Rousseau's 'Social Contract'

Question 1

Rousseau: Background Info

Answer 1

• Born 1712, Geneva, lived in France until death 10 years prior to French Revolution, living during the enlightenment
• One of the most famous people in Europe at the time
• Thought that restoration of science and art (enlightenment) was leading to cultural and moral decline

Question 2

Rousseau: State of Nature

Answer 2

• Hobbes and Locke ideas about SoN smuggle in ideas of society
• In his there wouldn’t be many humans around, plenty of reasons so no need for conflict
• Humans natural instinct for pity, others struggling would want to help
• Independence, don’t rely on others and have freedom
• Humans naturally solitary, but pushed together by population growth and natural disasters. This creates small societies which create artificial needs such as pride or glory, these are alien to natural man
• Only develop rational capabilities through social interaction, social not natural man characteristic

Question 3

Rousseau: Political Society

Answer 3

• SoN golden age for people, creation of society was a travesty, only set up political society if tricked
• The trick was the rich on poor, development of property rights to leave SoN, convincing poor its in their interest
  
  • How politics began
  • Inequality and Injustice as basis for political society
• People compelled out of SoN by people with more power
• Impossible to go back to SoN and recreate those conditions
• “Man is born free yet everywhere he is in chains”, there is no natural authority, people are naturally free in political society, what right to rulers have
• Sovereignty is merely the exercise of the general will, the sovereign, a collective, cannot be represented by anything but itself

Question 4

Rousseau: General Will

Answer 4

• In political society people need to meet, debate and vote, then they will be obeying their will
• Therefore a monarch or representative democracy is legitimacy
• Everyone must be involved in the process of making laws, only then will obey own will
• Minority not just obeying the will of the majority? He suggests that when voting should consider the general will, what’s good for population not yourself
• People should recognise general will, always the outcome of the vote
• Consequences are that either the minority should have voted for the majority decision, or because it represents that they should have willed, in obeying the majority decision they are obeying their own will, those who didn’t can be forced to be free

Question 5

Rousseau: Human Nature

Answer 5

• Every man born in slavery is born for slavery
• No man has natural authority over his fellow man
• Overall his argument was for freedom in modern political society, but his logic used to justify lots of totalitarian forms of politics, e.g. Hitler, as suggested its legitimate to coerce people in the name of own freedom and what they want is irrelevant