Jean Jacques Rousseau

Jean-Jacques Rousseau was an Enlightenment thinker during the eighteenth century and is most noted for his work The Social Contract. The Social Contract published in 1762 and is a philosophical document that expresses the ideas of popular sovereignty. Popular Sovereignty is a form of government in which “the doctrine that sovereign power is vested in the people and that those chosen to govern, as trustees of such power, must exercise it in conformity with the general will.” This is basically a fancy way of saying that the people have the power of authority of their government and the people should decide how they are governed. Like The Social Contract, the Declaration of Independence is a document that sets out to explain the relationship between a government and its people based on an an understanding of that relationship. The Declaration of Independence was composed by Thomas Jefferson in 1766, and shares many of the same ideals as The Social Contract. The Social Contract and the Declaration of Independence are more similar than different because Jean-Jacques Rousseau influenced John Locke, whose Social Contract Theories directly influenced Thomas Jefferson during the writing of the Declaration of Independence.

Rousseau strongly believed that equal representation wasn’t enough. He didn’t think that citizens could delegate their civil duties. Instead, he believed what the government needed to do in order to thrive is unite the people under one will, “The General Will”, the will of the people as a whole rather than the will of one, “Individual Will”. Rousseau believed that all citizens should live in a way that promoted the general good hence the, “General Will”. “Each of us puts his person and all his power in common under the supreme direction of the general will… We receive each member as an individual part of the whole.”

Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a Swiss-born French Enlightenment thinker most famous for the 1762, “The Social Contract.” “The Social Contract” is Rousseau’s most valued work due to its ties within the French Revolution.

Each and every one of us is entitled to the expression of the will of a community (which, according to Rousseau, is the collective will of the constituent individuals). In a similar light, the law is to regard each individual without bias; performing its duty of

Government is built on the premises of the established ideas of former politicians and then the new outlooks of recent politicians. All ideas on government are based on the structure and laws of former civilizations. Thus, many politicians can have similar viewpoints on government due to basing their ideas on the same former structures. But, in contrast new government structures include a variety of variations. Therefore, Jean Domat, Montesquieu and Jean Jacques Rousseau have major differences in their outlooks on government, but they do share similar aspects.

Rousseau is theorizing from the concept of the general will, which promotes individuals to become conscious citizens who actively participate as a community to form policies for a governing structure. The general will advocates for a commitment to generality, a common interest that will unite all citizens for the benefit of all. Rousseau states, “each one of us puts into the community his person and all his powers under the supreme direction of the general will; and as a body, we incorporate every member as an indivisible part of the whole” (Rousseau 61). The general will is an expression of the law that is superior to an individual’s

The book "On the Social Contract" published on 1762 by Jean-Jacques Rousseau is one of his most important works, which points out the basis for a genuine political order and freedom. One of Jean-Jacques Rousseau main ideas in this book is the significance of the loss of freedom. According to Jean-Jacques Rousseau freedom is loss when people elect representatives . In my personal opinion, I am not agreeing with the point of view of Jean-Jacques

In this paper, I will argue that Mill’s notion of colonial exploitation vastly expands Rousseau’s ideology of the perpetuation of social and political inequality through the development of private property. Rousseau discusses how property leads to inequality, which implemented the social contract. Mills expands Rousseau's ideology by discussing how race influences the social contract, directly correlating the racial contract to colonial exploitation. This allows Mills to accentuate the fundamental mechanisms in which the racial contract influences the social contract.

Rousseau argued that the general will of the citizens could not be decided by a monarch. He stated that the best form of government was a direct democracy “ . . . in which everyone voted to express the general will and to make the laws of the land” (CITATION ROUSSEAU). Rousseau claimed that all political power should reside with the people, who exercise their general will by deliberating on laws, voting, and making decisions by majority. Rousseau’s claim that citizens had political power encouraged the French public to break away from restrictions and revolt against their absolute

In Europe, they were having ideas about Liberty and progress. America was also having these same ideas at the same time. Jean-Jacques Rousseau stated that a country should be ruled by the general will meaning that there shouldn’t just be on person or group that makes all the country run, everybody should have a word in it. This new way of thinking shaped America to how it is today. Every single person in this country has a word on how this government and country should be controlled.

The majority first gains its right to rule over the minority, Rousseau believes, because “the nature order that the majority should govern and the minority should be governed.”. This principle of the natural order stems from the necessity for a society to identify and carry out the general will. It from this need to identify the common good, or general will, that the legislative body arises. Men are bound to obey the majority when they first enter into a society. To Rousseau, entering into a social contract, “by its nature, requires unanimous consent, that is, the social compact”.

Therefore it is the people who hold the power within the state, and also the legal subjects within the republic. Rousseau refers to the individuals as citizens when they are acting passively, and sovereign when acting as an active group for example, devising laws. He writes 'this public group, so formed by the union of all other persons...power when compared with others like itself' (lines 41-43 Rousseau extract). Rousseau's evaluates his solution, perhaps tersely earlier in his work by suggesting that 'the total alienation of each associate, together with all his rights, to the whole of the community' (lines 17-18 Rousseau extract). The main aspects that incorporates Rousseau's version of social contract theory is that he wants to make a distinct separation of the 'will of all' from 'general will'. Will of all or individual will, is private wills and specific to each of the state's members, while general will is a common will for all and reflect the common good for state members. By separating the two wills, can help to reduce conflict that may arise between the two, and by evaluating all the opinions of each member. It is possible to see what issues are more pressing, and cancel out individualistic wills, if the majority of individuals share the opinions, thus making this majority, the general will. Rousseau sums this up when he writes, 'There is often a great deal of

As the individual relinquishes all he had to the sovereign, it would suggest he was going to become a slave to the state. However, this is exactly what Rousseau was trying to avoid. This sovereign was not concerned with a simple majority; in fact Rousseau expressed distain for existing forms of civil state and their limited freedoms; “ England regards itself as free, it is grossly mistaken; it is free only during the election of its Members of Parliament. As soon as they are elected, slavery overtakes it, and it is nothing.” (Rousseau, as cited in Garrard, 2012, p.33) His general will was a more a greater, almost spiritual consciousness, which Rousseau outlined, somewhat abstractly, as “a form of association which will defend the person and goods of each member with the collective force of all, and under which each individual, while uniting himself with the others, obeys only himself and remains as free as before” (Rousseau, 1968 p.60). The laws or constraints “never formally stated, they are everywhere the same, everywhere tacitly admitted and recognised” (Rousseau, 1968, p.60). Yes, you would give up natural liberty, but you would gain civil liberty, thus achieving freedom, however now within the constraints of the general will, a structure that

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,

The social contract, according to which human beings begin as individuals in a state of nature, and create a society by establishing a contract whereby they agree to live together in harmony for their mutual benefit, after which they are said to live in a state of society, including concepts such as equality, fairness and equal distribution. During the Enlightenment of the 17th and 18th centuries, was when philosophers contributed to the social contract theory, as this was a time marked within history to be a time when intellectuals first began to explore established views in relation to religion, science, economics, goverments and laws. Dating back to 1588,Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) English philosopher, conditional defender of monarchy as the source of civic order (Explorations, 2014).Three philosophers in particular being Thomas Hobbes, John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau were the key thinkers within the philosophy of social justice, influencing the main idea of a social contract based on their theories, they suggest that the whole of society have been produced by a general social agreement, social contract, this outlines our responsibilities as citizens our obligations to obey the rules of justice that stem from the governments that enforce the rules of justice within our society, to enable a fair and just society and is within the interest of all people. John John Rawls, one of the most important political philosophers of the second half of the twentieth century, He is