Monday 24 November 2014

The insane Socrates of the National Assembly

The sweeping away of the existing order had left people biddable and lacking in direction, he said, and easy prey for imposters posing as idealists. Young people in particular had been deeply corrupted by revolutionary ideas. They had fallen under the malign influence of Rousseau, 'the insane Socrates of the National Assembly', a philosopher whose person and thought were dedicated to an 'ethics of vanity', which exalted the self and ignored values of honour, duty, humility and personal virtue

J. Norman, Edmund Burke (2013), 145

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