The idea of degeneration in Rousseau’s thought

Journal title RIVISTA DI STORIA DELLA FILOSOFIA
Author/s Mauro Simonazzi
Publishing Year 2015 Issue 2015/1
Language Italian Pages 15 P. 49-63 File size 549 KB
DOI 10.3280/SF2015-001005
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The Author analyses the part played by the idea of degeneration in Discours sur l’origine et les fondements de l’inégalité parmi les hommes in the light of the degeneration theory formulated by French physicians and naturalists between the 1740s and the 1760s. Rousseau draws both from the medical and the naturalist traditions of degeneration and applies them to his analysis of human historical development, adding alongside it a theory of moral degeneration, from which proceeds a theory of political degeneration.

Keywords: Rousseau, Buffon, Maupertuis, degeneration, transformism, perfectibility

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  • Do Normative Predictions Make Sense? Pragmatism and Ethics in Calderoni Giovanni Tuzet, in SSRN Electronic Journal /2016
    DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.2900313

Mauro Simonazzi, L’idea di degenerazione nel pensiero di Rousseau in "RIVISTA DI STORIA DELLA FILOSOFIA" 1/2015, pp 49-63, DOI: 10.3280/SF2015-001005