Rousseau's Concept of Democracy Essay

When Jean Jacques Rousseau wrote his Social Contract, the idea of liberty and freedom were not new theories. Many political thinkers such as John Locke and Thomas Hobbes had already evolved with their own clarification of liberty and freedom of mankind, and in fact John Locke had already publicized his views and ideas on the social contract as well. In Rousseau’s case, what he did was to transform the ideas incorporated by such substantial words, and present us to another method to the social contract dilemma. What would bring man to leave the state of nature, and enter into a structured civil society? Liberals believes that this was the assurance of protection - liberty to them implied being free from destruction and harm towards one’s property. Rousseau’s concept of freedom was entirely different from that of traditional liberals. According to Rousseau, liberty is meant to voice out your opinion, and participation as human being. “To renounce liberty is to renounce being a man” (Wootton, 454).

What entity dictates life on the most fundamental level? Is it the government or the people who permit the government to exist? This is the main point of contention between Baron de Montesquieu 's Spirit of Laws and Jean-Jacques Rousseau 's On the Social Contract. Interestingly, their interpretation of different forms of government converge on the sovereignty of a democracy, but that is where most of their common ground lies. While Rousseau shares similarities on the sovereign authority of a democracy with Montesquieu, he departs by arguing how regardless of government, sovereignty always rests in the hands of the people. He also disagrees on how the populace should participate in the democracy and on their representation in government, making his principles more relevant today.

     Democracy is defined as “A system of government in which ultimate political authority is vested in the People.” The Declaration’s

Rousseau wanted the state to be a legitimate democracy, a society that united together the people in freedom, equality and civic devotion. Rousseau believed that an individual fulfils his moral potential not in isolation but as part of a community where all members are committed to helping each other. This belief led Rousseau to ancient Greek society for which he felt a great admiration. He believed the Greeks lived in 'organic communities', cities where the citizens set aside personal interests in order to attain the common good. Rousseau's ideal state was one of a smaller size but one where the citizens were welded together in the spirit of 'fraternity'. People would therefore have the opportunity to get know each other, resulting in an enthusiastic contribution to all public affairs. Such a political environment produces free and committed citizens. In contrast, the large modern day states are ruled by an absolute monarch, creating 'servile subjects', which Rousseau despised.8

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 this book, Rousseau aims to discover why people gave up their liberty and how political authority became legitimate. In his case, sovereignty is vesting in the entire populace, who enter into the contract directly with one another. He explained, “The problem is to find a form of association which will defend and protect with the common force the person and goods of each associate, and in which each, while uniting himself with all, may still obey himself alone, and remains as free as before.” That was the fundamental problem which Social Contract provides the solution.

In the era of the contemporary United States, a country that has had the longest standing democracy, we are used to thinking very highly of its system. However, throughout our history, there have been a couple of critics to the system of democracy. It comes as no surprise that democracy does have its issues. One of the first pieces of literature where democracy was mentioned and analyzed at a deeper level was The Republic by Plato. This ancient Greek philosopher did not completely agree with democracy, regardless of the fact that ancient Athens was the first civilization that gave rise to it. In fact, in a numerical list that he composes on which are the best ways of ruling, Plato puts democracy at one of the lowest levels. In order, Plato’s list of types of government from most desirable to least desirable looks like this: 1.) Republic (The ideal city) 2.) Timocracy 3.) Oligarchy 4.) Democracy 5.) Tyranny. Additionally, In The Republic, Plato tells us his beliefs and values on certain aspects of life through the eyes of Socrates. So, even though Plato himself does not appear in The Republic and instead Socrates does, nonetheless, Plato and Socrates shared the same ideology when it came to democracy. As we know, Plato did not agree with democracy. As a result, in this paper, I will explore the greatest intellectual strengths and weaknesses of Plato’s view on democracy.

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

“This fame study of original man, of his real wants, and of the fundamental principle of his duties, is likewise the only good method we can take, to surmount an infinite number of difficulties concerning the Origins of Inequality, the true foundations of political bodies, the reciprocal rights of their members, and a thousand other familiar questions that are as important as they are ill understood.” (Rousseau, Preface lviii)

Rousseau establishes the Social Contract (Compact) that will provide the solution for a protective community of free individuals, who submit their freedoms or duties to the betterment of the whole collective body. While the individual is still free to conduct his life in freedom, the same citizen has a requirement to conduct business and make decisions that will be what’s best for the body. If everyone in the body commits to the arrangements of the contract, then the general members will have no problems with compelling to the political structure (Rousseau pg. 11).

Locke and Rousseau present themselves as two very distinct thinkers. They both use similar terms, but conceptualize them differently to fulfill very different purposes. As such, one ought not be surprised that the two theorists do not understand liberty in the same way. Locke discusses liberty on an individual scale, with personal freedom being guaranteed by laws and institutions created in civil society. By comparison, Rousseau’s conception portrays liberty as an affair of the entire political community, and is best captured by the notion of self-rule. The distinctions, but also the similarities between Locke and Rousseau’s conceptions can be clarified by examining the role of liberty in each theorist’s proposed state of nature and

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.

The general understanding of democracy is that it is a state of leadership where citizens of a country participate equally either directly or by representative individuals in the establishment of laws, which run the society. However, like many other forms of leadership, democracy has its cons and may not give the citizens the necessary freedoms that they think they have. Different philosophers have different insights on democracy in terms of concepts such as liberty, which they embraced. This paper will look at Benjamin Barber and Joseph Schumpeter’s idea of democracy contrasting their definition in terms of citizenship, obligation, rights and duties of each individual in the society declaring whose idea of democracy creates a compelling vision (Terchek & Conte, 2001).

Because Rousseau finds serious faults with the first three types, he calls for people to adhere to a fourth kind of religion. He defines this as “civil religion.”

Churchill’s claim that “democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried” is deliberately provocative and intended to challenge the reader’s simplistic ideal that democracy is without faults. There are an estimated 114 democracies in the world today (Wong, Oct 3rd lecture). A figure that has increased rapidly in the last century not necessarily because democracy is the best form of government, but primarily for reason that in practice, under stable social, economic and political conditions, it has the least limitations in comparison to other forms of government. Be it the transparency of a democratic government or the prevalence of majority rule, all subdivisions of democracy benefit and hinder its