Rousseau’s main idea is that everyone should feel safe, happy, and equal even if it means sacrificing personal joy for the good of society. If these things are not present then the community does not work. The contract
Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a great philosopher, writer, and composer during the 18th century. Rousseau’s civic philosophy influenced the Enlightenment and changed the general way of thinking. Rousseau’s first major piece of work when the academy he attended, the Academy of Dijon, conducted an essay contest and Rousseau was chosen as the winner with his essay called: A Discourse on the Sciences and Arts. Rousseau argued that Science and the Arts have corrupted the morals and virtue of people. Rousseau’s essay instantly won fame and recognition and it laid the building blocks for his next piece of work, The Discourse on the Origin of Inequality.
In 1972, Rousseau argued for the social contract which was meant to rectify the social and moral vices brought in the society due to development. He was very concerned about the history of mankind and how they ought to live together. He argues that when man was born he was free but now he is in chains. He further argues that mankind is and ought to live in a generally free nature but civilization has curbed that freedom and human authenticity through economic and social inequality. In order to restore freedom to mankind, Rousseau suggests there has to be a social contract.
To begin Rousseau starts the reading by saying that there cannot be a legitimate political authority because political authority puts restraints of freedoms that man was born with, Rousseau says that man was born with one natural form of authority, and that is the authority of a father over a child which exist only to keep the child alive all other authorities are rejected. The reasoning that some philosophers such as Hobbes assume that natural superiority of rulers over the ruled is the same as parental authority. However, Rousseau believes that this authority has no basis in nature because they use force to keep it. Rousseau says that the only answer to this problem is through some social contract made between members of society where people surrender their freedom
For the abandonment of his own children, Rousseau has the reputation of the hypocrite. “Rousseau 's own children, however, suffered the contradictions that characterized his life. By his own admission, he abandoned to a foundling hospital all the children he had by his lower-class common-law wife because he did not think he could support them properly; if their fate was like that of most abandoned children of the day, they met an early death” (Hunt 594). The fault in his reasoning about women confirms it. He uses Enlightenment ideals to support demands for equality only to the extent that satisfies dominant liberating tendency in the French society (Hunt 596).
In any other system, the people give up their freedom without any reason; it should be created only if all agree to it. The social contract would exist for the purpose of self-preservation, pushing the common will of the Sovereign. To convince his audience of these complex ideas, Rousseau must stay organized and be intentional in his rhetorical
Rousseau’s writings On the Social Contract critiques many aspects of modern society, including the use of representatives in most governments. With this critique, Rousseau attempts to persuade the readers that having a representative form of government is tantamount to being enslaved. This begs the question, is modern society wrong to use representative forms of governments or is Rousseau being courted by a utopian visage? Rousseau is persuasive in his arguments, however the impracticality of populaces sans representatives is a firm counterbalance. Rousseau’s main argument against the use of representatives in the political sphere is that utilising representatives thwarts any attempt at truly reaching the general will of the citizens.
Adam Smith is obviously interested in what markets, people, and nations do naturally in order to accumulate wealth; hence the word ‘nature’ being in the long title of the book. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, as any decent political philosopher, is also interested in nature and human nature. However, both authors seem to take for granted that their readers would intuitively know what they mean when they use iterations and phrases using the word ‘nature.’ This word is used frequently enough, especially in philosophical texts, that the actual meaning of the word and of phrases containing the word have often been obscured or lost their meaning.
This is a fatal event in Rousseau’s mind as unlike ‘the savage’ who ‘lives in himself’, an individual in society ‘is always outside himself and knows how to live only in the opinion of others’. Very unlike the Hobbesian war-like state of nature where ‘vainglory’ cause people to act like barbarous beasts, Rousseau argues that egocentrism derives solely from social interaction believing that his predecessors were projecting ideas of modern corruption onto the state of nature. Therefore, Rousseau’s analysis of moral psychology reveals how humans have become duplicitous and false through socialisation as the foundations of competition and bettering people are laid and consequently, a ‘desire for inequality’ governs the
Before commenting on Locke and Rousseau’s policies, one must examine their basis for property, inequality, and
In 1790, Irishman Edmund Burke published Reflections of the Revolution in France as a letter of stark critique against the French Revolution. A conservative, Burke’s philosophy of human nature highlighted society as prior to individuals and emphasized tradition. Within his conservative model, no one was born into a “state of nature,” for the mental experiment of a social contract was merely absurd. Instead, he viewed society as inherently organic and unlike a machine. Moreover, his major argument against the French Revolution was its foundation on abstract ideals, that although possibly desirable, could have problematic consequences of tyranny and disorder.
The farther back in time social historical thought goes, the further from our concept of humanity our ancestors get. Established as the State of Nature, Rousseau claims that man or “noble savages” once lived in a Golden Age where natural society was described with “independence”, “amour de soimême” or self-love, and pity. Rousseau elevates noble savages to a humanity far above any modern man of his time. He does this because to him the State and its constructs has distance us from our pure forms, a theme consistent in his literature. In fact, to Rousseau, “[m]an is made weak by human society by the way that society is developed”.
In his work Discourse on the Origin of Inequality Rousseau presents the argument that political inequality is rooted in the origins of human sociality. He suggests that in the state of nature, only physical inequality existed. Thusly meaning that political inequality only came into being as a result of human beings shifting from undifferentiated oneness to differentiated individuals. He illustrates three main stages that lead to this (civil society): the development of village life, the social division of labor and the formation of government. In forming society, we as human beings entered into social relationships and so were able to socially construct agreed upon measurements of human worth (i.e. private property) and so create political inequalities.
“This right does not come from nature, it is therefore founded upon convention”. Rousseau does not view society in the same light as Durkheim. He does not believe that society is the savior of humans and that there is no real self without it. Unlike Durkheim, Rousseau believes that the only natural society is the traditional family and that any other form is forged out of convention. Rousseau mentions that when parents are done raising their child and that child is no longer dependent, but chooses to stay then the family is together out if convention and is then unnatural.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Thomas Hobbes, two titans of the Enlightenment, work within similar intellectual frameworks in their seminal writings. Hobbes, in Leviathan, postulates a “state of nature” before society developed, using it as a tool to analyze the emergence of governing institutions. Rousseau borrows this conceit in Discourse on Inequality, tracing the development of man from a primitive state to modern society. Hobbes contends that man is equal in conflict during the state of nature and then remains equal under government due to the ruler’s monopoly on authority. Rousseau, meanwhile, believes that man is equal in harmony in the state of nature and then unequal in developed society.
