As we enter our third year some of us are disappointed that we have still not resolved the issues of knowledge, existence, morality etc. The trouble is that we can’t agree and are often distracted by details of science and religion, art and history, current affairs and personal experiences. However, we are resolved to keep trying and invoking the help of Plato and Socrates, Descartes, Kant, Rousseau and various members’ favourites like Bertrand Russell and Charles Darwin and the Daily Rag. It must say something that we keep coming back for more; perhaps it is that we offer a warm welcome and encouragement to discussions which are rarely too profound, often humorous and always enjoyably good natured. We’ll meet at The Rest at 10am on the following Fridays in November: 14th and 28th .

 

Jean Jacques Rousseau (Geneva, 28 June 1712 – Ermenonville, 2 July 1778) was a major Swiss philosopher, writer, and composer of the Enlightenment, whose political philosophy influenced the French Revolution and the development of liberal, conservative, and socialist theory. With his Confessions, Reveries of a Solitary Walker, and other writings, he invented modern autobiography and encouraged a new focus on the building of subjectivity that bore fruit in the work of thinkers as diverse as Hegel and Freud. His novel Julie, ou la nouvelle Héloïse was one of the best-selling fictional works of the eighteenth century and of great importance to the development of romanticism.[1] He also made important contributions to music as a theorist and a composer, and was reburied alongside other French national heroes in the Panthéon in Paris, sixteen years after his death, in 1794.