How Did Rousseau Influence The Government Of The United States

Madison’s primary focus throughout the beginning of this paper is factions. He holds a deep disdain for them as he thinks that they solely focus on themselves, while hurting other Americans, which is evident in this quote, (“…united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adversed to the rights of other citizens, or to the

With a higher populace comes the ability to have a larger fighting force. Another valid point that Madison brings up is that small republics are often prone to faction, and eventually fall apart. With a large republic, you can “tame” the factions with majority rule, while letting them freely express their opinions. I agree with Madison on many of these points, but I think that he would change his opinion on many after seeing the current condition of the United States. The governing body has grown so large that it has become inefficient and in many areas has lost its ability to do what is best for the

“You make it less probable that a majority of the whole will have a common motive to invade the rights of other citizens; or if such a common motive exists, it will be more difficult for all who feel it to discover their own strength, and to act in unison with each other. Besides other impediments, it may be remarked that, where there is a consciousness of unjust or dishonorable purposes, communication is always checked by distrust in proportion to the number whose concurrence is necessary.”

The second way in which a pure democracy differs from a republic is that a republic is much better-suited to be extended over, as Madison puts it, a “greater sphere of country”. This second difference between the two forms of government is significant in ensuring the effectiveness of a large republic over a small republic. Madison holds that there are two options in curing the effects of factions. Factions can be cured by either removing their causes or by controlling their effects. Removing the causes of factions is neither practical nor wise, as there are two ways to remove the causes of factions: destroy the liberty that fuels the formation of factions, or force the same interests and opinions on every citizen. Liberty cannot

Second, by giving to every citizen the same opinions, the same passions, and the same interests. Madison defined faction as any group, majority or minority, within a society that promoted its own self-interest at the expense of the common good. Due to this, there needs to be a check on the government. Sometimes public rights can harm the rights of an individual, and Madison wanted to prevent that from happening. Federalism is another way to control factions. A large republic means more factions will

With comparison between a small and large government, James Madison argues that a larger government, like the one proposed by the new United States Constitution, would protect from the tyranny of the majority that would likely be the result of maintaining a small government. He argues that voters are more likely to elect “fit” representatives, as compared to the higher corruption plausibility present in a smaller government. Madison formulates an important argument in favor of the government presented by the Constitution.

What Madison is saying is that factions are going to be in a society no matter what. People are going to have different opinions. Factions are always going to exist, and no matter what, the government cannot remove factions because if they do then they are eliminating peoples rights. The constitution protects against this. ?Liberty is to faction, what air is to fire, an aliment without which it instantly expires. But it could not be a less folly to abolish liberty, which is essential to political life, because it nourishes faction, than it would be to wish the annihilation of air, which is essential to animal life, because it imparts to fire its destructive agency.? This is one reason that the Americans had success (Ziegler 216).

The only way to manage faction is to remove its causes and to control its effects. By removing its causes Madison believes that liberty will be destroyed, or that by giving every citizen the same opinions, passions, and interests, would be impossible because people can never all be the same. Madison wanted the United States to be a republic, a form of democracy in which power is vested in representatives, so there will be a greater number of citizens represented and we will also be able to have more control over the factions effects.

Rousseau sees the first step of exiting the state of nature and getting closer to origin of tyranny is when man decides to leave the lifestyle of being alone and always wandering to settling down and making a house and trying to provide for his basic needs and the ones that are not as necessary as: nourishment, rest, shelter and self-preservation. This is the stage where you see the element playing a part in man’s life and in the way civil society came to be. Man is no longer just worried about himself he has to provide not only for himself but for his entire family which he is searching for. Natural man or savage man lives within himself whereas Rousseau argues that civil man lives in the judgement of others. This is one of the big reasons has to how inequality fomed. All the inequalities Rousseau does take about or basically economic things that happen in nature. This type of economic ineuality is among the many other inequalities but is one of many that inequality originated from. If man had stayed restricted to working by themselves they would have remained free, healthy, good and happy as

In addition, Madison defined that a faction is an amount of people, whether a popular or smaller, who are combined and motivated by nearly mutual compulsion of desire, or of attention, opposing to the privileges of further residents, or to the durable and collective benefits of the public. Also he explained why the Framers took a representative democracy, a republic, slightly than a clean, straight, democracy as the system of government for our new population. He defined a "pure democracy" as "a culture involving of a lesser quantity of nations, who gather and direct the rule in individual."

One of the biggest sources that factions come from are from the distribution of land. There are two main ones, those with lots and land and those with little land. Even though these groups conflict, the government is obliged to guard the interests of each group. Madison stated two ways to control factions, which were to remove its causes and controlling its effect. Madison says next that he worries about corruption of members of the new government, but says it is less likely because representative will be chosen by a large population. He also discusses the differences between a republic and a democracy, along with that the main goal of the Constitution is to make all 13 states secure from threats and invasion.

The Framer’s notion of a republic, or democratic republic form of government, rested on the necessity to limit the formation and success of factions. Yet, as Dahl argued, the irony of Madison’s aversions to factions is that, not long after the ratification of the

Rousseau’s state of nature differs greatly from Locke’s. The human in Rousseau’s state of nature exists purely as an instinctual and solitary creature, not as a Lockean rational individual. Accordingly, Rousseau’s human has very few needs, and besides sex, is able to satisfy them all independently. This human does not contemplate appropriating property, and certainly does not deliberate rationally as to the best method for securing it. For Rousseau, this simplicity characterizes the human as perfectly free, and because it does not socialize with others, it does not have any notion of inequality; thus, all humans are perfectly equal in the state of nature. Nonetheless, Rousseau accounts for humanity’s contemporary condition in civil society speculating that a series of coincidences and discoveries, such as the development of the family and the advent of agriculture, gradually propelled the human away from a solitary, instinctual life towards a social and rationally contemplative

Rousseau contended that man is naturally a solitary animal (page 5, line 18). Man has lost the direction to which God assigned him, and brought evil into the world (page 5, line 10-14). He believed that God made men for happiness. He argues that evil is positive. He considers the work of men to be equal of divine perfection (page 5, line 22-25).

Though the civil society and social contract do exist in today’s society, Rousseau’s state of nature could never be in existence. In reality, it is impossible to have ever been in a state of nature. This is supported by Rousseau’s idea that at birth, one is born into a society called “family.” This society is eventually dissolved but children eventually build a social contract with individuals as they grow up and mature. Furthermore, this supports the fact that social contracts and civil societies do exist, even when the state of nature never did. Each day, this is immanent when one forms social bounds with the people around them. Rousseau’s ideas developed from his time period and his life. He was writing this essay during the French Revolution which is in itself a perfect example of the destruction of a social contract between a society and its king and turning into a social contract of the general will of the population to form a new society. Though our time period may be different then those of Rousseau’s, his message will still have a