Rousseau's “Discourse on Inequality” is long on detail, but short on evidence …

“The first man, who, after enclosing a piece of ground, took it into his head to say, 'This is mine,' and found people simple enough to believe him, was the true founder of civil society. How many crimes, how many wars, how many murders, how many misfortunes and horrors, would that man have saved the human species, who pulling up the stakes or filling up the ditches should have cried to his fellows: Be sure not to listen to this imposter; you are lost, if you forget that the fruits of the earth belong equally to us all, and the earth itself to nobody!”

– Jean-Jacques Rousseau's “Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men” (1754), first paragraph of “Second Part”

I first read this work in English translation …

In the spring of 2007, I voluntarily read Jean-Jacques Rousseau's “Discours sur l'origine et les fondements de l'inégalité parmi les hommes” (“Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men”) in English translation. This would contribute to my later desire to read it in the original French. But it would be several years before I ever got the opportunity to do so. Thus, by the time I started this later project, more than a decade had passed since my first reading of the book in 2007.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

But more than a decade later, I read it in the original French, too

But I had been laboring for some three years on another French work, which was “in line” ahead of it, so to speak. This other work was Montesquieu's “De l'esprit des lois” (“The Spirit of Laws”), which I describe here. In 2018, I finally finished this work by Montesquieu, and could thus finally start on Rousseau's “Discours sur l'origine et les fondements de l'inégalité parmi les hommes.” This book is known by many titles in English, including “Discourse on Inequality” and “Discourse on the Origin of Inequality” (both abbreviated versions of the full title). For simplicity's sake, I will use these abbreviated versions of this English title for the most part. I started this work in January 2018, and finished it some six months later in June 2018. Thus, I have read this entire work in its original French, including Rousseau's notes at the end. I can thus certify that my criticisms of this work are not based on mistranslation.

Statue of Rousseau on the Île Rousseau, Geneva

What are “auxiliary subordinate rights”? (Answer: Rights intended to protect other rights)

“In the three preceding articles we have taken a short view of the principal absolute rights which appertain to every Englishman. But in vain would these rights be declared, ascertained, and protected by the dead letter of the laws, if the constitution had provided no other method to secure their actual enjoyment. It has therefore established certain other auxiliary subordinate rights of the subject, which serve principally as barriers to protect and maintain inviolate the three great and primary rights, of personal security, personal liberty, and private property.”

– Sir William Blackstone's “Commentaries on the Laws of England” (1765), Book 1, Chapter 1

Sir William Blackstone once said that the most basic rights of human beings were personal security, personal liberty, and private property. (More about this in another post.) Blackstone said much about this in his “Commentaries on the Laws of England,” a major legal work from the eighteenth century. But he also said that “in vain would these rights be declared, ascertained, and protected by the dead letter of the laws, if the constitution had provided no other method to secure their actual enjoyment.” (Source: Book 1, Chapter 1) Therefore, Blackstone argued that the British Constitution had established “certain other auxiliary subordinate rights of the subject, which serve principally as barriers to protect and maintain inviolate the three great and primary rights, of personal security, personal liberty, and private property.” (Source: Book 1, Chapter 1)

Sir William Blackstone

Blackstone believed that these “auxiliary subordinate rights” were vital to the protection of basic rights. They are subordinate unto the other rights, because their primary purpose is to sustain and protect these rights. And they are auxiliary rights, because they exist as backup plans in case of emergency, where the government tries to infringe on these other rights. Thus, it might be appropriate to examine these rights for a moment, and show what Blackstone believed to be necessary in this endeavor. (All quotations from his “Commentaries” in this particular blog post will be from Book 1, Chapter 1. This volume was first published in 1765.)

Coat of arms of Great Britain, 1714-1800

The minimum wage doesn't really help the poor …

One day, a man named Bob goes to the store to buy some milk for his family. Since the price is only $2.00 per gallon that day, he decides to buy 2 cartons of it for a grand total of $4.00. But when he goes to the store again a week later, he finds that the price has risen to $4.00 per gallon. Consequently, he decides to buy just 1 carton this time around for the same price, and wait until the price goes down to buy more. Some people would cut back more than that, and others would cut back less than that. But the demand for the product is not decided by just one customer's purchases. You have to add up the purchases of all of the consumers in that economy to get an accurate demand number. This is known as an “aggregate” figure, and represents the total demand for a given product in a given place at a given time. When you look at these “aggregate” numbers, we can say that the quantity demanded still goes down as the price goes up. Even if some people are still purchasing the same amount of milk as before, the total demand for that milk still goes down. (Applied to your own pocketbook, that logic will probably make sense, at least for some products.)

A review of Henry Louis Gates, Jr.'s “Africa's Great Civilizations” (PBS)

“The High Contracting Parties do by the present Charter establish an Organization to be known as the ORGANIZATION OF AFRICAN UNITY. The Organization shall include the Continental African States, Madagascar and other Islands surrounding Africa.”

– Charter of the “Organization of African Unity” (predecessor of the current African Union), 25 May 1963

Before watching this series, I knew next to nothing about the history of Africa – I admit it freely. The only part of this continent's history that I really knew much of anything about was Ancient Egypt, and then only in that period through the Roman conquests. This documentary did not neglect Ancient Egypt, as it turned out, but this was far from being its only focus. It tried to cover all of the written history of the entire continent, which is a truly ambitious scope for a documentary of any length. They did not cover everything, of course, nor could they have done so in the mere six episodes that they had here. But they were actually able to cover quite a bit in their limited running time, and I thus marvel that they were able to do so much.

A review of “Queen Victoria's Empire” (PBS Empires)

“ ♪ Rule, Britannia!
Britannia, rule the waves.
And Britons never, never, never shall be slaves. ♪ ”

– “Rule, Britannia!” (1740), a British patriotic song written decades before Queen Victoria was born

At the height of the British Empire, it was the largest empire in the history of the world. Its geography was so widespread that people often commented that the sun “never set” on its borders. Actually, it is not the only empire in history to be described in this way, but it may still be the most prominent of them. The British Empire actually predates Queen Victoria's reign by some centuries, with its “first empire” going from 1583 to 1783 (the year that they lost America). The “second empire” went from 1783 to 1815, the year that the Napoleonic Wars ended. But a number of historians believe that Britain's “imperial century” was from 1815 to 1914, the year that World War One began. Queen Victoria reigned for more than half of this latter period, as it turns out, and was alive for an even larger share of it – part of which was before she assumed the throne in 1837. Thus, historians sometimes refer to this empire as “Queen Victoria's” empire, and to this era of British history as the “Victorian era.”

A review of PBS's “Catherine the Great”

Warning: This post contains some mature themes in it. Although I have tried to cover them tastefully, there's no way to take them out – they are too prominent in this story.

Catherine the Great

Before I watched this documentary, I had seen parts of the 1995 television movie “Catherine the Great,” starring Catherine Zeta-Jones in the title role. I fast-forwarded through certain bedroom scenes, but this film did have a good dose of politics and intrigue as well. Indeed, this aspect of the story was the part that I most wanted to learn about. This is part of why I wanted to see this other film in the first place, in fact. This PBS documentary (starting Emily Bruni) turned out to be as good as expected, but it also had many surprises for me.

How is Catherine's personal life connected with her political life?

Because of my prior experience with the Catherine Zeta-Jones movie, I was not too surprised to learn that Catherine was somewhat loose in her personal life. But the degree to which her life was a soap opera was something that I did not expect. Indeed, one cannot leave it out of the story, even if politics and intrigue are the primary focus. Her personal life is a part of the political story; and is almost inseparable from it. Thus, a few comments about Catherine's personal life may be warranted here, to help explain why it played such a prominent role in her life. This will also help to shed some light on what kind of film this is.

The future Catherine the Great, in an equestrian portrait

A review of “Egypt's Golden Empire” (PBS Empires)

The Egyptian language might have been the first language in human history to have been written down. (Although some scholars have argued that Sumerian was actually the first, and that Egyptian was only the second.) Regardless of whether it was first or second, though, the earliest known records of the Egyptian language actually go back to two or three thousand years before Jesus Christ. But unexpectedly, that is not where this documentary begins its history. This is actually a history of the “New Kingdom” in Egypt, which goes from about 1500 BC to 1000 BC – long after the earliest known records in Egypt. I would presume that PBS wanted to focus on a narrower period of Egyptian history (only five centuries or so), to allow for a simpler story. With less than three hours to tell the story here, you can see why PBS would want to do this. But one can only speculate as to why they decided to focus specifically on the “New Kingdom,” rather than on some other period of a similar duration. There are a number of other periods that would have made for equally interesting television, I think; and if someone decided to cover one of them, I would probably view their coverage with more than a little interest.