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Article: The Natural Goodness of Man: On the System of Rousseau's Thought.
- Article from:
- National Review
- Article date:
- February 25, 1991
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1991 National Review, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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The Natural Goodness of Man: On the System of Rousseau's Thought
MARXISM may be dead today, but the Left remains very much alive. Its continued vitality is evident in the widespread suspicion of authority, the propensity to blame society first for our dissatisfactions, and the romantic environmentalist condemnation of even the most benign tinkering with pristine nature. That such attitudes have survived the obsolescence of Marxism is unsurprising, since they were most powerfully articulated by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, half a century before Marx's birth. In many respects Rousseau, the guiding light of the pre-Marxist Left, is suitably positioned to provide a similar ...