Philosophy 4: Paper Two (Prompt #2)
Rousseau believes that even when one votes in the minority they can obey the law and still be free. But, “how can the opposing minority be both free and subject to laws to which they have not consented?” (Rousseau, pg. 153) Rousseau’s response is that citizens must consent to all the laws because “ to inhabit the territory is to submit to the sovereign.”(Rousseau, p.153) In accordance with the social contract, when a citizen votes they should completely surrender their personal interest and vote for what they believe to be the general will. The general will of each individual is considered to be their real will when it comes to social policy. The majority vote will depict the general will, and the minority shows the citizens that are mistaken about the true nature of the general will. (Rousseau, p.153) Therefore, even if you voted with the minority and ended up being wrong about your real will, you still remained true to obeying your own reasons and deliberated freely. In the end what you wanted was the general will and voting is how you find out what it is. I do not believe that Rousseau’s reasoning succeeds because he does not give an adequate explanation for how the people voting are suppose to identify what the general will is.
In order to live in a particular state a citizen must agree to live by the rules of that state or prepare to possibly be punished for not consenting. Rousseau believes men came together to avoid extinction by combining forces and implementing a set of laws and motives in order to establish more power. The social contract provides a way of combining the efforts to bond society, without sacrificing individual freedom. In order to accomplish this, each individual ...
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...aving people vote according to what they think would be best for the general good, maybe it would be to get an idea of the interest of each member of society and use the sum of their results to produce what the best way to reach the general will would be. There are several other options that may considered that with further study may prove to be more reasonable than Rousseau’s view on the topic.
Work Cited
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. The Social Contract. Harmondsworth (Middx.): Penguin, 1971. 49-154. Web. .
Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a philosopher that helped develop concepts such as general will, and improved on the early norms on child-raising. Born in Geneva, he was a “citizen” of the city. “Citizens” were the two hundred members of the Grand Council of Geneva, which made most of the political decisions in state. Jean-Jacques Rousseau was an important part of the Enlightenment. He led an interesting life, as told by his three memoirs, had a solid philosophy, did not believe in reason, and left a lasting legacy that still affects us today.
At the core of their theories, both Locke and Rousseau seek to explain the origin of civil society, and from there to critique it, and similarly both theorists begin with conceptions of a state of nature: a human existence predating civil society in which the individual does not find institutions or laws to guide or control one’s behaviour. Although both theorists begin with a state of nature, they do not both begin with the same one. The Lockean state of nature is populated by individuals with fully developed capacities for reason. Further, these individuals possess perfect freedom and equality, which Locke intends as granted by God. They go about their business rationally, acquiring possessions and appropriating property, but they soon realize the vulnerability of their person and property without any codified means to ensure their security...
Rousseau defines the general will as concerning “only the general interest,” saying it can be arrived at by taking all individual wills and “[removing] … the pluses and minuses” from each to “cancel each other out” (437). He doesn’t say what parts of individual opinion are “pluses and minuses” however. Rousseau’s outlook on humanity seems to be overwhelmingly positive in this case, since he assumes that people will need no specific guidelines to lead “good” political lives. This faith in humanity is where his arguments become weak.
In the Social Contract, Rousseau discusses the idea of forced freedom. “Whoever refuses to obey the general will shall be constrained to do so by the entire body; which means nothing other than that he shall be forced to be free” (Rousseau, SC, Bk 1. Ch. 7). This forced freedom is necessary for a government that is run by the people and not a small group of few to one sovereign(s). For forced freedom allows a difference of opinions but the outcome is the idea with the greatest acceptance. Because political rule requires the consent of the ruled, the citizens of the state are required to take action within their community.
A key concept in liberal democracy is based on a consensus (shared thoughts and judgements from the public). This can be supported by a quote from Price who says a key concept of liberal democracy at a starting point refers to “collective judgements outside the sphere of government that affect political decision making” (Price, 1992 8). Price’s quote elaborates the importance of public opinion within politics especially within a liberal democracy. The concept of public opinion developed around the time of the emergence of the enlightenment theory. A key theorist in the enlightenment theory was Rousseau. Rousseau developed the ‘general will’ of the people. The ‘general will’ consisted of the desires and interests of the public as a whole rather than as individuals. Rousseau’s ‘general will’ exhibits the development of public opinion as people in society shifted from individualistic views and desires to shared judgements and desires which helped to form public opinion and the public sphere.
In his essay, Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, Rousseau attempts to explain the relationship between the formation of political and social institutions and the state of human nature. Before going into depth regarding the state of human nature, Rousseau starts by first demonstrating the first crucial steps in human evolution and the effects these steps had on the development of inequality. Rousseau believes that the combination of these concepts are important to understanding where we came from, who we are now as a society and what our society will resemble in the future.
Thomas Hobbes and Jean-Jacques Rousseau have very different views on the social contract largely based on their fundamental views of the state of nature in humanity. These basic views of natural human nature cause Hobbes and Rousseau to have views on opposite sides of the spectrum, based on two controversial speculations, that human is inherently good or that human is inherently inclined towards egotism and perpetual insecurity. Due to his belief that they are of this nature, Hobbes viewed an all-powerful sovereign of a rather totalarianistic nature to be necessary. Rousseau on the other hand, viewed that the sovereign should represent the common will of the people, the sovereign being agreed upon by all constituents. It is my assertion that Rousseau’s argument, although flawed in its own ways, is superior to Hobbes in that it has an answer for the inequalities that may arise in a society by Hobbes’ princples.
To understand the Rousseau stance on claims to why the free republic is doomed we must understand the fundamentals of Rousseau and the Social Contract. Like Locke and Hobbes, the first order of Rousseau’s principles is for the right to an individual’s owns preservation. He does however believe that some are born into slavery. His most famous quote of the book is “Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains” (Rousseau pg 5). Some men are born as slaves, and others will be put into chains because of the political structures they will establish. He will later develop a method of individuals living free, while giving up some of their rights to...
Rousseau believes the solution to having the obedience of men and their loyalty to the
Both Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Karl Marx had some doubts concerning works of Locke and Hobbes about democracy. Still, their delay originated from distinctive bases. For Rousseau, the issue was mostly political; particularly, the question of liberal independence and assent as the special part of managing government. Rousseau's choice was 'General will'. Marx's opinion was farther radical. Trading and loaning was the issue and just by upsetting the economic class framework could a practical unbiased state be made. So, the aim of this paper is to discuss and evaluate differences between Rousseau and Marx’s points of view.
In The Social Contract philosophers John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau discuss their differences on human beings’ place of freedom in political societies. Locke’s theory is when human beings enter society we tend to give up our natural freedom, whereas Rousseau believes we gain civil freedom when entering society. Even in modern times we must give up our natural freedom in order to enforce protection from those who are immoral and unjust.
He feels that if we are represented, we will not necessarily be represented in the exact manner in which we please. If we were to participate in the government instead, we could all deliberate with one another and come to a better understanding of what everyone’s ideas are. Also in The Social Contract, Rousseau comments about how the grouping of people into a civil society forms a sovereign, which we can metaphorically think of as a single person with their own personal will and also the general will.... ... middle of paper ...
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. The Social Contract and The First and Second Discourses. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2002. (sourced from Otis database)
The French economy in the eighteenth century was on the brink of collapse, due to two costly interventions in colonial wars across the Atlantic. The Third Estate, which constituted the majority of the French population, received horrendous taxation rates in order to save the floundering French government, which desperately needed funds to pay off the nation’s debt. Accordingly, Rousseau's vision of government in which "a people could only be free if it ruled itself" became incredibly popular amongst the French populace, due to the appealing idea of the French citizens controlling the government rather than an absolute monarch. However, even though Rousseau did not directly prefer a republic, (for he saw representatives as the removal of power amongst the non representative population) his ideas regarding the people's rights to create their own laws and effectively control the government, indirectly spurred on the creation of the French repub...
First the problem of order will be addressed. To determine how Rousseau handles the problem of order it must be decided whether the state Rousseau describes is natural or artificial. Rousseau believes that man is born into a state of nature. In this state of nature man has complete freedom. Rousseau defines this freedom as physical freedom, because man has the ability to whatever he physically pleases and is only guided by his impulses and instincts. By joining a civil society man gains the rationality to restrain his actions and preserves himself by removing himself from the state of nature, in which everything is determined by force. Since Rousseau believes man is born into a state of nature and subsequently forms a social contract to create a civil society that society or state created would be artificial.