"Amiable and virtuous women citizens, it will always be the fate of your sex to govern ours." Letter, p. 31
While I was excited to see women called "citizens" as opposed to just recognized as members of society or not recognized at all, Rousseau seems to be talking less about how women can be active participants in the state's politics and more about what their proper place is: married, in the home, and modestly attired. Doesn't quite seem like a citizen to me.
"Although it might be appropriate for Socrates and minds of his stature to acquire virtue through reason, the human race would long ago have ceased to exist, if its preservation had depended solely on the reasonings of its members." p.55, end of the paragraph about pity
This quote stayed with me for a long time after I read it. I wonder if Rousseau considers himself a man with a mind of Socratic stature or if he puts himself with everyone else whose virtue developed not through reason but was inspired by pity. I'd like to talk more about his idea of pity and of reason.
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