Rousseau: Savage Vs. Civilized Man

627 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Civilisation vs savagery

Savage versus Civilized Rousseau differentiates the savage and civilized man to be completely different from the core of their hearts and even in their natural tendency towards anything. While Rousseau believes a savage man to be naive and peaceful, he describes the civilized man to be working extremely hard all the time and being dominated by selfishness and vanity. I will talk about this distinction from a completely different perspective and I believe that the distinction still holds in the today’s world to some extent. When Rousseau talks about the savage man, it makes me think about the people who are living below the poverty line or people who are extremely poor. I believe that the poor people in today’s world could be considered as savage because the poor people are the ones who have few needs and does not really …show more content…

This is because these are the people who are working in a laborious manner every day, which is similar to the Rousseau’s definition of a civilized man being “moving, sweating, toiling, and racking his brains to find more laborious occupations” (REF). Additionally, while Rousseau describes the civilized man as a person who is not “ashamed to value himself on his own meanness” (REFbk), in my opinion, a civilized person is not necessarily a person who is mean and egoistic. This is because some of these people are working purely so they could do something for the world and the people living in the world. Aria Finger, Yao Zhang, and Mark Zuckerberg are such examples who are working solely to change the world selflessly and even donate huge amounts of money for the betterment of the society. Overall, I believe I could connect to Rousseau’s concept of civilized man to some extent as according to me, a part of it is not necessarily

Show More
Related

  • Essay Comparing Rousseau And Batman

    864 Words  | 2 Pages

    Why compare an important philosopher to a villain? Well the answer is simpler than it might seem. In the past many comics, books and movies were based on a change proposed to society often portraying the new idea as something bad and the traditional way of doing things as the good that must prevail. Just look to The Wizard Of Oz and how the yellow brick road is supposed to symbolize the safe way of going about things. Any other path in this story would have led to Dorothy’s destruction. The yellow brick road symbolizing the gold standard. In the same way the creators of the Batman comics and Batman begins likely fear what would come if education became more like Rousseau’s idea of education. Both Rousseau and Ra’s Al Ghul from Batman Begins, believe that society is what corrupts man and that people must learn through necessity though Ra’s Al Ghul

    Read More

  • Rousseau's View of Humanity

    1102 Words  | 3 Pages

    Jean Jacques Rousseau in On Education writes about how to properly raise and educate a child. Rousseau's opinion is based on his own upbringing and lack of formal education at a young age. Rousseau depicts humanity as naturally good and becomes evil because humans tamper with nature, their greatest deficiency, but also possess the ability to transform into self-reliant individuals. Because of the context of the time, it can be seen that Rousseau was influenced by the idea of self-preservation, individual freedom, and the Enlightenment, which concerned the operation of reason, and the idea of human progress. Rousseau was unaware of psychology and the study of human development. This paper will argue that Rousseau theorizes that humanity is naturally good by birth, but can become evil through tampering and interfering with nature.

    Read More

  • Rousseau Influence On American Government

    1225 Words  | 3 Pages

    The authors of the Virginia Declaration of Rights, the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Paine’s Common Sense and the United States Constitution pulled from many different sources during the infancy of these invaluable documents. They used pieces such as Hobbes’ Leviathan, Locke’s Second Treatise on Government, Rousseau’s Of The Social Contract, and Montesquieu’s The Spirit of the Laws as inspiration for America’s fundamental government. Each of these influential political philosophers were instrumental in making our government what it is today. Hobbes brought the ideas of natural equality, a strong, powerful government, and the principle that governments must be able to protect the people to American political philosophy. Locke added that

    Read More

  • Rousseau's Discourse On Inequality

    1052 Words  | 3 Pages

    While Aristotle believes that this implies that men are better than women and the horribly disfigured (or slaves), Rousseau feels humans have evolved so much over their history that “civil” humans are naturally superior to hunter-gatherers. Aristotle thinks that it’s natural for humans to use those who are inferior. Rousseau disagrees with that. He states, “It is impossible to make any man a slave, unless he is first reduced to a situation in which he cannot do without the help of others: and, since such a situation does not exist in a state of nature, every one is there his own master, and the law of the strongest is of no effect.” Unless somebody is severely disfigured (in an unnatural way), in Rousseau’s eyes they could never be a slave.

    Read More

  • Locke Montesquieu And Rousseau Essay

    1414 Words  | 3 Pages

    During the enlightenment period in the 1600’s to the 1700’s, writers like Locke, Montesquieu, and Rousseau influenced some of America’s founding documents, including the Virginia Declaration of Rights, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. During this time period, these writers had no idea that their works would impact such influential documents. The first document these writers influenced was the Virginia Declaration of Rights.

    Read More

  • Golding vs. Rousseau

    1085 Words  | 3 Pages

    Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a great philosopher who lived in the Enlightenment. He was a very influential philosopher and “Thinker” he has written many books including The Discourse on the Origin of Inequality. Rousseau’s theory was in essence that humans were created naturally pure and innocent but over time and new technologies become more evil. He had thought that in the very first light of man he was completely innocent, a being who had no intention to harm anyone else. However as time progressed and the growing capacity for man increased and the

    Read More

  • Marx (The Communist Manifesto) and Rousseau

    2059 Words  | 5 Pages

    The political philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Karl Marx examined the role that the state played and its relationship to its citizen’s participation and access to the political economy during different struggles and tumultuous times. Rousseau was a believer of the concept of social contract with limits established by the good will and community participation of citizens while government receives its powers given to it. Karl Marx believed that power was to be taken by the people through the elimination of the upper class bourgeois’ personal property and capital. While both philosophers created a different approach to establishing the governing principles of their beliefs they do share a similar concept of eliminating ownership of capital and distributions from the government. Studying the different approaches will let us show the similarities of principles that eliminate abuse of power and concentration of wealth by few, and allow access for all. To further evaluate these similarities, we must first understand the primary principles of each of the philosophers’ concepts.

    Read More

  • The Justifications Of Social Inequalities In Jean-Jean Rousseau

    1270 Words  | 3 Pages

    Inequality is an issue which has been analyzed by political thinkers for centuries. Some thinkers have long been supporting the subordination of one gender, race, or class over another with religious, moral, ethical, and scientific factors to support their claims; others, however, argue against any subordination of any decree. Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), a famous philosopher of the eighteenth century, defined inequality in two parts: natural and social. Natural inequalities are the differences in bodily and mental strengths. Social inequalities, however, are the differences that exist between individuals in wealth, power and honor. For Rousseau, social inequalities are justified when they are able to reflect natural inequalities.

    Read More

  • Rousseau Essay

    1151 Words  | 3 Pages

    Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a philosopher that helped develop concepts such as general will, and improved on the early norms on child-raising. Born in Geneva, he was a “citizen” of the city. “Citizens” were the two hundred members of the Grand Council of Geneva, which made most of the political decisions in state. Jean-Jacques Rousseau was an important part of the Enlightenment. He led an interesting life, as told by his three memoirs, had a solid philosophy, did not believe in reason, and left a lasting legacy that still affects us today.

    Read More

  • Rousseau Perfectibility Analysis

    1222 Words  | 3 Pages

    In his “Discourse on the Origin and the Foundations of Inequality Among Mankind,” Jean-Jacque Rousseau attributes the foundation of moral inequalities, as a separate entity from the “natural” physical inequalities, which exist between only between men in a civilised society. Rousseau argues that the need to strive for excellence is one of man’s principle features and is responsible for the ills of society. This paper will argue that Rousseau is justified in his argument that the characteristic of perfectibility, as per his own definition, is the cause of the detriments in his civilised society.

    Read More

  • Rousseau and Marx: Property and Inequality

    1831 Words  | 4 Pages

    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...

    Read More

  • Hut Society In Rousseau's Theory Of Hut Society

    1179 Words  | 3 Pages

    While Rousseau praises the purity and freedom of humans in the state of nature, he favors civilization’s stage of development into the “hut society” stage and views contemporary society as a corruption of human virtue. Hut society significant inequality as people remained independent without the division of labor. Rousseau describes hut society as “A golden mean between the indolence of the primitive state and the petulant activity of our vanity” (150-151). He sees hut society as having the best of both worlds; limited in its vanity, but also enough so that people enjoy the company of others and are at least somewhat productive.

    Read More

  • Thomas Hobbes And Jean Jacques Rousseau And The State Of Nature

    1865 Words  | 4 Pages

    Rousseau theorized that the “savage” in the state of nature was not selfish, like Hobbes idea, but rather it arose as a result from the person’s interaction with society. He argued that people naturally have compassion for others who are suffering and that the civil society encourages us to believe we are superior to others. Therefore, the thought of being more powerful will cause us to suppress our virtuous feelings of kindness and instead change us into selfish humans.

    Read More

  • The Savagery in The Life of Pi, by Yann Martel

    862 Words  | 2 Pages

    Savagery by definition is the act of being uncivilized. The acts I consider to be savage are those committed by the cook on the first few days being on the lifeboat. “Yet there he was, swinging his arms and catching flies and eating them greedily. Right away he was in a holy terror for hunger” (Martel 304). After not being on the boat a full day, the cook is already showing signs of uncivilized manner by eating insects although there were food rations on the lifeboat. Eating flies when there is proper food to be eaten is not something that would be considered civilized. His actions are not done out of the necessity to live because there is food on board the lifeboat. If there had been no food available, the actions of the cook could be understood more as an action to survive the life or death situation. Not only was the cook eating flies like a savage, but he was also cutting up the other humans to use as bait for fishing. There is no need to already start filleting the sailor because there are still food rations available to the cook at ...

    Read More

  • Rousseau's Concept of Democracy

    996 Words  | 2 Pages

    Rousseau describes democracy as a form of government that “has never existed and never will” ; yet twenty-six countries in the world are considered to be full democracies. How can this be possible? Rousseau’s concept of democracy supports the most fundamental and basic premise of democracy – one in which all citizens directly participate. While his idea of democracy cannot be considered an effective indictment of what passes for democracy today, it is not Rousseau’s account which is flawed but that in modern society is would be practically impossible to achieve this idea of democracy.

    Read More

More about Rousseau: Savage Vs. Civilized Man

Open Document