rousseau

Essay on Rousseau’s Discourse on the Origins and Foundations of Inequality and On the Social Contract
by Charles Glenn

Human nature, as seen through the eyes of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, is highly unconstrained. He advocates the philosophy of the "noble savage," and identifies society, not human nature, as the source of vice and corruption. However, in Discourse and On the Social Contract, he admits to the need for society, and specifically, for a practical government.

Although he admires the anarchic nature of primitive societies, who have no conception of private property or "the state," he joins Locke insofar as agreeing that government is necessary for justice to continue to exist as a society grows larger.

Rousseau appears to see the natural world through "rose-colored glasses." He rejects the mind/body dualism, and advocates the idea that humans are more similar to animals than they are to each other, going so far as to ascribe sentiments such as pity to the animal kingdom.

Pity, he feels, is the foundation on which human morality and ethics are built, and so he consequently believes that men are naturally altruistic toward one another. This altruism, however, becomes more and more subdued as a society grows larger, and with the advent of laws and government, mankind resorts to survival at the expense of his neighbor.

What Rousseau appears to desire is a society which is more similar to the natural order of things, hence he develops his central argument, which he calls the "social contract." In this contract, he posits that the people, not the government or one individual, form the "sovereign."

In a detailed series of arguments, he attempts to explain that the ideal form of government depends on the size of the populace, and that the basic structure includes the people, the legislators, and the executive. In his view, these "branches" are not as Locke describes them, but rather, they are natural outgrowths of the society itself. Using ideas like the "general will" in reference to a vaguely defined consensus, he concludes that the larger a society becomes, the smaller must its government become.

In the end, he appears to advocate a limited monarchy or aristocracy, depending on the size of the populace, with the important clarification that the government acts in the best interests of the common good.