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sidsimpson.bsky.social
Sid Simpson
@sidsimpson.bsky.social
520 followers 470 following 6 posts
🇵🇭🇺🇸 | Assistant Professor of Political Theory at Sewanee | sidsimpson.com
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sidsimpson.bsky.social
My latest in Philosophy & Social Criticism! "Dancing in the streets: Rousseau, the genealogy of vice, and the practice of freedom"

Check it out here:
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A journal article abstract that reads: Only recently has Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Discourse on Inequality begun to be read as a genealogy rather than a variation on the social contract tradition. This article argues that reading Rousseau as a genealogist not only clarifies his analysis of amour-propre’s inflammation, but also illuminates a conception of freedom achieved through the continuous political practice of shaping of amour-propre. In the first section of this article, I situate this conception of freedom against two separate but relevant bodies of Rousseau scholarship: those who read him as a genealogist, and those who emphasize the ambiguities of amour-propre. Next, I look to The Social Contract’s passages on censorship and court of honor in order to evaluate their roles as institutions that forestall the inflammation of amour-propre. Finally, I examine the social institutions that citizens actively participate in as they practice their freedom: the festivals, dances, balls and games described in The Letter to D’Alembert and Considerations on the Government of Poland. It is in these institutions that we see the political implications of Rousseau’s genealogical system manifest: because his genealogy illuminates the human tendency toward vice, the cultivation of virtuous citizenship appears as a constant struggle rather than an idealist achievement.
December 16, 2024 at 4:44 PM
sidsimpson.bsky.social
Obligatory
December 2, 2024 at 5:19 PM