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 ideas that changed the worldworld. Let me start with a few social frameworks like the Magna Carta, The American Constitution, the abolition of slavery and being scottish my personal favourite the Declaration of Arbroath. In its mixture of defiance and supplication, nonsensical history and noble thought, two things make the Declaration of Arbroath the most important document in Scottish history. Firstly it set the will and the wishes of the people above the King. Though they were bound to him 'both by law and by his merits' it was so that their freedom might be maintained. If he betrayed them he would be removed and replaced. This remarkable obligation placed upon a feudal monarch by his feudal subjects may be explained in part by the fact that Bruce was still a heather king to many of them, still a wild claimant ruling upon sufferance and success. But the roots of his kingship were Celtic, and a Celtic tradition was here invoked, the memory of the Seven Earls, the Seven Sons of Cruithne the Pict in who, it was believed, had rested the ancient right of tanistry, the elevation of kings by selection. This unique relationship of king and people would influence their history henceforward, and would reach its climax in the Reformation and the century following, when a people's Church would declare and maintain its superiority over earthly crowns. Secondly, the manifesto affirmed the nation's independence in a way no battle could, and justified it with a truth that is beyond nation and race. Man has a right to freedom and a duty to defend it with his life. The natural qualifications put upon this by a medieval baron are irrelevant, as are the reservations which slave-owning Americans placed upon their declaration of independence. The truth once spoken cannot be checked, the seed once planted controls its own growth, and the liberty which men secure for themselves must be given by them to others, or it will be taken as they took it. Freedom is a hardy plant and must flower in equality and brotherhood. |
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It just shows what a book can do. the man who with "Du Contrat Social" {The Social Contract} observes in his very first line: <<"L'homme est né libre, et partout il est dans les fers.">> Or, in English translation: <<"Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.">> Futher on in his little book he makes the transition from "I desire" as the basis of everything, to "We desire" ========> -- and that transition to class-for-itself political consciousness became the basis for every revolution since, especially those in France and in Russia. Am proud to have a pocket-sized copy from Paris from 1793 (during the Revolution it inspired) that belonged to one of the French Revolutionaries. |
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Jean-Jacques Rousseau and David Hume unusual for great philosophers. Jean Jacques was a political philosopher and romanticist who amongst other things created the social contract. David Hume was more of a moral philosopher both were great humanitarians who knew and influenced each other. If you go right back to Aristotle with "Nicomachean Ethics" you can see the influence he had on both Jean-Jacques Rousseau and David Hume. Out of the two Hume would be my personal favorite as I am more of the pragmatic type than the romantic, but then thats the difference between the Gauls and the Scots. Hume went on to influence Adam Smith "the wealth of nations" as well as the Teutonic Immanuel Kant in "The Critique of Pure Reason", while this was supposedly a step change from Hume I do prefer to read Hume as he is much more accessible and reason for pure reasons sake is a dangerous path. At the end of that road leads to (in my opinion) the rather mad Ludwig Wittgenstein. I am just glad that Bertrand Russell was able to set some of the record straight thereafter. Bertrand Russell's "history of western philosophy" is a great reference book. |
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