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PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   16273 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 19, 2025

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The anti-Enlightenment polemics write themselves.

18th century Enlightenment: Rousseau writes books on so-called "social contract" and education of children, criticizing practices of handing out their infants to wetnurses and tutor burdened by (what we call today) principal agent problems.

Since mothers despise their primary duty and do not wish to nurse their own children, they have had to entrust them to mercenary women. These women thus become mothers to a stranger's children, who by nature mean so little to them that they seek only to spare themselves trouble. A child unswaddled would need constant watching; well swaddled it is cast into a corner and its cries are ignored. As long as the nurse's negligence escapes notice, as long as the nursling does not break its arms or legs, what matter if it dies or becomes a weakling for life? Its limbs are kept safe at the expense of its body, and if anything goes wrong it is not the nurse's fault. These gentle mothers, having gotten rid of their babies, devote themselves gaily to the pleasures of the town. Do they know how their children are being treated in the villages? ...

Once motherhood becomes a burden means are found to avoid it. They will make their work useless in order to begin it over again, and they thus distort, to the prejudice of the species, the charm which was given them for its increase. This practice, along with other causes of depopulation, forebodes the coming fate of Europe. The sciences, arts, philosophy and customs that are generated will not be long in reducing Europe to a desert. It will be the home of wild beasts, and its inhabitants will hardly have changed for the worse. ...

Do you wish, then, that he keep his original form? Watch over him from the moment he comes into the world. As soon as he is born take possession of him and do not leave him till he is a man; you will never succeed otherwise. Just as the real nurse is the mother, the real teacher is the father. Let them agree in the ordering of their functions as well as in their system; let the child pass from one to the other. He will be better educated by a sensible though limited father than by the cleverest teacher in the world. For zeal will make up for lack of knowledge better than knowledge for lack of zeal.

(Emile, Book 1) Very lofty educational ideals! Also written by a man who abandoned his own kids in an orphanage.

21st century rationalist enlightenment: Galaxy-brained, they hire help (as aristocrats of 18th century did). Presumably kids are left unswaddled and better off than 18th century orphanage. Better than Rousseau, but that is damning with faint praise.

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