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Jean Jacques Rousseau Research Paper

701 Words3 Pages

Introduction
In Social Contract, Jean Jacques Rousseau has attempted to lay down a form of government that eliminates any chances of people becoming victims in any way. For him, this type of government must allow people unlimited sovereignty and must create equality amongst them so as to reduce chances of victimhood. While all of this seems to be hinting at an anti-totalitarian stance, Rousseau seems to employ a fundamentally totalitarian approach in his book.
Rousseau as an Advocate of Totalitarianism
Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) opens the famous book, Social Contract, with the phrase ‘man is born free but he is everywhere in chains.’ It is through this statement that he asserts that modern states limit people’s physical freedom – which has been granted to them by nature – and take no measure to secure people’s civil freedom, as a consequence of which people enter into and become a part of the civil society. As per Rousseau, legitimate political authority …show more content…

He writes, ‘… the claimant occupies no more than he needs for subsistence … he takes possession … by actually working and cultivating the soil – the only sign of ownership…’ This takes us back to Rousseau’s aim of creating equality between people by allowing them to take only what is theirs from the common good once they have entered the social pact. This deep egalitarian tendency can be seen in the case of ‘the right of the first occupancy’ here: equality is being created by each man receiving only what he needs from the common good, nothing more and nothing less. This would not have been possible in a democracy; had there been a democracy, people would have been greedily taking whatever they could get their hands on. Rousseau’s society has a very controlling government with a lot of power and holds back its individuals from acquiring what is not

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