Heather Holmes's List: Theoriest Paper

• The basic philosophy of education that Rousseau advocates in the Emile, much like his thought in the first two Discourses, is rooted in the notion that human beings are good by nature.
• Book One opens with Rousseau’s claim that the goal of education should be to cultivate our natural tendencies.
• Rousseau says, someone who has been properly educated will be engaged in society, but relate to his or her fellow citizens in a natural way.
• Unlike amour de soi, amour-propre is a love of self that depends on comparing oneself with others. Essentially it consists in someone basing his or her self-worth on a perceived superiority to another. It breeds contempt, hostility, and frivolous competition.
• Rousseau’s philosophy of education, therefore, is not geared simply at particular techniques that best ensure that the pupil will absorb information and concepts. It is better understood as a way of ensuring that the pupil’s character be developed in such a way as to have a healthy sense of self-worth and morality. This will allow the pupil to be virtuous even in the unnatural and imperfect society in which he lives.

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• Ayn Rand’s The Virtue of Selfishness (1961) is comprised of a philosophy that defies

   

  the entire premise of what our education system is and shall be built upon.
• “Objectivists” view the education

   

  system as being doomed and irreparable. In their opinion, education is wasted on the

   

  Proletariat or working class and is essential to the Bourgeoisie or elite.

• "The purpose of an education is to teach   a student how to live his life—by developing his mind and   equipping him to deal with reality. The training he needs   is theoretical, i.e., conceptual. He has to be taught to   think, to understand, to integrate, to prove. He has to   be taught the essentials of the knowledge discovered in   the past—and he has to be equipped to acquire further knowledge   by his own effort."

         

  AYN RAND
• ther knowledge   by his own effort."

• In order to live, man must act; in order to act, he must make   choices; in order to make choices, he must define a code of values; in   order to define a code of values, he must know what he is and where he   is—i.e., he must know his own nature (including his means of knowledge)   and the nature of the universe in which he acts—i.e., he needs   metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, which means: philosophy. He cannot   escape from this need; his only alternative is whether the philosophy   guiding him is to be chosen by his mind or by chance.

• Achievement of your happiness is the only moral purpose of your life, and that happiness, not pain or mindless self-indulgence, is the proof of your moral integrity, since it is the proof and the result of your loyalty to the achievement of your values.
• Achieving life is not the equivalent of avoiding death.
• Every man builds his world in his own image. He has the power to choose, but no power to escape the necessity of choice

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• Individual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority; the political function of rights is precisely to protect minorities from oppression by majorities (and the smallest minority on earth is the individual).
• Just as man can't exist without his body, so no rights can exist without the right to translate one's rights into reality, to think, to work and keep the results, which means: the right of property.
• Money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver.

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• The truth is not for all men, but only for those who seek it.
• There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil.
• There is a level of cowardice lower than that of the conformist: the fashionable non-conformist.
• To say "I love you" one must first be able to say the "I."
• When man learns to understand and control his own behavior as well as he is learning to understand and control the behavior of crop plants and domestic animals, he may be justified in believing that he has become civilized.

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