- Rousseau - "Forcing to be free" - The Social Contract
- Linking in with Hobbes and Locke.
- Rousseau is seen as the founder of romantiscm - The state of nature expresses that we were born free, and now society (laws and government) have distorted us, human nature has been damaged by society.
- He believed that society was an 'evil' and that all humans should return to an animalistic way, passionate.
- The state of nature is before government, the social contract had created the government.
-Hobbes believed that if there were no laws within society there would be chaos and that the state of nature is like war. He believed it would be best to elect a leader to have 'God-like' power that must protect your life and country from invaders.
- Locke was more rational although still believed a leader came from God and that everyone had their own natural rights and these can not be taken away. He has an obsession with property and believes natural goodness is needed for power to defend lives and property.
- Rousseau 1712 - Born in Geneva, he was a traveller and a aristocrat, his wife was a servant and an adultress and he had five children which he took to an orphanage - he wrote a book on how people should be educated and was very passionate and sentimental - not rational. He was influential to the French Revolution and disagreed with Hobbes and Locke stating that going back to when there was no language is the genuine state of nature.
He was influenced by the Greeks - Socrates.
He was put on trial for 'perverting the youth of Athens' and being a philosopher. Rousseau liked the thought of being part of a society that owned us.
"The first person who having enclosed a piece of land, took it into his head to say this is mine and found people simple enough to believe him was the true founder of civil society" Rousseau believed that savages were free and in a more typical society.
Amour - propre.
- 'Self esteem' is the cause of most enquality.
- The progress of civilisation is responsible for all our miseries.
- But we can not return to the state of nature so what can be done?
- Self esteem wears us down.
- State of nature - no one cared how they were seen, Rousseau knows we can not return to the state of nature
- He begins... "Taking men as they are and laws as they might be." This is a clear attack on Hobbes and Locke - but reminiscent of Machiavelli's 'Prince'
- The Problem - "Find a form of association, which defends and protects with all common force, the person and goods of each associated and by means of which each one while writing with all obeys only himself and remains as free as before" Hobbes.
- The Solution - The Social Contract
- Rousseau said we did not need an aristocracy
'The General Will' - Direct democracy - no representation - (voting for society)
-Since we all contribute to the shaping of this general will, when we obey it's laws we do, he wants to say, no more than obey ourselves.
- "For it to be driven by appetite alone is slavery and obediance to the law one has presented for onself its freedom"
- Contrast with the public and private sphere.
- Rousseau believes there is no conflict and there is an agreement within society making a law, to obey this law is to be free.
- Public life is to follow the law, and in private life you are seen to be free, 'in a private sphere'.
- Everyone is free because we all agree on the laws.
- Danger is a new kind of dictatorship (because the law becomes so important) the tyranny of law. Anyone who refuses to obey the general will, will be 'forced to be free'.
- Freedom exists only in service - our freedom starts where the law begins. You will only be free if you follow the law.
...French Revolution...
- Declaration of the Rights of Man - similar to American Bill of Rights/more influenced by Locke.
- Men are born and remain free and remain equal in rights.
- The principle of all sovereignity resides essentially in the nation (the people)
- Law is the expression of the 'general will'. Every citizen has the right to participate personally or through a representative, in it's foundation.
- Law is expression of innate goodness.
Rousseau believed that God was not influential in a person's everyday life - supreme being.
-Taking away power from the Catholic church.
...Romanticism...
- The idea of uniqueness of the individual
- Goodness of primitive man - the noble savage.
- Reaction against the enlightenment - believed in supremacy of emotions.
- The rural over the urban
- Aesthetic vs. Utilisation standards.
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