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Jean jacques rousseau the social contract essay
Social Contract Theory Reflection
On the Social Contract rousseau
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Kunal Mehta
The Social Contract, Rousseau
Literary analysis
March,3,2014
In the height of the enligtenment era mid 17 th century Jean-Jacques Rousseau modified and gave new impetus to John Locke's idea of social freedom through his book called The Social Contract.In the course of his book Rousseau counter argues not only Locke's perception of freedom but also his own perception through his text to let the reader arrive to his own conclusion ,is freedom really free? Rousseau is very insightful in his scriptures and trys to make his book easier to read and understand by subcatoogerizesing his chapters to key points that he thinks as followed: Right of the strongest, Slavery, Social compact and the Sovereign. Men are born free, yet everywhere
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In Americas wake of enlightenment,separation from church and god has become the motive for most.Idealy reason and individulism rather than tradition.Its purpose was to reform society using reason, to challenge ideas grounded in tradition and faith, and to advance knowledge through the scientific method.Those set of ideas made Rousseau conclude that we are never free and tied and shackled to our selves.In the eye of the beholder is how freedom and tolerance is viewed.Even if freedom is attained strict rules or guidelines are present ie: goeverment, which makes it contradictory and takes free from freedom.An example is given in text when said 'the strongest is never strong enough to always be the …show more content…
There is no possible compensation for a person who has given up his freedom. Furthermore, Rousseau believes that actions can be moral only if they have been done freely. “The word ‘slavery’ and ‘right’ are contradictory, they cancel each other out. Whether as between one man and another, or between one man and a whole people, it would always be absurd to say: "I hereby make a covenant with you which is wholly at your expense and wholly to my advantage; I will respect it so long as I please and you shall respect it as long as I wish.” Another argument Rousseau makes for slavery is based in war: he claims that because the victors in war have to right kill the vanquished, the latter can sell their liberty in exchange for their lives. Rousseau disputes the victors have a right to kill the vanquished. Rousseau states wars are fought by states, not by men. After a nation has lost in battle, its soldiers cease being enemies to the opposing state, and no one has a right to their lives.“To renounce freedom is to renounce one's humanity, one's rights as a man and equally one's duties.” Rousseau
Society’s structure has been debated and contested as far back as ancient Greece. Since then, man has developed social systems that greatly differ from anything the ancients had in mind. One such system is the social contract theory, which first came to prominence around the time of the enlightenment. Simplified, social contractarians argued that in order to achieve a balanced and stable society, all of its members must sacrifice certain liberties to a government or similar authority. As Rousseau explains, the contract begins when “Each of us places his person and all his power in common under the supreme direction of the general will” (148). Essentially, it is an agreement between the rulers and the ruled that produces a stable political state. John Locke’s The Second Treatise of Government and Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s The Social Contract are both enlightenment works that detail contractarianism, yet each has a unique and different way of considering the social contract. Although John Stuart Mill is also known for his work with Utilitarianism, his essay On Liberty considers consent and other issues relating to contract theory. These authors provide different insights into the social contract, and frequently one will reject another’s idea and offer a new solution. Even after this meshing of ideas and solutions, contract theory falls short of practicality. The idea is appealing, appearing on the surface as a fair and just way of governance. However, true liberty cannot arise from a contract, as man cannot be “forced to be free” (150). There are two fundamental flaws with contractarianism: it is not practical and it ignores human nature, and even if were possible to establish a true contract-based society, the citi...
This nullifies any freedoms or rights individuals are said to have because they are subject to the whims and fancy of the state. All three beliefs regarding the nature of man and the purpose of the state are bound to their respective views regarding freedom, because one position perpetuates and demands a conclusion regarding another. Bibliography:.. Works Cited Cress, Donald A. Jean-Jacques Rousseau “The Basic Political Writing”.
This idea was adopted into the US Declaration of Independence created in congress. Rousseau agreed with John Locke’s statement of the fact, that no man shall have to give up his rights to a higher authority. Some of Rousseau’s ideas were also embodied within the US Constitution, it starts with “We the people” which was Rousseau’s will that people would come together as one and create a general will according to crf-usa.org. Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s idea of how a government should be ran, has been incorporated into not only the US Constitution, which is a big part of how America is run. His ideas have also been incorporated into the US Declaration of Independence, which has created America’s freedom from the English. The ideas of Rousseau have a big impact to how the government in the US operates the way it does today. In closing of this idea to how The Enlightenment impacted the US government, every man is entitled to the pursuit of happiness as long as it does not harm anyone as stated by Rousseau, the US Constitution, and the US Declaration of
...eing mandated for protection. Rousseau’s conception of liberty is more dynamic. Starting from all humans being free, Rousseau conceives of the transition to civil society as the thorough enslavement of humans, with society acting as a corrupting force on Rousseau’s strong and independent natural man. Subsequently, Rousseau tries to reacquaint the individual with its lost freedom. The trajectory of Rousseau’s freedom is more compelling in that it challenges the static notion of freedom as a fixed concept. It perceives that inadvertently freedom can be transformed from perfectly available to largely unnoticeably deprived, and as something that changes and requires active attention to preserve. In this, Rousseau’s conception of liberty emerges as more compelling and interesting than Locke’s despite the Lockean interpretation dominating contemporary civil society.
In conclusion, Rousseau’s idea of forcing citizens to be free is extremely troubling. In asserting that citizens must surrender to the general will, Rousseau places far too much emphasis on the will of the political community. This emphasis on the will of the whole comes at the detriment of minority group interests. Moreover, the possibility that forcing citizens to be free actually promotes freedom is undermined by the concept’s propensity for oppression. Though forcing citizens to be free can be a means of maintaining order in a political community, it also entails significant dangerous implications.
To understand the Rousseau stance on claims to why the free republic is doomed we must understand the fundamentals of Rousseau and the Social Contract. Like Locke and Hobbes, the first order of Rousseau’s principles is for the right to an individual’s owns preservation. He does however believe that some are born into slavery. His most famous quote of the book is “Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains” (Rousseau pg 5). Some men are born as slaves, and others will be put into chains because of the political structures they will establish. He will later develop a method of individuals living free, while giving up some of their rights to...
...hat is prepared by others. To take a walk, one must progress along the streets constructed by others, or along the earth that exists due to a supreme power. To have a conversation, one requires another to communicate with. To comprise a single thought, reverts back to the need to even exist as a human. The examples are endless while the fact is simple: to do anything of an individual desire requires the direct or indirect partnership of another. This sole principle ruins the basis of the social contract. If people are aware of their existing group efforts, they may be reluctant to give up natural rights that they do not have, for a society in which they’ve already established. In reality, Rousseau’s theory is that of natural existence; he just made it sound appealing by adding a few accents. In response to this reality, Rousseau may propose that a social contract must be enforced upon a society to encourage security, general will and proper law regulations. This response may be sufficient enough to blind a society into conformity, but it does not change the natural fact that as a single being, we can do nothing alone.
In his Discourse on Inequality, Rousseau hypothesizes the natural state of man to understand where inequality commenced. To analyze the nature of man, Rousseau “strip[ped] that being, thus constituted, of all the supernatural gifts he could have received, and of all the artificial faculties he could have acquired only through a lengthy process,” so that all that was left was man without any knowledge or understanding of society or the precursors that led to it (Rousseau 47). In doing so, Rousseau saw that man was not cunning and devious as he is in society today, but rather an “animal less strong than some, less agile than others, but all in all, the most advantageously organized of all” (47). Rousseau finds that man leads a simple life in the sense that “the only goods he knows in the un...
John Locke (1632-1704) and John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) are two important thinkers of liberty in modern political thought. They have revolutionized the idea of human freedom at their time and have influenced many political thinkers afterwards. Although their important book on human freedom, John Locke’s The Second Treatise of Government (1689) and John Mill’s On Liberty (1859), are separated 170 years, some scholars thinks that they are belonging to the same conceptual tradition, English Liberalism. In this essay, I will elaborate John Locke and John Stuart Mill view on human freedom and try to find the difference between their concept of human freedom despite their similar liberal tradition background.
SparkNotes: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778): The Social Contract. (n.d.). SparkNotes: Today's Most Popular Study Guides. Retrieved February 9, 2011, from http://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/rousseau/section2.rhtml
It is easier to describe what is not freedom, in the eyes of Rousseau and Marx, than it would be to say what it is. For Rousseau, his concept of freedom cannot exist so long as a human being holds power over others, for this is counter to nature. People lack freedom because they are constantly under the power of others, whether that be the tyrannical rule of a single king or the seething majority which can stifle liberty just as effectively. To be truly free, says Rousseau, there has to be a synchronization of perfect in...
First, I outlined my arguments about why being forced to be free is necessary. My arguments supporting Rousseau’s ideas included; generally accepted ideas, government responsibility, and responsibility to the government. Second, I entertained the strongest possible counterargument against forced freedom, which is the idea that the general will contradicts itself by forcing freedom upon those who gain no freedom from the general will. Lastly, I rebutted the counterargument by providing evidence that the general will is always in favor of the common good. In this paper I argued in agreement Rousseau that we can force people to be
Firstly, each individual should give themselves up unconditionally to the general cause of the state. Secondly, by doing so, all individuals and their possessions are protected, to the greatest extent possible by the republic or body politic. Lastly, all individuals should then act freely and of their own free will. Rousseau thinks th...
In The Social Contract philosophers John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau discuss their differences on human beings’ place of freedom in political societies. Locke’s theory is when human beings enter society we tend to give up our natural freedom, whereas Rousseau believes we gain civil freedom when entering society. Even in modern times we must give up our natural freedom in order to enforce protection from those who are immoral and unjust.
With this in mind, Saccarelli stated that the institution of families was created first by women not by men. Furthermore, insinuating that the influence of women is what created the first yoke to further create a “reason” centered society for ultimate control. Additionally stating, “Reason here is associated with women directly, appearing not as an internal fault, but as a force that comes to confront men from without”. However, his statement is that based on assumption. While there is no indefinite way to truly understand what Rousseau meant in specific detail. It is inferred that men at this time because Rousseau speaks highly of men, and more “patriarchal society” are the sole proprietors in this instance. It is not because of women that we have developed reason nor is it solely based on men. Moreover, because of the institution of family, parental love, the societal change did bring about reason. That is not to say that men or women separately are the only actors. The familial upbringing is both a benefit as well as a downfall. Ultimately, Rousseau’s whole argument with family was reiterate man’s first benefit of having a family which is love, and pity. It is our first connection that is desperately needed to understand the real state of