature wanted to protect you from the science just as a mother wrests a dangerous weapon from the hands of her child, that all the secrets she hides from you are so many evils from which she is protecting you, and that the difficulty you find in teaching yourselves is not the least of her kindness. Men are perverse; they would be even worse if that had had the misfortune of being born learned,” (p. 13). Rousseau clearly explains how humans should not be teaching themselves about the nature of the world. He he believes that men who continue to do this are perverse. In empires that have tried to expand further and further like the Roman empire, they eventually turned to chaos and ruin.

Rousseau’s ideas also relate to ruins of an empire because he discusses how we would be better off as a society if we had not continued to progress, as empires try to do just to result in ruins. Rousseau argues, “Mores would then be healthier and society would be more peaceful. But these vain and futile declaimers go off in every direction, armed with their deadly paradoxes, undermining the foundations of faith and annihilating virtue,” (p. 15). He essentially claims that the discovering of unknown explanations for nature mock the real definitions of faith and virtue. This quote can be used to argue that empires that fell, had paradox ideas of morality which lead them to be unhealthy and unpeaceful and eventually to ruin.

In Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s chapter, “Discourse of the Science of the Arts”, in The Basic Political Writings, he argues that mankind would be in a better position if we did not have to find rationality behind everything and did not continue to progress or expand like empires did.

Works Cited:

image: http://thegreatthinkers.org/rousseau/

1) http://www.iep.utm.edu/rousseau/#SH3a