TECHNOLOGY AND MOTHER EARTH
THE ROUSSEAUIAN ROOTS OF THE DEBATE
Keywords:
ROUSSEAUIAN, Earth, TechnologyAbstract
The idea of "Mother Earth" grows ever more popular as the West opens itself to other cultural traditions and the influence of Christianity wanes. Ironically, as Christianity's power declines, so does the star of modern science. Feminism and environmentalism, for example, now both advocate a new conception of nature and our relationship to it. Gaia, worshipped in the pre-Christian era of the West, has today been rediscovered. The search for a new moral imperative is now well under way with the demand that we revalue nature and our relationship to Earth. The idea of "Mother Earth" seems to offer the perfect opportunity for such a revaluation. It brings all cultures together and unites tradition with progressive political ideas. Hence the idea of "Mother Earth" seems to raise the hopeful possibility of an intellectual pathway out of our ever deepening crisis, a crisis of faith in both the old religion and the old science.
References
Victor Goldschmidt, Anthropologie et politique: les principes du systeme de Rousseau (Paris: Librairie philosophique J. Vrin, 1974) p. 748
John Locke. Second Treatise of Government. Chapter 11
Jean Starobinski, • 'Rousseau et l'origine des langues" in Jean-Jacques Rousseau: La transparence et robstacle (Paris: Gallimard, 1971) p. 361.
Pierre Manent, Naissances de la politique moderne: Machiavel, Hobbes, Rousseau (Paris: Payot, 1977) p. 132.
"Emile" in Oeuvres completes IV PP. 522-526; 534-536; 581-588. Cf. John Charvet. The Social Problem in the Philosophy of Rousseau (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974) pp. 79—85.
Arthur Melzer's, The Natural Goodness of Man: On the System of Rousseau's Thought (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1990).
