Jean Jacques Rousseau Research Paper

Jean- Jacques Rousseau was born on June 28, 1712, in Switzerland. The European philosopher wrote a book called A Discourse on the Arts and Sciences. His belief is that society is corrupted by evil and that man is good in his “state of nature” (Notes). He believed that man are naturally good and if we let them act on their own instinct, that they will act their true nature. He claims that politics are evil and corrupt the society with their systems.

Jean Jacques Rousseau was a French philosopher in 1712-1778. He believed that all humans are born innocent and what corrupt them and makes evil is society. He believes that if there was no society it would not make human beings feel so judged, shy or depended on others. Without society people would feel more equal they would not want to compare themselves Humans would feel freer. Rousseau thought that society weakens humans that if someone were to grow up in a natural place and place far from society they would be stronger. Compared o the people that grow up in a society they weaken.

Society becomes corrupt and there will be violence and as a result will lead to revolution in the society. Rousseau believes in a direct democracy. These views will not be successful because good ideas will be hard to accomplish because of practical difficulties of the people living in the society. Rousseau says that a section of the society will provide certain types of jobs to their own relations and friends. This will create partiality and deprive the talented ones.

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 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

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.

     Jean Jacques Rousseau stated that the view of science, art, and social institutions has corrupted humankind. He also stated that natural state is morally greater than civilized state. Later he stated that it is more important to express yourself than to hold back on becoming a unique individual (Hampshire, 149).

99). Rousseau viewed property as a right “which is different from the right deducible from the law of nature” (Rousseau, p. 94). Consequently, “the establishment of one community made that of all the rest necessary…societies soon multiplied and spread over the face of the earth” (Rousseau, p. 99). Many political societies were developed in order for the rich to preserve their property and resources. Rousseau argues that these societies “owe their origin to the differing degrees of inequality which existed between individuals at the time of their institution,” (Rousseau, p. 108). Overall, the progress of inequality could be constructed into three phases. First, “the establishment of laws and of the right of property” (Rousseau, p. 109) developed stratification between the rich and poor. Then, “the institution of magistracy” and subsequently “the conversion of legitimate into arbitrary power” (Rousseau, p. 109) created a dichotomy between the week and powerful, which ultimately begot the power struggle between slave and master. According to Rousseau, “there are two kinds of inequality among the human species…natural or physical, because it is established by nature…and another, which may be called moral or political inequality, because it… is established…by the consent of men,” (Rousseau, p. 49).

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’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

To better understand Rousseau’s thesis and social contract he proposed, we must first understand why Rousseau felt compelled to write and his main criticism of society during the 18th century. In sum, Rousseau argued that states (specifically France, though never explicitly stated) have not protected man’s right to freedom or equality. Rousseau began The Social Contract in dramatic fashion. He wrote, “man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains” (1). This quote is still used today, and is a powerful description of Rousseau’s central issue with society. He believed that every man is “born” naturally free—he has full autonomy and can do what he chooses. However, Rousseau argued that man is bound to the injustices of society.

While one might not go as far as to see them as diametrically opposite, they are at the very least distinctively different. Rousseau, Mill, and Constant exhibit a very different view of the modernizing society. This paper seeks to flash out the distinct visions of liberty that Rousseau, Mill, and Constant articulated by unpacking and discerning the central premises of each argument, pitting them against each other through comparing and contrasting.

According to Rousseau man was born “naturally good”. However, when man began to acquire private property it created a society where the naturally good of individuals became corrupted. Modern institutions like private property are the driving force behind an immoral

all others. The way we started, grew as a society, and live now, are totally

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”.