Human nature

An interesting pair of course books last weekend: Rousseau's Discours sur l'inégalité and Freud's Civilisation and its discontents. Interesting because they both draw similar conclusions about human nature, namely that social problems stem from the conflict between the anti-social nature of humanity (in Freud's case, the difficulties that arise from primal family conflicts between father and son, or brother and brother) when humans start to live together. [6] [7]

My lecturer claims that Rousseau is the most important writer in Western culture between St Paul and Karl Marx. There's a claim to live up to...