Manipulative Systems: Illusions of Freedom

A system that manipulates its people into thinking they have freedom creates a stronger government.

As a response to the brutality of the French Revolution, philosophers during the Enlightenment period began expressing ideas that seeked to reform and create a system that would be beneficial to its people, as well as create everlasting peace without corruption; however, only one of these philosophical ideas were able to come up with a solution for a perfect government.

European philosopher Thomas Hobbes wrote Leviathan in which he conveyed his beliefs that people were innately evil, and need the assistance of sovereign control because they were unfit to govern themselves and if they did it would solely result in violence

In the first case, the will, when declared, is an act of Sovereignty and constitutes law: in the second, it is merely a particular will, or act of magistracy—at the most a decree”(1). Rousseau mentions the same term that Thomas Hobbes talked about but interprets it differently, he uses the term sovereignty to represent the vote of citizens that is essential to exercise the general will of the people; in addition, he points out that this is a way to promote directed democracy by allowing the people to vote based on majority rules based on what’s beneficial to them, and with this system everyone would have to follow it: “IF the State is a moral person whose life is in the union of its members, and if the most important of its cares is the care for its own preservation, it must have a universal and compelling force”(3). Rousseau implies that for the sake of

His system of three branches substantially influenced the United States’ government as we know it today as he seeked to modify the system by assigning different roles to the three different branches with an equivalence of powers; furthermore, his system managed to maintain law and order, liberty of the public, and the property of the individuals without creating violence and corruption with the government. Each of the branches also has it’s own job of casting votes, making laws, and ensuring that these laws are constitutional and beneficial to it’s citizens; as stated by Rousseau: “The conjuring tricks of our political theorists are very like that; they first dismember the Body politic by an illusion worthy of a fair, and then join it together again we know not how”. He points out that Montesquieu’s ideas are just an illusion that lures people into thinking that the branches are separated but is actually branches separated as one whole system; despite Rousseau’s accuracy and attempt to denigrate Montesquieu’s theory, this manipulative system didn’t cause corruptions, oppress