Project Rousseau Personal Statement

Thompson & Knight LLP (“Thompson & Knight” or the “Firm”) is being retained by Andrews/Park Haven Apartments, Ltd. (“Park Haven”) to provide assistance with respect to the proposed sale of the Park Haven Apartments to Savannah Developers of Texas, LLC. Ben B. West and John Rousseau, a paralegal, are the only members of the Firm who will work on this matter.

The concept of Liberty can be very complex when trying to define it, one of the reasons for that is that no one seems to agree on what it means to be free. There is the connotation of the word Liberty which is “Freedom from captivity imprisonment, slavery, or despotic control.” (566 Oxford Dictionary) but Liberty is often portrayed as more than just that. When looking at the past, Liberty is an interesting concept, considering the social structure at the time and how the king and the church had so much power. A lot changed with the French Revolution and the abolishment of the French monarchy but let us take a look a few years before that, where two great minds of this time had their own opinion of Liberty an how to achieve it.

Hi Stephanie! I hope you'll like what's coming. At first this was going to be a collection of creepy ficlets from the Nex family. But I thought you would like letters from them instead. : ) So here's seven letters from different parts of the Nex/Brookhaven/Poe/Doe/Rousseau families. They're all addressed to you. Some shorter then others at the end. Yeah, I could've emailed them to you but I thought you'd like a mailed version. Also a couple of these letters may include a couple of jokes not meant to take offensively.

Since the establishment of society and government there has always been a struggle between what is best for the government and its citizens as whole and what is best for its leaders. The Federal government and its leaders have been known to exploit public events and tragedies for the wrong reasons including, using these events to push its own agenda and influencing public opinion to that of its own belief. The exploitation of these events not only violate the intended agreement between citizens and their government, but it violates basic moral principles.

In Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Second Discourse and Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France, both men detail their beliefs regarding social and economic inequalities within societies, the consequences of these inequalities for political life, and their stances on what ought to be done in response to these inequalities. Burke has the more compelling argument because he is right when he states that men are not born equal but are instead born into a society that is already more favorable to some than others, that hierarchy and government are natural and necessary, and that human beings are not intrinsically good.

     “I was born to a family whose morals distinguished them from the people.” (Josephson 9) Jean-Jacques Rousseau was born in Geneva, Switzerland on June 28, 1712. He became the son of Isaac Rousseau, a plebian class watchmaker, and Suzanne Bernard, the daughter of a minister who died shortly after giving birth to him. Rousseau’s baptism ceremony was a traditional one held at St. Peter’s Cathedral on July 4, 1712 by the reverend senebies. He had an elder brother who had a “loose character”, but Rousseau loved him anyway.

The ideas of Enlightenment philosophers rippled throughout the globe, however, they seemed to have the most interesting effect on France. Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a major contributor to Frances political and social structure post-French revolution. These ideas weren’t the only triggers for the French Revolution. A combination of strangling taxes, economic disparity, and an impotent ruler led to the development of an intense need for reform in France. “France spent an enormous amount of money during the American war which put them on the verge of bankruptcy” (McKay et al., pg. 662). To make up for this immense national debt, taxes were raised which put more pressure on the already struggling working class in France. The privileged classes

Over the course of history this idea of freedom has been developed and defined by many famous political and philosophical thinkers. Many of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s ideas are acknowledged in the “Discourse on the Origin of Inequality” and more notably the “The Social Contract”. John Stuart Mill’s major points originate from a book called “On Liberty”. All of these works are still read today and taught in schools around the world. In particular, their ideas on freedom and liberty have drawn a considerable amount of attention. For instance, Rousseau is well known for his idea of “forcing citizens to be free”, while Mill claims that freedom can be found in “pursing our own good in our own way”. Therefore, it is evident that fundamental differences occur between Rousseau’s and Mill’s ideas on liberty and freedom. Rousseau’s rejects this classical liberal idea of freedom of the individual, and instead argues that the highest quality of freedom is achieved through a social contract where collective decisions represent the law and people have a duty to the state, while Mill sees freedom as not being constrained by the government (freedom from laws) and pursuing one’s own good as long as it does no harm to others.

During the eighteenth century, romantic writers and poets made a break with the rational and regular thinking. Most think of Voltaire as the main power of reason but Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a more well-known voice during the nineteenth century romanticism. Soon enough Jean Jacques Rousseau was considered the high priest of Romanticism. Confessions was popular enough among Europeans to make an impression on their thinking and influence. More so, Rousseau was considered a leader of the Romantic movement because his “enthusiasm for nature and his appeal to the emotions… opened way for… the Romantic…His ideas stimulated or inspired…” many other writers. Rousseau claims to be original and vary from others in society due to the fact

Rousseau starts his discourse with the quote, “What is natural has to be investigated not in beings that are depraved, but in those that are good according to nature” (Aristotle. Politics. II). It is this idea that Rousseau uses to define his second discourse. Rousseau begins his story of human nature by “setting aside all the facts” (132). Rousseau believes the facts of the natural state of humanity are not necessary to determine the natural essence of human nature, and adding facts based on man’s condition in society does not show man’s natural condition. The facts don’t matter for Rousseau because to understand the essence of human nature requires looking to how man is in a completely natural state. Since man is no longer in this state,

In Rousseau's Social Construct, he theorized about his opinion on the best ways to a political government and was the inspiration of many political reforms in Europe during the late 1700's. Throughout this book he had many key points that he talked about that are important to understanding if you want to completely appreciate what Rousseau was trying to express.

The purpose which Rousseau ostensibly gives his social contract is to free man from the illegitimate chains to which existing governments have shackled him. If this is his aim, then it follows that he should be most concerned with the preservation of freedom in political society, initially so that savage man might be lured out of nature and into society in the first place, and afterwards so that Rousseau’s framework for this society will prevent the present tyranny from reasserting itself. Indeed, in his definition of purpose for man’s initial union into society, he claims that, despite his membership in an association to which he must necessarily have some sort of obligation if the

Rousseau clearly promotes totalitarianism in The Social Contract, and hints at it in a few passages from his Second Discourse. He desperately attempts to lay down a form of government that eliminates any chance for the people to be victims. Rousseau specifically shows us the faults in the other types of government and tries to prevent them in his ideas. He wants to create a political situation where people have as much sovereignty as possible.

Eighteenth-century philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau influenced many French revolutionaries with his ideas. In the time of the Enlightenment, people believed that humankind could progress and improve through the use of reason and science. One of them was French artist Jacques-Louis David, who was official artist to the French revolution (p158, Blk 3). Just as Rousseau had used his publications to reflect on his ideas, David had used art as a media to reflect the ideas and values of the society in the eighteenth century. In this essay, we will be examining the influence of Rousseau’s views on the relationship between the state and the individual in David’s painting “The Oath of the Horatii”.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a Swiss-born French Enlightenment thinker most famous for the 1762, “The Social Contract.” “The Social Contract” is Rousseau’s most valued work due to its ties within the French Revolution.