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Rousseau And Equality

Decent Essays

Rousseau committed himself to the promotion of individual rights which had a cascading effect on Frenchmen and gave rise to a reform in the individual rights that were given to a person in France. He believed that society would captivate, rather than liberate an individual. In her Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Equality, Judith N. Shklar argues that “Freedom is defined, here, as the unimpaired strength of the state, not as personal choice Dependence on private persons is a loss of freedom now, because it diminishes the state, not because it enchains the subordinate. Freedom is in reliance on the state's laws which one has made. For one then is not doing anything one does not want to…” (Shklar, pg. 17). A person’s freedom is not defined as what …show more content…

Rousseau’s Civil Religion is a text that clearly defines the roles of the church and the government in society. This served as a model for French government post-revolution and gave French reformers an ideal relationship between church and state. John A. Coleman clarifies the respective roles of the church and state in society in Civil Religion and argues that “The differentiation of civil religion from both church and state is healthy for both the state which does not place itself in opposition to the church and the church which remains free to perform a prophetic religious function. The relation between civil society (the state) and organized religion (the church) will be most harmonious when neither monopolizes the symbols of civil religion but both cooperate in encouraging a relatively autonomous set of civil religious symbols. The necessary conditions for such cooperation is that civil religion be both general enough to earn acceptance by specific, historic world religions, yet specific enough to provide a clear statement of the role and destiny of man as citizen and the nation in relation to questions of ultimate meaning and existence” (Coleman, pg. 76). Both institutions have defined boundaries and must remain within those boundaries. There must be an agreement between both

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