Notion of Social Contract by J.J. Rousseau - Essay Example

His father got into a quarrel with a French captain, and at the risk of imprisonment, left Geneva for the rest of his life. Rousseau stayed behind and was cared for by an uncle who sent him along with his cousin to study in the village of Bosey. In 1725, Rousseau was apprenticed to an engraver and began to learn the trade. Although he did not detest the work, he thought his master to be violent and tyrannical. He, therefore, left Geneva in 1728 and fled to Annecy. Here he met Louise de Warens who was instrumental in his conversion to Catholicism which forced him to forfeit his Genevan citizenship (in 1754, he would make a return to Geneva and publicly convert back to Calvinism). Rousseau’s relationship with Mme. de Warens lasted for several years and eventually became romantic. During this time he earned money through secretarial, teaching, and musical jobs” (Delaney J. J., 2005).

How did it come about that a man born poor, losing his mother at birth and soon deserted by his father, afflicted with a painful and humiliating disease, left to wander for twelve years among alien cities and conflicting faiths, repudiated by society and civilization, repudiating Voltaire, Diderot, and the Encyclopedie, and the Age of Reason, driven from place to place as a dangerous rebel, suspected of crime and insanity, and seeing, in his last months, the apotheosis of his enemy—how did it come about that this man, after his death, triumphed over Voltaire, revived religion, transformed education, elevated the morals of France, inspired the Romantic movement and the French Revolution, influenced the philosophy of Kant and Schopenhauer, the plays of Schiller, the novels of Goethe, the poems of Wordsworth, Byron, and Shelly, the socialism of Marx, the ethics of Tolstoy, and altogether, add more effect upon posterity than any other writer or thinker of that eighteenth century in which writers were more influential than they had ever been before? Here, if anywhere, the problem faces us: what is the role of genius in history, of man versus the mass and the state? (Durant, Will, & Ariel. 1967, 3).

Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), a philosopher in the eighteenth-century French sense, was not what would now be called a “philosopher”. Nevertheless, he had a powerful influence on philosophy, literature and tastes and manners, and politics. Whatever may be our opinion of his merits as a thinker, we must recognize his immense importance as a social force. This importance came mainly from his appeal to the heart, and to what, in his day, was called “sensibility.” He is the father of the Romantic Movement, the initiator of systems of thought which infer non-human facts from human emotions, and the inventor of the political philosophy of pseudo-democratic dictatorships as opposed to traditional absolute monarchies. Ever since his time, those who considered themselves reformers have been divided into two groups, those who followed him and those who followed John Locke, an English philosopher (1632-1704). Sometimes they cooperated and many individuals saw no incompatibility. But gradually the incompatibility has become increasingly evident. Hitler is an outcome of Rousseau; Roosevelt and Churchill, of Locke (Russell, Bertrand, 685).

“John Locke, in the Second Treatise of Government, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, in On the Origin of Inequality, address the concept of human rights about the establishment and acquisition of private property. Locke takes an almost idealist approach on the matter, arguing that human rights are bolstered by private property and even goes as far as to name property as a human right in itself. Rousseau, however, takes a different approach to private property and recognizes the vast inequalities that it creates between human beings, arguing that the acquisition of private property undermines human rights. Rousseau crafts a much more persuasive argument due to his recognition of these inequalities and the assertion that humans are willing to enslave themselves to protect their property.

Both Locke and Rousseau derive their views of human rights from the state of nature where no human rights can be violated or impugned. Locke understands all humans to be free and equal in the state of nature, and thus entitled to life, liberty, and property. Rousseau differs only slightly in his conception of human rights, asserting that humans are free and equal so far as their understanding of one another goes. While not all are born in possession of the same talents, this does not become evident to humans until society is created and competition is born. This becomes a divisive point in the ultimate conclusion of whether owning property bolsters or undermines human rights. As far as human rights are concerned, however, Locke and Rousseau's views are similar enough in understanding that they may be considered the same for analysis, and are based on the freedom and equality of human beings existing in the state of nature and their entitlement to life and liberty” (Prather C., 1).