In the eighteenth century, Rousseau became the apostle of a ‘back to nature movement’ that repudiated human culture as the source of all evil. If only, in education, religion, morality, society, and the state, we would return to nature, to the idyllic circumstances of shepherds and farmers, the innocent and carefree lifestyle of natives, then humanity, virtue and happiness would instantly be restored. The attempts to follow through on this vision–the French Revolution and all it’s step children, a variety of utopian colonies–demonstrate the futile attempt to bring heaven on earth.
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