Rousseau discusses the genesis of language. He states that "all individual things presented themselves to their minds in isolation, as they are in the spectacle of nature. If one oak tree was called A, another was called B. <For the first idea one draws from two things is that they are not the same; and it often requires quite some time to observe what they have in common.> The difficulty inherent in all this nomenclature could not easily be alleviated, for in order to group beings under various common and generic dominations, it was necessary to know their properties and their differences" (58).
-This notion reminded me of our discussion on the necessity for historical insight and sociological study. Man's natural inclination is to be ignorant of groupings, or of the knowledge that two things may be similar enough to assign it the same label. In terms of the formation of civil society and its abundance in efforts made to make as much as possible homogenous and similar, don't these efforts appear to be in direct opposition to what is "natural?" I found it interesting that we have done away with the need for a variety of definitions, that we emphasize and even prefer boxing and categorizing when it is not the natural state of man to do so.
-This notion reminded me of our discussion on the necessity for historical insight and sociological study. Man's natural inclination is to be ignorant of groupings, or of the knowledge that two things may be similar enough to assign it the same label. In terms of the formation of civil society and its abundance in efforts made to make as much as possible homogenous and similar, don't these efforts appear to be in direct opposition to what is "natural?" I found it interesting that we have done away with the need for a variety of definitions, that we emphasize and even prefer boxing and categorizing when it is not the natural state of man to do so.
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