Rousseau
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Following the lead of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau returns to the idea of the social contract in his treatise of the same name. As with Hobbes and Locke, Rousseau begins with a consideration of man in a state of nature. He finds that all men are born free but that all around can be seen men in chains, and he asks how this can have come about and how this change can be seen as legitimate. The right that Rousseau holds in highest regard is the social order, and he says that this is a right that does not come from nature but that is rather founded on conventions. Identifying these conventions is the issue, and one of the important forces expressed by Rousseau as being the motivator for the development of these conventions and for the agreement resulting in a social order is the general will. Rousseau was less interested in individual freedom and more in making government responsive to the general will. Rousseau considered the formation and influence of groups within society. For Rousseau, the social contract created an environment in which the general will of the people, a unifying force, would dominate individuals and their particular wills. Rousseau agreed that man in nature, the "noble savage," was essentially good, but he also sees that man in society is not free and has not protected himself from tyrannical government. He sees this as a consequence of the failure of people to participate fully in their own governance. Such participation
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most important function of the human being, a function he calls the first law of human nature. This law is carried out in a world in which each individual has complete independence and sovereignty over himself. This sovereignty in the state of nature is inalienable, but it can be altered so that it becomes sovereignty for the collective mass in society rather than the individual and weaker sovereignty in presocial life. The social contract is the agreement whereby individuals come together to form a society and place their collective, corporate sovereignty in one man or group of men who then become the sovereign as the servant or the political instrument of the people.
This view was much like that of Locke and Hobbes, but Rousseau included another important element that made his theory different from theirs. He felt that once individuals came together to form a social order, what was formed was a new entity with a common life and a common will. This is the general will, and it always tends to preserve the existence and welfare of the whole. The general will is something intangible but powerful. It becomes the motivating force for the preservation of social values. Rousseau states that "only the general will can direct t
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Approximate Word count = 1659
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)
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