My apologies to Jean Jacques Rousseau...actually in my philosophical development, Rousseau's "Discourse on Inequality" was a critical read. As a black student in America you are usually given a cliche curriculum that only includes black writers..the usual suspects like DuBois, Martin Luther King , Cornell West and Bell Hooks. I think the cannon would benefit to include Rousseau's essays.
I like to read 18th and 19th century theorists talk about their views because this is the beginnings of the European's interface with cultures exploited by their contemporary experience of European Empire.
Imagine yourself in their time. Sure they had no electricity, no penicillin, no telephone, no trojan rubbers but they still had the beginnings of the scientific method, political organization and the rule of law. They still thought that the "primitive" man was a different species.
Let's be honest. The rule of "law" is a paradoxical phenomenon. On the one hand it can put you away for the rest of your life, on the other it's only words.
Somebody "says" this land is mine, or the King's or whatever. And magically in our world, that's that . That's essential to the western world.
to be cont'd.
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