Explaining the Origins and Evils of Society in Second Treatise of Government by Locke and Discourse on the Origin of Inequality by Rousseau

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Second Treatise of Government by John Locke and Discourse on the Origin of Inequality by Jean-Jacques Rousseau are books written to try and explain the origin of society. Both try to explain the evils and inequalities of society, and to a certain degree to discuss whether man in his natural state is better than man in society. These political science based theories do not appear, at first, to have anything in common with J. Hector St. John De Crèvecoeur’s Letters from an American Farmer, which are letters written by Crèvecoeur during the settling of America and the beginning of the American Revolution, however with examination we can see reflection of both Locke’s and Rousseau’s ideas about things such as human nature, government, and inequality.
When speaking about the nature of man, Crèvecoeur speaks about the natural man and man in society. He proclaims ‘Evil preponderates in both; in the first they often eat each other for want of food, and in the other they often starve each other for want of room.’ (Crèvecoeur, 608). He does not see one state as better than the other; he believes that they both have their disadvantages. On the other hand Rousseau as well as Locke both believes that man in his natural state was better. For Rousseau all man’s needs are filled in nature (Rousseau, 47), while in society man can take more than he needs which leaves his fellow man lacking. For Locke, even though man entered society in order to enjoy properties in peace and safety (Locke, 69) he believes that living in society has caused greediness as well as governments governing without the consent of their people. So while the authors disagree about what it was like in the state of nature, with only Locke really insisting that things ...

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...o live in a society where the government was democratic and the republic having been established much earlier (Rousseau, 31-32). Crèvecoeur’s preference for a free, democratic government as compared to an absolute monarchy, can be seen as reflecting the opinions of Locke and Rousseau.
Despite not being written in the genre of political writing, providing more of a sociological perspective in reality, Letters from an American Farmer is fairly consistent with having the same opinion and views on key philosophical issues such as inequality, government, and the nature of man as in the books Second Treatise of Government and The Basics of Political Writings. Through Crèvecoeur’s writing we see many opinions, such as the greediness of man as well as how man is evil in both society and in nature, which reflects the written opinions and theories of Locke and Rousseau.

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