"I would leave this life with apprehension if I knew a better man than me."--Rousseau, on himself
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Coming from Rousseau, given the appalling way he treated his friends, women (particularly Therese Levasseur), benefactors, that's a bit bloody rich!https://twitter.com/sarahrutherfor2/status/1008464184365998080 …
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If we judge artists for their ‘goodness’ we wouldn’t read or admire many works of art. Words and art can be judged for their own merit. Or we put a line through some of the greatest. We are all flawed human beings aren’t we?
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I think it raises interesting issues if there is a large gap between somebody's moral injunctions and the way they actually lived their life. Rousseau, Marx & Bertie Russell are all good examples.
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But a failure of someone who advocates for a moral principle to live up to it is not a valid argument against the moral principle itself. Just like an advocate’s strict adherence is not a valid argument for a principle.
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The failure of somebody to live up to their own moral system can certainly be evidence against the theory of human nature upon which the system is built (especially if lots of other people fail to live up to it as well). It also likely has consequentialist implications.
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But the failure of one person (however prominent) is not similar to the failure of most people who subscribe to a moral system.
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Maybe not most people, though I find it hard to think of any moral injunction that most people won't violate given the right circumstances, but certainly many people (unless the failing person is a genuinely odd psychopathic type).
End of conversation
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