...Freedom is a very susceptible term, to Mr. Jean - Jaques Rousseau freedom seems to be a product of nature and at the same time a product of civilization, and either of them is true depending of the context that freedom is interpreted in. Freedom then becomes a set of constraints, chains that compel us to cooperate with others in order to survive. It is for the sake of a community that new chains need to be created, thus given birth to the law. The purpose of this piece is to analyze the nature of freedom, the civil rights and the establishment of the a sovereign power according to Mr. Rousseau’s work. Let’s begin with men and his freedom. “Men is born free; and everywhere he is in chains,” (ER, 430) I take what Mr. Rousseau means is that In nature, men is born free but as soon as the event of his birth comes to pass, men becomes enslaved to his own needs, to his intellectual and physical limitations. Therefore the only obvious solution to any problem presented to man was to be solved physically, through the use of strength, to build, to hunt, to control their environment. So freedom in this sense is the use of force, and also is yielding to force, “an act of necessity” (ER,431) Mr. Rousseau calls it, and act of self-preservation. And it is by combining forces that men can manage to defend their rights, their freedom. But to Rousseau, strength isn’t just power or necessity, it is also a responsibility that compels to respect the freedom of others. This way power becomes...
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...Social contract theory is a philosophical account of the origins of the state and the relationship between the individual and the state. It refers to an agreement between individuals, in which they abandon a part of their freedom (or natural rights) in exchange for laws guaranteeing an organized society. The concept of a social contract appears early in the writings of Plato; nevertheless, the major theorists of this concept are credited to Thomas Hobbes, John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. This essay will assess the meaning of the social contract through an analysis of their theories. Hobbes describes his conception of the social contract in his book Leviathan whereby he begins describing an account of men in the state of nature. In this state, men strive for power, are relatively equal and fight for scare resources (Wolff 2006). Therefore, from theses assumption of equality, scarcity and uncertainty, Hobbes theorized the creation of a state, which could ensure peace and security by commanding people (M.Rosen and J.Wolff 1999). That is why the social contract should be a “contract of submission”, which means that the only way to maintain the security is to completely submit to a sovereign authority. This contract is characterised by two fundamental features, which are a complete submission and an absolute power (J.Hampton 2013). Hobbes argues, only a powerful sovereign can maintain social stability: “Without the sword, contracts are only words" (Leviathan 1651). The result...
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...Samuel Cunningham POL 161 Essay #2 As everyone that has read the “Social Contract” can attest to, Rousseau believed every “man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.” (1) In book three of the Social Contract, Rousseau reveals several ways in which these shackles have yet to be released. In the following paragraphs I will consider what these chains are, give my own opinion on the subject, and discuss what it means to be truly free. To begin, in the radical and sometimes confusing political book, Rousseau believes that executive power does not belong to the people because it deals with particular acts and rather that the people should focus on general concerns. The people must have some sort of middle man or “agent” to pursue the general will and to be the messenger between the state and the sovereign. The purpose for this is to “full fill in the political entity the function that is performed in a man by the union of body and soul.” (2) For the government to carry out the general will, it must have its own life and be able to distinguish itself from the sovereign. While reading the “Social Contract,” it appears that Rousseau, while critiquing various forms of government, supports government being separate from the people, almost as if the government should be god-like. Be that as it may, he also says that the corporate will should always be less of a priority than the general will. To him, government should be an “intermediate body set up between subjects and...
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...James Staton Mr. Borton World Literature II October 6, 2015 Jean-Jacques Rousseau: The Social Contract Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a prominent writer in the eighteenth century and influenced different revolutions in his work such as the revolutionary sentiments in France and American colonies. Rousseau helped start the Romantic Movement and is responsible for creating the new genre in literature known as an autobiography. This came from the one of the stories he wrote called Confession, which he goes in to detail about what he has been through in life. He was writer during the Enlightenment period and he drew influences from Immanuel Kant. A lot of beliefs of the enlightened way of thinking show in Rousseau‘s writing called The Social Contract. Being “Enlightened” is ones freedom to think for them and not be trapped in social status that societies may put on people. Rousseau put together the social contract to persuade people to break the political rule of authority and give power to the people and not one person. The Social Contract was written in 1762 containing four different books explaining the possibilities of how people can achieve equality and power with the help contract. Rousseau's intended audience were the people who were under the political rule of authority. I feel that the way he explains his contract is effective especially because each book is something different that would erase the political rule of authority and bring equality among the citizen. Book...
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...Jean-Jacques Rousseau, “The Social Contract” (1762) Jean-Jacques Rousseau, a leading intellectual during the French Enlightenment period, published his seminal work, “Du contract social ou principes du troit politique” in Holland in 1762. This is translated as “Of the social contract or principles of political right” and as the name suggests, is a political treatise outlining the principles that Rousseau felt would reform political society. The Age of Enlightenment existed in seventeenth century Europe, and was essentially a cultural movement of intellectuals who wanted to challenge set ideas or advance knowledge. Rousseau, Voltaire, and Diderot, among others, were known as ‘philosophes’ and their goal was to bring attention to societies’ ills. However, Rousseau has been found to be an unusual man with many contradictions in his writing. He was a man who was a champion of individual freedom yet his “social contract” proposed a collectivist state. This essay will discuss the author and the historical background behind the “social contract”. Next, the document will be analysed as to its purpose and central ideas. Rousseau was born in Geneva in 1712 but came to live most of his life in France where he became acquainted with other fellow intellectuals. After winning a major essay prize, Rousseau then contributed to the crowning glory of the enlightenment, Diderot’s “Encyclopedie”. Love said in 2008, ‘Rousseau was the eighteenth century’s leading apostle of democracy’...
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...Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Thomas Hobbes were 17th and 18th century philosophers with contrasting theories about human nature. Rousseau published first part of his Discourse on Inequality arguing that men in a state of nature are free and equal. In their theories, both Hobbes and Rousseau’s appeal to the state of nature are quite different. This paper will discuss how Rousseau’s understanding of fear of death of human nature differs from Hobbes’s understanding. Hobbes believes that man is always in the fear of being killed in a painful way because everyone is an enemy of each other. Hobbes says life is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short” (Hobbes, 76). The fear of a short life that ends badly should be the glue that holds society together....
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...Page 1 of 7 What is Social Contract Theory? The concept of social contract theory is that in the beginning man lived in the state of nature. They had no government and there was no law to regulate them. There were hardships and oppression on the sections of the society. To overcome from these hardships they entered into two agreements which are:1. “Pactum Unionis”; and 2. “Pactum Subjectionis”. By the first pact of unionis, people sought protection of their lives and property. As, a result of it a society was formed where people undertook to respect each other and live in peace and harmony. By the second pact of subjectionis, people united together and pledged to obey an authority and surrendered the whole or part of their freedom and rights to an authority. The authority guaranteed everyone protection of life, property and to a certain extent liberty. Thus, they must agree to establish society by collectively and reciprocally renouncing the rights they had against one another in the State of Nature and they must imbue some one person or assembly of persons with the authority and power to enforce the initial contract. In other words, to ensure their escape from the State of Nature, they must both agree to live together under common laws, and create an enforcement mechanism for the social contract and the laws that constitute it. Thus, the authority or the government or the sovereign or the state came into being because of the two agreements. Analysis...
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...The Social Contract The Age of Enlightenment was a period of reason, discovery, and knowledge. In the 17th century, Europe created a movement that supported personal intellect, skepticism, and individualism. People resisted traditional notions and set out to think for themselves and develop new ways of interpreting life. In this new age of reason, society’s origin was questioned and this resulted in a new philosophy. The Social Contract is a theory that explains the relationship between individuals and authority. There are many different viewpoints on how this theoretical contract originated and how it should be upheld. New enlightened thinkers Thomas Hobbes, John Lock, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau publically shared their views on the Social Contract. The Leviathan, published in 1651, was the first written work to argue certain interpretations of a social contract. Thomas Hobbes used this publication to explain to the world why an absolute government was necessary for the advancement of civilization and individualism. According to Hobbes, before laws and government were established, men existed in a “state of nature”. The hypothetical state of nature describes the condition in which people lived before a civil society. Hobbes believed that this state was full of chaos, fear, and self-reliance. Men were free to do as they pleased and there was no order to ensure their protection. In order to maintain a beneficial society, men would have to surrender their rights and freedoms to...
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...The Grapes of Wrath directed by John Ford is a 1940 film based on the Pulitzer winning novel by John Steinbeck. It tells the story of the Joads who during the Great Depression in the 1930s were run off their farm in Oklahoma. The film details their journey to California in search of work and a new beginning for their family. This paper will relate the main character Tom Joad to the philosophies of Thomas Hobbes and his theory of the state of nature and government as an artificial creation, and Jim Casy to Jean Jacques Rousseau’s theory of government and society as inhibitors of our natural freedoms. The Grapes of Wrath Tom Joad, played by Henry Fonda in the 1940 drama film Grapes of Wrath, is the main character who opens the movie returning to his home in Oklahoma after serving four years in prison for manslaughter. On the way he runs into Jim Casy, the former preacher who warns Tom that most sharecroppers have been evicted due to the effects of the depression. Once finding his family’s farm deserted, he finds them at his uncle’s farm preparing to also leave the next day for California in hopes of finding work and a brighter future. As they begin their treacherous journey across Route 66, the Joads and Casy endure many hardships. Grandpa, who didn’t want to leave his land, dies and is buried alongside the road. Then they run into a man who informs them that there is no work in California, but with not feeling they had any other options, they carry on with hope that they...
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...“The Social Contract” Jean-Jacque Rousseau Book 1 Summary & My own thoughts: Chapter 5: We must always go back to a first agreement Rousseau believes that a despotic ruler may rule half of the world people, but as soon as he dies his empire would shortly collapse because his interests was simply his sole private interest, therefor there is no unity. The ruler does not try win the people’s heart, he rules by inflicting fear among the mass, fear of typically one individual, himself. By dominating with fear he isolates himself from the mass, upon that he does not care about public’s interest, therefor when his reign is over his empire will dissolve into a heap of ashes. It is the prior agreement that makes the minority obligated to the majority’s vote. Chapter 6: The social compact Rousseau concluded that the social compact boils down to ‘Each of us puts his person and all his power in common under the supreme direction of the general will, and, in our corporate capacity, we receive each member as an indivisible part of the whole.’ This is the first time in this work that Rousseau comes up with the phrase ‘the general will’. Chapter 7: The sovereign Each individual when making a contract with himself would acquire two commitments: (a) as a member of the state he has a commitment to the sovereign, and (b) as a member of the sovereign. An individual would have a particular will that contradicts with the general will and might think he/she is not obliged to...
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...philosophy. Fast forward to over a century later. It is 1762 and Europe is enjoying relative peace. Never before has mankind seen such a period of intellectualism, reason, and inquiry. It is here that Jean-Jacques Rousseau, a Frenchman, will offer his take on man and his most basic of instincts. It is from these settings that we can see how environment influences man; one lived during one of the most violent times in history and the other lived in an age of reason and civility. One believes men are...
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...dominates political thinking, with exclusive emphasis on the state as the primary actor in world politics. Realists display a very overt pessimistic view of human nature, advocating with religious conviction that selfish human nature drives international relations into conflicts subjugating state to resort to organized violence and wars in order to gain upper hand and to always resort to wars to resolve international conflicts. Thus resulting in a system framed to maximize state’s military power in a predominantly anarchical environment. As a distinct school of thought, Realism emphasizes separation from domestic to international with little or no democratic structures within its sphere. Consequently, warfare has remained an institutionalized social order against the predatory behavior of others and consequently a legitimate instrument of survival. Moreover, growth in the size of armies and the development of weapons technology has led to an increase in the frequency of wars resulting in large-scale destruction and death. However, this paper will argue that war cannot not simply be a tool or an instrument at the disposal of a state for the purposes of organized aggression and violence, rather it needs to be a rationally constituted structure that allows the state to maintain its legitimate peaceful coexistence within its defined sovereign sphere and maintain the...
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...Enlightenment Philosophers One of the earlier Enlightenment philosophers is Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679). Hobbes was an English philosopher, scientist, and historian. One of Hobbes's most important writings is “The Leviathan”. It argues the necessity of absolute sovereignty during unstable wartimes, and doubles as an autobiography. Thomas Hobbes believed that people were “cruel, greedy, and selfish”. Hobbes is quoted with “Life without laws would be nasty, brutal, and short”. John Locke lived 1632 to 1704 in New England. Locke lived as a graduate of University of Oxford Westminster School. His education led to studies in medicine, political philosophy,epistemology, and education. Many modern philosophers believe he laid down the basics...
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...Social and Moral Policies of Government Philosophy 2000 – Ethics August 13, 2011 Introduction The movie “Thelma and Louise” is based on two friends taking a vacation for a few days to get away from every day social regulations. Thelma’s is married to her high school sweet heart and is a victim of social rules laid by her husband. Louise is the total opposite of Thelma; she does what she wants when she wants. Louise has an on and off again boyfriend who she decides to leave for a few days until he gets his head on straight. Louise tries to live by the policies of the government but soon find if challenging. Thomas Hobbes believed that morality should be understood as the solution to a practical problem that arises for self-interested human beings (Rachels & Rachels, 2010). We all want to live as well as possible; but in order to flourish; we need a peaceful, cooperative social order and we cannot have one without rules (Rachels & Rachels, 2010). He also believed that “without society they would dwell in a “state of nature”, living in fear and engaged in a war of all against all” (Sommers & Sommers, 2010). Thelma is a very naïve person and believes everything someone tells her. Thelma is a housewife who aides to her husband’s every becking call. She lives in a “Social Contract Theory” and her husband is the keeper. Louise is a waitress who is trapped in a life going nowhere. Louise’s boss is getting a divorce and is letting everyone he knows...
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...democratically elected politicians is constantly scrutinised by their constituents, peers, the press and the nation as a whole. The recent expenses scandal provides an example as to why national and global societies have suspicious feelings toward the intentions of politicians. This essay will highlight the fact that the role of a professional politician, where instant decisive and important decisions need to be made, and the context sometimes require democratically elected politicians, engaged in a social contract with the electorate, to lie to safeguard the greater good of national and global citizens. Due to the volume of theory and discourse related to this topic, it would not be practical to analyse all aspects to this question. However, this essay will examine the following: first, it will look at the unique nature of the role of a politician, followed by an overview of the social contract theory and the contributions made to it by Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and John Rawls. Then, the work of Niccolo Machiavelli and the notion of Reason of State will be examined, followed, in turn, by Utilitarianism, commenting on the contributions of Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill. This will be done before going onto balance the essay by introducing a counterargument offered by Idealism. Finally, to contextualise the thesis, there will be a contemporary example given of a world leader having to lie for the greater good of global citizens for possible prevention of...
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