Word: rousseauian
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...pessimistic, in reflecting that man is prone to evil from his youth, but it is the opposite of fatalism. It may be guardedly optimistic, in finding that the intellectually discovered key to the good life is easily used by the will, but it is equally the opposite of that Rousseauian naturalistic optimism, that Alice-in-Wonderland adventure of the self which finds the whole of goodness concealed in its own closets, and which reads Rabelais's Theleme injunction wrenched from its context. The philosophy of humanism is essentially and necessarily dualistic, and is continuous with the best expressions of that...