Essay Social Contract

Rousseau thought that man was born weak and ignorant, but virtuous. It is only when man became sociable that they became wicked. (Cress, 80) Since civil society makes men corrupt, Rousseau advocated “general will”, more precisely the combined wills of each person, to decide public affairs. General will would become the sovereign and thus it would be impossible for its interests to conflict with the priorities of the citizens, since this would be doing harm to itself. Virtue came from the freedom of men to make decisions for the good of the

The opening line of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's influential work 'The Social Contract' (1762), is 'man is born free, and he is everywhere in chains. Those who think themselves masters of others are indeed greater slaves than they'. These are not physical chains, but psychological and means that all men are constraints of the laws they are subjected to, and that they are forced into a false liberty, irrespective of class. This goes against Rousseau's theory of general will which is at the heart of his philosophy. In

With this, all peoples are equal and completely free or, to put it more eloquently, “in giving himself to all, each person gives himself to no one” (Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. Basic Political Writings. Hackett Pub. Co., 1987. p. 148). In this respect, Marx and Rousseau share common ground. They both believe that a community or state ruled by all needs to exist to ensure freedom for all. Marx and Rousseau agree that control that comes from above/without/utilizing force can never be rendered legitimate. Likewise to Rousseau, the core of Marx’s notion of freedom is epitomized in this phrase: “Liberty is, therefore, the right to do everything which does not harm others” (C., Tucker, Robert, and Engels, Friedrich. The Marx-Engels Reader, First Edition. New York: W. W. Norton, 1972. p. 40). The break between the two is most noticeable concerning Marx’s central idea that the procurement of the rights of production is the key to freedom. When human beings are estranged from their labor they are estranged from themselves, from each other, and, ultimately, made subjects because of it. Freedom necessarily means that human beings must have the right to produce freely as production is a natural extension of oneself. As we shall see, this problem is only exacerbated by civil society.

The preliminary investigation into Rousseau originates with an account of his assertion that, “Man was/is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.” Rousseau postulates that those who consider themselves as rulers of others are, in actuality, more of a slave. Although Rousseau does not indicate how this enigmatic condition transpires, he does consider that he can legitimize the contention. Using an analogy from Causality viz., there must be as much cause as there is in the effect; Rousseau explains that people have a tendency to obey the rules. As long as people are constrained to obey the rules, they do it rather well. Nevertheless, if people were not constrained to obey those rules, they would actually obey the rules better.

In his work, Rousseau talks about freedom the most in his political philosophy, and the goal was to explain how people in the state of nature are privileged to have total freedom. Rousseau believed that in a good government, it must have

But Rousseau's system has a remarkable problem .He insures that the will of each person always coincide with the will of the state-either voluntary or by force-and this inclined to be autocratic solution and against democracy .He neglects the minorities' views and forces them to obey the general will. in another word, they had to suppress their views and follow the majorities, whether they are convinced with it or not. He justifies that, by doing so, you are forcing them to be free and this is for their benefit at the end.

In Book I, Rousseau begins Section I by saying that a man supposedly thinks he can do whatever he chooses to do as he is born with unlimited opportunities into the land of freedom (pg 56). However, this isn’t entirely true because the man is actually shackled by the law in reality. In fact, he will always have to follow a set standard of rules and regulations which has already been made by today’s civil society. The man doesn’t have much choice but to obey the laws like everyone else if he doesn’t want to get himself into deep trouble with the law in the state of nature. In Section II, it states that the only natural form of authority is the kind where it involves a family (pg 56-57). The child is dependent on the parents because he needs tender, love, and care from them until he grows

The equality of wealth, virtues, beliefs, and interests previously outlined are key for Rousseau in the political community because it guarantees political autonomy when all the citizens are motivated to believe the same things. But again it seems that Rousseau is undermining his views on the autonomy and freedom of the individual, this time by having citizens coerced into a specific ideal citizen. This is the core issue; the undermining of the individual along with the general will through this type of manipulation and molding. The individuals and general will become the product of this social engineering of ideal virtues through their moral direction. As a result, these laws become almost untouchable and sacred and a type of blind obedience

According to Rousseau, sovereignty is important because it is a power with undisputable and complete influence over its subjects, but it discards the idea that a small group or a person can act as a sovereign. People are treated equal instead of having laws that only apply to others based off of their incomes.

If we can be completely human under the sponsorship of the social contract, then that agreement is more essential than the people that consent to it. Hence, the point forward to this is that despite the fact that Rousseau does grant natives to do whatever they please insofar as it doesn't meddle with open intrigues, regardless he appears to accept that human identity is somehow open. He doesn't appear to see a refinement between who we are out in the open and what we are in private. By requesting such dynamic citizenship, he is requesting that our open persona outweigh our private

In Chapter II of Rousseau’s Social Contract, Rousseau claims: “Every man being born free and his own master, no one, under any pretext whatsoever, can make any man subject without his consent.” Rousseau goes on to propose a sort of paradox that pits all out freedom versus majority

Rousseau distinguished between two types of freedom, natural liberty and the liberty that follows after natural liberty is given up. Natural liberty leads on to civil liberty, developmental liberty and moral liberty when the social contract is entered. Being a part of the civil state necessitates the surrender of natural freedom to the community. As the sovereign is made up of the people, everyone ends up giving their natural freedom to everyone else, totally and equally. “Each one of us places in common his person and all his powers under the supreme direction of the general will; and we receive back as a corporate body, each member, as an indivisible part of the whole” (Rousseau 50). Thus this implies that the will of the sovereign is the general will.

Now though he noticed that people have private interests, he believed that in the aggregate will all the private interests will cross one anther to some degree. If not then there exist some common interests for all social participants. Therefore his sovereign is popular sovereign in the form of everyone’s democratic right. Rousseau opposed interests of associations formed by some members of the society. He said that

This is a good example to help discern the difference between a natural authority relationship and an unnatural authority relationship. A man, Grotius, “denies that all human power is established for the benefit of the governed, citing slavery as an example.” He says that the relationship between a ruler and his subjects resembles the relationship between a father and his child because the ruler cares for his subjects. Grotius is assuming natural superiority of rulers over the people they rule. Rousseau disagrees with this argument. Rousseau states that the superiority that a ruler boasts over his subjects is driven by force, not by nature. Rousseau is basically saying that the ruler has unlimited rights over his subject merely because he forces them to be obedient. Therefore, such political authority has no place in nature.

Another point that Rousseau develops is that if all humans give up their power and rights for the general will, they will be more free because what they achieve in the social freedom is better for them than the freedom in the state of nature. Therefore, people should abandon and sacrifice their personal freedom in order to achieve social freedom. People give up all their rights to each other and they’ll receive all their rights back through the general will and that 's how they become equal.