Today at lunch I finally finished the elusive book number twenty-five, which I should have finished at the end of June to be on pace for fifty this year. Alas, my chances of success are slim but we'll see how close I get.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau's The Social Contract has the honor of being my halfway point or, rather, I have the honor of having read it. I believe it was Abe Ravelstein that was always referencing the philosopher and inspired me to look him up. As soon as I read the famous first lines of this treatise -- "Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains" -- I was certain that this endeavor would be worthwhile.
Rousseau tackles natural rights vs. civil rights, freedom and slavery, religion and how it fits into the social order, political systems from monarchy to democracy, quite a bit of Roman history, etc; basically a bunch of subjects alien to my middle-class Texas upbringing and technical education. The focus on politics was a little more than I expected but was enlightening; it also inspired me to move on to Machiavelli's The Prince (another in the Penguin Great Ideas series), which is, evidently, a cornerstone of the political philosphy realpolitik (a philosophy to which "Obama the Christ," as my boy Wayne calls him, supposedly subscribes). I'm waging my war on ignorance at full tilt; the effectiveness of my efforts may vary.
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