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PREACHING, PRACTICING FROM ROUSSEAU TO SPOCK, THE WISE AREN'T ALWAYS GREAT.(COMMENTARY)

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From: The Virginian Pilot
Date: 19980524
Author:

Byline: Margaret Edds

RICHMOND -- The French philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau informs us in one of his three autobiographies that he fathered several children by his illiterate washerwoman wife, and then abandoned them all.

Since Rousseau had the Reaganesque touch of melding truth with allegory in recounting his life's story, historians have debated whether any children existed. All we know for sure is that, by Rousseau's own account, if he had fathered children, he was precisely the sort of lout who would have abandoned them.

Learning this recently from a professor ...

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