RACISM

Racism

Racism

Introduction

In the modern world, ideology has never before been so much in evidence as a fact and so little understood as a concept. For some, the term ideology carries dubious epistemological implications, and so must be abandoned. In a book designed both for newcomers to the topic and for those already familiar with the debates, Terry Eagleton unravels the many different meanings of ideology, and charts the history of the concept from the Enlightenment to postmodernism.

Ideology provides lucid accounts of the thought of major Marxist thinkers, and examines the thought of non-Marxist theorists such as Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Freud and the poststructuralists. As well as clarifying a confused topic, this new work by a major critic and theorist constitutes a political intervention into current theoretical debates. It is essential reading for students and teachers of literature and politics.

Discussion

Harmony is achieved between our internal nature & external nature through satisfaction of all needs; in the state of nature, conditions for discord are wholly lacking Therefore, the relation among humans is not a state of war the natural relation among humans is a state of peace.

Rousseau's concern was "Has the progress of the arts and sciences contributed more to the corruption or purification of morals?" Rousseau criticized social institutions for having corrupted the essential goodness of nature and the human heart. In his "Discourse on the Origin of Inequality" he elaborated on the process of how social institutions must have developed into the extreme inequities of aristocratic France where the nobility and the church lived in luxury while the poor peasants had to pay most of the taxes, and in his "Discourse on Political Economy" he suggested remedies for these injustices (Moore Chia Lam Chuang 1994 23).

Some historians consider Rousseau the initiator of the romantic rebellion in art and literature. Rousseau reacted against the artificiality and corruption of the social customs and institutions of the time. He was a keen thinker, and was equipped with the weapons of the philosophical century and with an inspiring eloquence. To these qualities were added a pronounced egotism, self-seeking, and an arrogance that led to bitter antagonism against his revolutionary views and sensitive personality, the reaction against which resulted in a growing misanthropy. Error and prejudice in the name of philosophy, according to him, had stifled reason and nature, and culture, as he found it, had corrupted morals. In Emile he presents the ideal citizen and the means of training the child for the State in accordance with nature, even to a sense of God. This "nature gospel" of education, as Goethe called it, was the inspiration, beginning with Pestalozzi, of worldwide pedagogical methods. The most admirable part in this is the creed of the vicar of Savoy, in which, in happy phrase, Rousseau shows a true, natural susceptibility to religion and to God, whose omnipotence and greatness are published anew every day Urofsky 2001 15). The Social Contract, on the text that all men are born free and equal, regards the State as a contract ...