Jean Jacque Rousseau's Political And Political Philosophy

Europe’s time periods worked together like a domino effect. Time periods like the Renaissance, Reformation, Scientific Revolution, and the Enlightenment all were an extension of each other. The Scientific revolution used reason and logic to explain certain planetary motion and much else and philosophers from the enlightenment wanted to incorporate these same tactics. Philosophers agreed on each other’s thinking like natural rights and consent if the governed, however some did not have the same thought. They disagreed on topic like women rights and the type of government the people should have. Not only did philosophers seek change, but most of their thinking challenged previous thinking, as well as the Scientific Revolution. Undoubtable,

The Primary objective of all leaders should be to control citizens. A society that allows authority to be challenged will never succeed.

The creation of the United States was a long process that was influenced by many different individuals with many different thoughts and ideas. Jean Jacques Rousseau was one of many who contributed ideas that helped shaped our government as we know it, but his ideas were the most important to consider when creating the United States Government, followed by the ideas of Montesquieu, John Locke, and Voltaire.

During 1787, there was major controversy over the Articles of Confederation. To fix the controversy, the founding fathers of America came up with the Constitution to help resolve the issues. The Constitution was ratified on June 21, 1788; it provided a new central government, laws, and certain basic rights for the American people. Many of the ideas in the Constitution were influenced by French Enlightenment thinkers such as Thomas Hobbes, Montesquieu, Rousseau, and John Locke.

The creation of the United States was a long process that was influenced by many different individuals with many different thoughts and ideas. Jean Jacques Rousseau was one of many who contributed ideas that helped shaped our government as we know it, but his ideas were the most important to consider when creating the United States Government, followed by the ideas of Montesquieu, John Locke, and Voltaire.

Rousseau, one of the most leading philosophers during the Enlightenment, had indeed left many of legendries behind. Not only his writings had caused many of the reactions at that time, but also influenced many writers’ aspects of the French Revolution and the overall understanding of inequality and the General Will. As one of the chief political theorists during the French Revolution who was also influenced by Rousseau’s ideas, Abbe Sieyes, published the pamphlet, “What is the Third Estate?” in 1789. This pamphlet was one of the documents that changed the world and lit the flame toward the French Revolution, as characterized by Joe Janes, a University of Washington professor (Janes). It derived many of its ideas from Rousseau’s “The Social

This paper examines both Jean-Jacques Rousseau and James Madison remark concerning ‘ factions ’ as the potential destructive social force to the society.To layout and examine, this paper will first outline and discuss on Rousseau’s understanding of factions in The Social Contract,and Madison’s discussion on factionalism in the Federalist Papers 10.But there are many component surrounded with their view’s on ‘factions’,so it is important to consider together.

Thomas Hobbes in his Leviathan and Jean-Jacques Rousseau in his Discourse on Inequality and Social Contract each attempt to explain the rise of and prescribe the proper management of human society. At the foundation of both philosophies is the principle that humans are asocial by nature, a precept each philosopher interprets and approaches in a different way. Hobbes states that nature made humans relatively “equal,” and that “every man is enemy to every man.” Life is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short,” he says, and “every man has right to everything.” Rousseau outlines primitive asocial man having “everything necessary for him to live in the state of nature” from “instinct alone,” and being “neither good nor evil.” In contrast to Hobbes, who argues social bonds form to regulate human nature, Rousseau argues that the formation of the civil state results from and in a “change in man,” that humans must of necessity be denatured in the process of forming society. There are similarities between the two’s philosophies, but it is Rousseau, through his arguments that human nature can be changed, who articulates a political vision more consistent with the claim that humans are asocial by nature.

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.

Society has been struggling to find order ever since its conception. The idea that perfection could be achieved has long been dismissed, but societies still strive for something at least resembling functionality. Some of the fundamental problems faced within the genesis of a nation stem from the establishment of a government. How would one control and provide for the citizens in an effective way? Why would anyone willingly submit to governmental control? These are questions that Jean-Jacques Rousseau attempts to answer. In his “The Origins of Civil Society”, Rousseau presents his ideas on how the ideal society would run. He is able to effectively organize his thoughts in such a way that enables understanding and camaraderie with his audience, convincing them of the ways in which the quintessential society would function.

The questions of the whether social inequality is justified and the extent of government to address said inequality are some of the foundations upon which societies and economies are built. Two key philosophers on this issue – John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau – differ on this subject. In Two Treatises on Government, Locke holds that individuals have a right to property derived from their labor, citizens consent to the existence of inequality in society, and governments are instituted among men to protect said property. In contrast, Rousseau writes in Discourse on the Origin of Inequality and The Social Contract that inequality should be strictly limited and that governments have a duty to act in the best interest of its citizens by maintaining

In Discourse on the Origin of Moral Inequality, Rousseau rationally determines that the emergence of society and the invention of property directly cause moral inequality between people, specifically, the rich and the poor. First, he establishes the state of nature as a basic system, with no complex morality or rationality involved, unlike the states of nature described by Hobbes and Locke. At the most fundamental degree, Rousseau places mankind at the same level as other animals. “when I consider him, in a word, as he must have left the hands of nature, I see an animal less strong than some, less agile than others…” (Rousseau 40) Contrary to those described by Hobbes and Locke, Rousseau’s state of nature does not involve complex rational ideas, but rather simple instincts such as sympathy and self-preservation. The absence of things like violence and property from Rousseau’s state of nature implies that these problems are unnatural and are the product of society. Rousseau continues to state

The French Revolution was undoubtedly influenced by the political theorists of the Enlightenment. The ideas of two French political theorists in particular are easily seen throughout the French Revolution, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Baron Montesquieu. Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s thoughts and texts, such as the Social Contract, instilled the entitlement of basic human rights to all men. Rousseau’s concepts on rights combined with Baron Montesquieu’s ideas on government provided the backbone of a radical movement in the French Revolution known as the Terror. When one delves into the beginnings of the French Revolution, the motives and actions of the National Assembly, and the Terror of the French Revolution, one can obviously see the influence of two Enlightenment political theorists, Rousseau and Montesquieu.

Book One of The Social Contract by Jean-Jacques Rousseau focuses on the reasons that people give up their natural liberty in order to achieve protection from threats to themselves and their property. This results in the formation of a legitimate sovereign where all members are equal. Rousseau believes that no human has authority over another individual because force cannot be established. He argues that no individual will give up his or her freedom without receiving something in return. I will focus my analysis on how the social contract states that we must give up our individual rights in order to obtain equality and security. However, by doing so, we retain our individuality and freedom.

Jeans-Jacques Rousseau’s Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men is a defence of the original man in a state of nature and an attack on the corrupt and elitist European society of his day. Rousseau sought to ‘go back to an earlier point and try to piece together[… the] slow succession of events’ in order to pinpoint where humanity degenerated from the state of nature to today’s “civilised” society. In this sense, Rousseau seems to be attributing the process of socialisation to ‘all the evils’ in the world. In order to explore what, according to Rousseau, were the worst effects of socialisation and as a result how they impacted humanity, four points require