Rousseau Civil Living

I argue that government and civil living benefit society because they force citizens to cooperate, give leaders the authority to impose laws which prevent anyone from acting uncivilized, and ensure justice upon criminals. In this essay, I will use a thought experiment to justify the implementation of government, then object this argument using Rousseau’s theory of the state of nature, and finally show how this objection is invalid.

Consider the following situation: you and a boatload of strangers are shipwrecked on a tropical island, which you think is uninhabited. Your boat is severely damaged, and there is only a small amount of food available. What do you do? I argue that the logical solution is to form a simple, but structured, organization

Rousseau argues that man’s natural state, without any sort of civil society or government, is peaceful, and that at the end of the day, man is only focused on his own basic needs. Therefore, without government, we wouldn’t run around killing each other just for the fun of it. While we might not necessarily cooperate, our disagreements would never escalate to the point which I describe above because our only disputes would be over our own physiological needs, and these are easily attainable. According to Rousseau, man’s natural tendency is not towards war, or violence, but towards peace and coexistence. According to Rousseau, our basic motives are pity, and self-love. Rousseau argues that we would defend ourselves before all others, but at the same time, our human nature enables us to have pity. Returning to my argument above, suppose that the shipwrecked group began a dispute about how to fix the ship. According to Rousseau, our dispute wouldn’t escalate to the point where a full-blown war began, or even to the point where someone was killed. This is because, as our main goal is only to satisfy our needs, our conflicts would be short lived, and each person would go off in a different direction and simply do what they thought necessary for them to survive. My next argument, that the only way to obtain cooperation is through government, and that we need to cooperate because if we do not, many

Is our pity really strong enough to prevent us from killing others? Even today, with the restraints of government, it doesn’t seem to be. In fact, I argue that our internal anger is powerful enough to overcome our pity in an instant, and drive us to do things we regret. For example, suppose that when a dispute arises on the deserted island, one thinks “this person just can’t see things the way I do! I can’t believe we are even this situation to begin with! I am never going to get home! ” In stressful situations such as being shipwrecked on a deserted island, we are desperate; and, desperate human beings are easily irritable, and often extremely volatile. In this case, one may be angry at their particular circumstances, and not a specific person, but because their anger boils over, they may attack one who is innocent. The same holds true in our everyday life. Life is difficult, and as humans, we sometimes become irrational, emotional, and allow our emotions, especially anger, to overtake our innate sense of pity, or self-preservation. This leads us to act irrationally, perhaps even killing a person, without a second thought. In this case, even if the victim didn’t initially harm us, due to our human nature, we may inadvertently explode because we lack control over our emotions. Thus, it is only logical that if even with all of government’s