How Does Rousseau And Diderot Compare Their Texts On Human Happiness?

Born in Geneva in 1712, Rousseau was shaped by the death of his mother and loss of his father at an early age. Sent to live with the Baroness de Warens, he gained a formal education that enabled him to write his later famous works. He loathed the Baroness’ values even when they eventually became lovers, but growing up in her educational environment allowed Rousseau to be exposed to different opinions that would eventually shape his Enlightened ideas, (Historyguide.org, www.historyguide.org/europe/rousseau.html.). This also exposed Rousseau to different religious ideas eventually forming his views that the church was corrupt, (Nardo, Don. “The Onrush of Modern Ideas.” The French Revolution, Cengage Learning, 2008, pp. 21–21.) Then in 1741, Rousseau fled to Paris where he wrote, “Les Muses Galantes.” This work allowed for Rousseau to meet Voltaire and exchange Enlightenment ideas. Being exposed to the “popular crowd” abled Rousseau in 1750 to write, “A Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts” based off of a prison he visited holding Denis Diderot. Diderot was one of the people Rousseau was able to meet due to Les Muses galantes, it was there Rousseau got the inspiration to form an opinion on the following essay question, “Have arts and sciences improved or corrupted the morals of mankind?”( Historyguide.org, www.historyguide.org/europe/rousseau.html.). Rousseau believed the arts and sciences had not corrupted man just simply decreased their freedoms. Being around Diderot in prison abled Rousseau to write, “Discourse on the Origin of Inequality” which stressed his ideals of man’s natural goodness and the corruption of regularized life, which connects back to Rousseau’s visit to Diderot in an institutionalized prison. These events and works all lead up to Rousseau’s most famous and popular work, “The Social Contract.”

Rousseau’s assumptions and beliefs of his era are society and the growth of social interdependence. He was from 1700, (1712-78) it was very different compared to our beliefs.

Denis Diderot and Jean-Jacques Rousseau are two of the original Romantics; they both brought new ideas to the world and tried to change it. Diderot was very big on man being able to think for themselves, not always being told what to do and how to do it, he believe in our ability to reason and make our own decisions “The finest privilege of our reason consists in not believing in anything by the impulsion of a blind and mechanical instinct. Man is born to think for himself.”(Denis Diderot, “L’Encyclopedie” 1751) Rousseau had his own view of liberty, he believed that man show follow their feelings and not their mind, he believe that nature was man’s true safe haven “To feel is to exist, and our feelings come most uncontestebly before our thoughts”

Jean Jacques Rousseau in On Education writes about how to properly raise and educate a child. Rousseau's opinion is based on his own upbringing and lack of formal education at a young age. Rousseau depicts humanity as naturally good and becomes evil because humans tamper with nature, their greatest deficiency, but also possess the ability to transform into self-reliant individuals. Because of the context of the time, it can be seen that Rousseau was influenced by the idea of self-preservation, individual freedom, and the Enlightenment, which concerned the operation of reason, and the idea of human progress. Rousseau was unaware of psychology and the study of human development. This paper will argue that Rousseau theorizes that humanity is

William Golding stated after writing The Lord of the Flies, that he had attempted to connect the flaws of modern society to their origin in the nature of humanity. In doing so, Golding has alluded to the contrasting teachings of the philosophers Jean Jacque Rousseau and Thomas Hobbes and the overarching conflict of humanity being inherently good versus inherently evil.

The political philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Karl Marx examined the role that the state played and its relationship to its citizen’s participation and access to the political economy during different struggles and tumultuous times. Rousseau was a believer of the concept of social contract with limits established by the good will and community participation of citizens while government receives its powers given to it. Karl Marx believed that power was to be taken by the people through the elimination of the upper class bourgeois’ personal property and capital. While both philosophers created a different approach to establishing the governing principles of their beliefs they do share a similar concept of eliminating ownership of

Rousseau states that “the first person who, having enclosed a plot of ground, thought of saying this is mine and found people simple enough to believe him was the true founder of civil society” (91). As a result of the creation of establishments and institutions of property, men created laws and the creation of laws created inequality among people. Rousseau stated that the only thing natural man cared about was survival. Additionally, natural man did not have possessions and therefore, there was nothing that could trigger envy or jealousy. Competition did not exist. However, civilization has corrupted humans. Today, man cares a lot about power and reputation. Rousseau states that, “ . . . the savage lives within himself; sociable man, always outside himself, knows how to live only in the opinion of others, and it is from their judgment alone that he, so to speak, derives the feeling of his own existence” (117). He continues by stating that, “ . . . everything becomes fabricated and staged -- honor, friendship, virtue, and often even the vices themselves, which men ultimately discover the secret of-- boasting about . . .” (117). In other words, man has not only moved further away from “animal condition” but from oneself.

Another key aspect of his personal source of happiness relating to his experiences of nature was his description of his accommodation after the stoning at Motiers. Rousseau explains it further in this statement “…It is on this island that I took refuge after the stoning at Motiers. I found staying there so

In contrast, Rousseau had a generally positive view on human nature though a rather negative view on modern society. He proposed that humans had once been solitary beings and had learned to be political. He believed that human nature was not fixed and was subject to changed. Likewise, he believed that man was good when in a state of nature, but was corrupted by society as shown in his quotation, "Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.” Also differentiating himself from other humanists, Rousseau taught that the sciences and the arts were not beneficial to man. Rousseau believed the general will must always be right and to obey the general will is to be free.

Due to state laws and policies, Marx and Rousseau both agree men are not living in a free society. In western democracies today, both philosophers’ ideas are clear and visible.

Rousseau believes that modern society must be judged by the virtue of its citizens. As he is trying to reverse the progressivism of the Enlightenment, Rousseau suggests that our social frenzy diverts and corrupts us. According to him, modern people cannot be trusted or loved, and are not capable of knowing, as they seek to be virtuous without actually becoming virtuous. On the other hand, Rousseau’s natural man can be defined as the primal identity of subject and object. Natural man is solitary, is distinguished from animals by his free will, has no concepts of morality, and gradually transitions from the state of nature to state of society. In order to emerge from the state of nature, one could benefit from two forms of self-love: amour de soi or amour-propre. Amour de soi is a natural form of self-love in that it does not depend on the love of others. Rousseau claims that by nature, people have a natural feeling of love toward ourselves and one another. We naturally look after our own preservation and interests. By contrast, amour-propre is an unnatural self-love that is essentially relational. Without amour-propre, human beings would not be able to move beyond the pure state of nature

“I have concealed nothing that was ill, added nothing that was good, and if I have sometimes used some indifferent ornamentation, this has only even been to fill a void occasioned by my lack of memory.” I like the way Rousseau expressed himself, what he said was I am who I am, I don’t add something good to make you make you more like me, and I don’t add something bad for no reason. Rousseau’s whole life seems tragic, when he was born he lost his mother and he had a bad relationship with his only brother; but I think he is a luckier, even thought he lost his mother but he has a lovely father, and his aunties, neighbors, the people he had met in his life they all like him. when Rousseau was in the middle age, he developed the idea of “kids should

     Man has no reason or conscience when in contact with others. Possessions begin to be claimed, but the inequality of skill lead to inequality of fortunes. The idea of claiming possessions excites men’s passions, which provoke conflict and leads to war. Rousseau believes men are not perfect in their original state, but have the ability to live in a more perfect society with guidance of

Eighteenth-century philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau influenced many French revolutionaries with his ideas. In the time of the Enlightenment, people believed that humankind could progress and improve through the use of reason and science. One of them was French artist Jacques-Louis David, who was official artist to the French revolution (p158, Blk 3). Just as Rousseau had used his publications to reflect on his ideas, David had used art as a media to reflect the ideas and values of the society in the eighteenth century. In this essay, we will be examining the influence of Rousseau’s views on the relationship between the state and the individual in David’s painting “The Oath of the Horatii”.

Rousseau starts his discourse with the quote, “What is natural has to be investigated not in beings that are depraved, but in those that are good according to nature” (Aristotle. Politics. II). It is this idea that Rousseau uses to define his second discourse. Rousseau begins his story of human nature by “setting aside all the facts” (132). Rousseau believes the facts of the natural state of humanity are not necessary to determine the natural essence of human nature, and adding facts based on man’s condition in society does not show man’s natural condition. The facts don’t matter for Rousseau because to understand the essence of human nature requires looking to how man is in a completely natural state. Since man is no longer in this state,