Hey,
Welcome back to the grounded sleep podcast.
I hope you're ready to get a really great night's sleep because I am going to bore you to bed with some philosophy tonight.
And you may not know this about me and you may not care.
I actually do have a degree in philosophy and I love it to this day.
Yes,
Philosophy can be really heady,
But it can also be really profound and even put us to sleep.
So welcome back to the grounded sleep podcast.
Make sure you're in bed and you got your jammies on and the lights are off.
Do whatever else you got to do,
Surround yourself with crystals and humidifiers.
Whatever you need,
Glass of water,
Tea,
Just allow yourself to be comfortable and to let yourself have a really great night's sleep.
Sleep is this kind of miracle.
We just close our eyes and we disappear and then we wake up rested and refreshed,
Starting a new rotation as the planet moves and the sun shines.
So you're setting an intention tonight to go to sleep and you're also setting one to wake up and live a beautiful life.
So eyes closed,
Allow your body to get nice and heavy and take a few slow deep breaths.
And tonight I'm going to read you one of my favorite pieces of philosophy by Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
I hope my accent was okay with that.
And he was an 18th century philosopher that I studied and I really appreciate his discourse on the origins of inequality.
And for tonight's sleep purposes,
I'm going to read you the preface.
Just relax,
Let yourself enjoy some Rousseau and let's get you to sleep.
1751.
What is the origin of inequality among mankind and is it justified by natural law?
Of all the human sciences,
The most useful and most imperfect appears to be that of mankind.
And I will venture to say the single description on the temple of Delphi contain a precept more difficult and more important than is to be found in all the huge volumes that moralists have ever written.
I consider the subject of the following discourse as one of the most interesting questions philosophy can propose and unhappily for us,
One of the most thorny that philosophers can have to solve.
For how should we know the source of inequality between men if we do not begin by knowing mankind?
And how shall man hope to see himself as nature made him across all the changes which the succession of place and time must have produced in his original constitution?
How can he distinguish what is fundamental in his nature from the changes and additions which his circumstances and the advances he has made have introduced to modify his primitive condition?
Like the statue of Glaucus which was so disfigured by time,
Seas and tempests that it looked more like a wild beast than a god,
The human soul altered in society by a thousand causes perpetually recurring,
By the acquisition of a multitude of truths and errors,
By the changes happening to the constitution of the body,
And by the continual jarring of the passions,
Has,
So to speak,
Changed in appearance so as to be hardly recognizable.
Instead of a being acting constantly from fixed and invariable principles,
Instead of that celestial and majestic simplicity,
Impressed on it by its divine author,
We find in it only the frightful contrast of passion,
Mistaking itself for reason and of understanding grown delirious.
It is still more cruel that as every advance made by human species removes it still farther from its primitive state,
The more discoveries we make,
The more we deprive ourselves of the means of making the most important of all.
Thus,
It is in one sense by our very study of man that the knowledge of him is put out of our power.
It's easy to perceive that this is in these successive changes in the constitution of man that we must look for the origin of those differences which now distinguish men,
Who it is allowed,
Are as equal among themselves as were the animals of every kind,
Before physical causes had introduced those varieties which are now observable among some of them.
It is,
In fact,
Not to be conceived that these primary changes,
However they may have arisen,
Could have altered all at once and in some same manner every individual of the species.
It is natural to think that while the condition of some of them grew better or worse,
And they were acquiring various goods or bad qualities not inherent in their nature,
They were those who continued a longer time in their original condition.
Such was the doubtness,
The first source of the inequality of mankind,
Which it is much easier to point out,
Thus in general terms,
Than to assign with precision to its actual causes.
Let my readers therefore imagine that I flatter myself with having seen what it appears to me so difficult to discover.
I have here entered upon certain arguments and risked some conjectures less in the hope of solving the difficulty,
Than with a view to throwing some light upon it and reducing the question to its proper form.
Others may easily proceed farther on the same road,
And yet no one find it very easy to get to the end,
For it is by no means a light undertaking to distinguish properly between what is original and what is artificial in the actual nature of man,
Or to form a true idea of a state which no longer exists.
Perhaps it never did exist and probably never will exist,
And of which it is nevertheless necessary to have true ideas in order to form a proper judgment of our present state.
It requires indeed more philosophy than can be imagined to enable anyone to determine exactly what precautions he ought to take in order to make solid observations on this subject.
And it appears to me that the good solution of the following problem would be not unworthy of the Aristotle's and Pliny's of the present age.
What experiments would have to be made to discover the natural man,
And how are those experiments to be made in a state of society?
So far am I from undertaking to solve this problem,
And I think I have sufficiently considered the subject to venture to declare beforehand that our greatest philosophers would not be too good to direct such experiments,
And our most powerful sovereigns to make them.
Such a combination we have very little reason to expect,
Especially attended with the perseverance or rather succession of intelligence and goodwill necessary on both sides to succeed.
These investigations which are so difficult to make and have been so little thought of are nevertheless the only means that remain of obviating a multitude of difficulties which deprive us of the knowledge of the real foundations of human society.
It is this ignorance of the nature of man which casts so much uncertainty and obscurity on the true definition of natural right,
Or the idea of right.
And more particularly of the natural right,
Our ideas manifestly relative to the nature of man.
It is then from this very nature itself,
It goes on from the constitution and state of man that we must deduce the first principles of this science.
We cannot see without surprise and disgust how little agreement there is between the different authors who have treated this great subject.
Among the more important writers there are scarcely two of the same mind about it.
Not to speak of the ancient philosophers who seem to have done their best purposely to contradict one another on the most fundamental principles.
The Roman jurists subjected man and the other animals indiscriminately to the same natural law because they considered under that name rather the law which nature imposes on herself and that which she prescribes to others.
Or rather because of the particular acceptation of the term law among those jurists who seem on this occasion to have understood nothing more by it than the general relations established by nature between all animated beings for their common preservation.
The moderns understanding by the term law merely a rule prescribed to a moral being that is to say intelligent,
Free and considered in his relations to other beings consequently confined the jurisdiction of natural law to man as the only animal endowed with reason.
But defining this law each after his own fashion they have established it on such metaphysical principles that there are very few persons among us capable of comprehending them much less of discovering them for themselves so that the definitions of these learned men all differing in everything else agree only on this that it is impossible to comprehend the law of nature and consequently to obey it without being a very subtle causest and a profound metaphysician.
All which is as much to say that mankind must have employed in the establishment of society a capacity which is acquired only with great difficulty and by very few persons even in a state of society.
Knowing so little of nature and agreeing so ill about the meaning of the word law it would be difficult for us to fix on a good definition of natural law.
Thus all the definitions we meet with in books setting aside the defect in point of uniformity have yet another fault and that they are derived from many kinds of knowledge which men do not possess naturally and from advantages of which they can have no idea until they have already departed from that state.
Modern writers begin by inquiring what rules would be expedient for men to agree on for their common interest and then give the name of natural law to a collection of these rules without any proof than the good that would result from their being universally practiced.
This is undoubtedly a simple way of making definitions and of explaining the nature of things by almost arbitrary conveniences but as long as we are ignorant of the nature of man it is in vain for us to attempt to determine either the law originally prescribed to him or that which is best adopted to his constitution.
All we can know with any certainty respecting law is that if it is to be a law not only the wills of those it obliges must be sensible of their submission to it but also to be natural it must come directly from the voice of nature throwing aside therefore all those scientific books which teach us only to see men such as they have made themselves and contemplating the first and most simple operations of the human soul.
I think I can perceive it in two principles prior to reason.
One of them is deeply interesting us in our own welfare and preservation and the other exciting and natural repugnance and seeing any other sensible being and particularly any of our own species suffer pain.
It is from the agreement and combination which understanding is in the position to establish between these two principles without its being necessary to introduce that of sociability and all the rules of nature right appear to be derived rules which our reason is afterwards obliged to establish on other foundations when by its successive development it has been led to suppress nature itself.
As I read this philosophy allow yourself to drift off deeper and deeper into sleep and as you sleep perhaps a philosopher in you will start to rise to the surface in your dreams bring wisdom to your waking state.
And let us drop into sleep remembering some wise words from Rousseau that man and woman are born free.
Have a beautiful sleep.
Be well.
