Tonight's Lost: Locke and Rousseau. [View All]

[AP]

John Locke's the bald guy. Tonight we met Rousseau.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau makes it explicitly clear in his writings, “The Social Contract and Discourses” that he believes strongly in personal freedom and autonomy. Rousseau believed that a truly free government is one where everyone votes, every citizen. Rousseau argues that by everyone surrendering his or her rights to the sovereign equally they maintain freedom. He believes man has the most freedom in the state of nature, but because man has the ability to rationalize and the desire to be social, he must enter a social contract with others in order to have a free and equal society. Rousseau adamantly defends his belief in autonomy in his Discourses on the State of Nature, the Social Contract, and Sovereignty.


Rousseau believes that for man to exit a State of Nature he must agree to a Social Contract. Rousseau’s “Social Contract” in the simplest terms is, “each of us puts his person and all his power in common under the supreme direction of the general will, and in our capacity, we receive each member as indivisible part of the whole” (Rousseau. P. 192). Unfortunately, this Social Contract will require all individuals to relinquish their rights to the legislative whish is to be made up of all citizens, and raises a question about personal autonomy and freedom in Rousseau’s philosophy. The Social Contract allows individuals in the State of Nature to establish a whole community. It may be argued that by asking people to give up their rights, that they are subjecting themselves to inequality. Rousseau counters that argument:

These clauses, properly understood, may be reduced to one, the total alienation of each associate, together with all his rights, to the whole community; for, in the first place, as each gives himself absolutely, the conditions are the same for all; and, this being so, no one has any interest in making them burdensome to others. (Rousseau, John-Jacque. “The Social Contract.” The Social Contract and Discourses, P. 191)


If people did not give up their rights, they could not leave the State of Nature. Rousseau claims that everyone gives up his or her rights equally...

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