First Group meeting - or lack of. (Blog #3)

Deviant Philosophy.
Group Topic – “Paid Work is Voluntary Servitude”
First group meeting (outside of lectures).

The first group meeting was somewhat of a failure. Some realised (at the last minute) that they couldn’t make it and others weren’t entirely sure where we were meant to meet. This wasn’t a completely waste of time however as I managed to meet up with almost everyone over the course of two days and we have shared the following information:

Aleksy has gone rogue and covered work by the authors which other group members were supposed to be covering. Which is fine as we may all interpret the theories of different philosopher’s differently.

I met up with Blair and have filled him in on what he missed at the last lecture. I also gave him some suggestions of what philosopher’s and theorists he could look into – Locke and Voltaire being the most important ones; I also suggested that if he could find anything (primary or secondary) about Nietzsche's “Slave and Master Morality” that it might help as Meena had suggested it may be useful in the last lecture.

My reading on Rousseau is going well, I’ve managed to find several books; two which are primary texts by Rousseau Discourse on Inequality (1994), The Social Contract and Discourses (1993) (as suggested in the last lecture) and Rousseau and Liberty (1995) which is a secondary text dealing with aspects of The Social Contract and Discourses (1993) and contextualising Rousseau’s work. The last book I picked up was Selected Writings (1995) which focuses on the work of Voltaire.

I’ve focused on reading the primary texts of Rousseau to begin with and found the section in The Social Contract (1993) about ‘Slavery’ and ‘The Right of the Strongest’ has been particularly informative. I can also see Discourse on Inequality (1994) being useful but due to the book lacking a concise contents page I’m having to read through the length of the book to find the information which is of particular relevance.

We have agreed to stay in contact on Wednesday via email and will be bringing all our idea's, suggestions etc to the next lecture on Thursday.

Bibliography

BOOKS:

ROUSSEAU, J. (1994) Discourse on Inequality, Oxford, Oxford University Press.
ROUSSEAU, J. (1993) The Social Contract and Discourses, London, Everyman.
VOLTAIRE (1995) Selected Writings, London, Everyman.
WOKLER, R. (1995) Rousseau and Liberty, Manchester, Manchester University Press.