Political Paradigms

This study will discuss and analyze the ideas of Aristotle, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau with respect to the political paradigms their philosophies represent, and the ultimate result---authoritarianism or totalitarianism---of those philosophies. The study will essentially argue that Locke's notion of the social contract, the great power of the government based on that contract, and his inclusion of the people's right to change the government (or at least a part of it) results in an authoritarian society; that Rousseau's utter disregard for the individual's rights in the face of the common good leads inevitably to totalitarianism; and that Aristotle's philosophy stands somewhere in between the two metaphors (Locke's communitarian vs. Rousseau's mechanical). Aristotle clearly believes in the common good, but his society is far from totalitarian, thus defying the typical result of the communitarian model. Instead, the result is an authoritarian leader, with Aristotle spelling out the difference between the good and bad leader.

The three political philosophers, of course, do not commence from a point of advocacy for either authoritarianism or totalitarianism. Each of them, to the contrary begin from a place of idealism, aiming at what they believe to be best for both the individual and the society as a whole. Rousseau, for example, fashioning a concept of the social contract which fit the needs of the French Revolution, sought not authoritarianism but a government whi

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will be planning a state of chaos and anarchy. Rousseau is aware of this fact and pulls the rug out from under this "independent" individual and his "absolute value": In order, then, that the social compact may not be but a vain formula, it must contain, though unexpressed, the single undertaking which can alone give force to the whole, namely, that whoever shall refuse to obey the general will must be constrained by the whole body of his fellow citizens to do so: which is no more than to say that it may be necessary to compel a man to be free (Barker 184). Of course, this is blatant double-talk, the stuff of George Orwell's 1984 or Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Rousseau is merely paying lip service to the individual, when he in fact fears the true individual and his freedom and what he might do the social and political order were his individualistic ways to proliferate. Whereas Rousseau set out to guarantee that a despotic rule would not result from the French Revolution, he obviously feared the individual more than the powerful leader. He was either deceitful or naive in arguing that the individual with political rights was an individual whose needs in society were properly satisfied. In any case, the society he desired

Category: Philosophy - P