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any progress whatsoever in enlightenment” (Kant: 57). Both, therefore, openly challenge existing social, political and religious dogmas.
Rousseau’s intent in his “Discourse on Inequality” is to address the reasons of inequality and to “pinpoint that moment in the progress of things, when, with right succeeding violence, nature was subjected to the law” (Rousseau: 77). However, it is evident that his writings had a far more profound impact: they inspired the French, Russian and South American revolutions aiming at the liberation and overthrowing of structures of exploitation due to oppression resulting from “moral or political inequality” (Rousseau: 77). In very much the same way, Kant’s theistic philosophy not only saves Christianity (at least temporarily! 3⁄4 before knowledge of his Opus postumum3 which reduced God to a fiction of the mind) but it also creates a revolt in the sphere of thought: Kant’s “Copernican revolution”4 which asserts that “the thing” revolves around the mind rather than the mind around “the thing,” inspires a revolution in that the world is created and determined by the
3 Durant, Will and Ariel. The Story of Civilization. Rousseau and Revolution. Volume X. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1967. 551 4 Durant, Will and Ariel. The Story of Civilization. Rousseau and Revolution. Volume X. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1967. 550
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