Hobbes theory of Social Contract supports absolute sovereign without giving any value to individuals, while Locke and Rousseau supports individual than the state or the government. He rules out a representative form of government. But, Locke does not make any such distinction.
Unlike, Hobbes for whom the state of nature is a state of war, Locke's state of the nature is the state of peace, Good Will, Mutual Assistance, and Preservation. ' [4] His theory brings out that man is a wise, sociable being who can judge the ill effects of going to war .
The Social Contract helped inspire political reforms or revolutions in Europe, especially in France. The Social Contract argued against the idea that monarchs were divinely empowered to legislate. Rousseau asserts that only the people, who are sovereign, have that all-powerful right.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau impacted governments around the world with his idea of the social contract and the importance of individual freedoms. Rousseau argued that the people and the government form a social contract. The people allow the government to have power over them, they consent to be governed.
Indeed, in his most influential work of political philosophy, The Social Contract (1762), Rousseau asserts that democracy is incompatible with representative institutions, a position that renders it all but irrelevant to nation-states (see state).
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712 - 1778) was a French philosopher and writer of the Age of Enlightenment. His Political Philosophy, particularly his formulation of social contract theory (or Contractarianism), strongly influenced the French Revolution and the development of Liberal, Conservative and Socialist theory.
The four teachings of Rousseau that laid the foundation of democracy were as follows : He upheld the doctrine of popular sovereignty. He believed that the government should be based on the consent of the governed. He stated that people are the real sovereigns and kings rule with their consent only.
In turn, the Enlightenment ideals of liberty, equality, and justice helped to create the conditions for the American Revolution and the subsequent Constitution. Democracy was not created in a heartbeat. The American colonies began developing a democratic tradition during their earliest stages of development.
Rousseau proclaimed the natural goodness of man and believed that one man by nature is just as good as any other. For Rousseau, a man could be just without virtue and good without effort. According to Rousseau, man in the state of nature was free, wise, and good and the laws of nature were benevolent.
The state of nature, for Rousseau, is a morally neutral and peaceful condition in which (mainly) solitary individuals act according to their basic urges (for instance, hunger) as well as their natural desire for self-preservation.
Rousseau's central argument in The Social Contract is that government attains its right to exist and to govern by “the consent of the governed.” Today this may not seem too extreme an idea, but it was a radical position when The Social Contract was published.
Rousseau believed that the only good government was one that was freely formed by the people and guided by the "general will" of society—a direct democracy. He believed that laws existed to preserve social order, not to avenge crimes.
John Locke was the architect behind the Western democracies as they exist today. He presented his ideas in his principal work "Two Treatises of Government" in 1690. Unlike Hobbes, he believed that this social contract should be a democracy.
Locke believed that in a state of nature, no one's life, liberty or property would be safe because there would be no government or laws to protect them. This is why people agreed to form governments. According to Locke, governments do no exist until people create them.
Rousseau s theory of education emphasized the importance of expression to produce a well-balanced, freethinking child. He believed that if children are allowed to develop naturally without constraints imposed on them by society they will develop towards their fullest potential, both educationally and morally.
Who wrote the social contract?
Rousseau was the least academic of modern philosophers and in many ways was the most influential. His thought marked the end of the Age of Reason. He propelled political and ethical thinking into new channels. His reforms revolutionized taste, first in music, then in the other arts.
Simpson writes that Rousseau "defined moral freedom as autonomy, or 'obedience to the law that one has prescribed to oneself'" (92), though to illustrate this idea he gives an example of an alcoholic who is said not to possess moral freedom "because he is unable to live according to his own judgment about what is good
Lines of inquiry include: 1) the timeliness of Rousseau's work in the current context of deepening political, social, economic, and moral crises in the western world; 2) Rousseau's pioneering work in On Inequality between Men (1755), which still speaks to the scandalous social disparities, which modern society is host
The description Rousseau gave of his life, and the little reservations he had about retelling it, would have influenced the Romantic period greatly as his autobiography did not follow the societal rules and constructs of the Enlightenment period.
Jean Jacques Rousseau: His writing played a significant role in bringing about French revolution and encourage people to fight for their rights. He believed that government should be based on the consent of govern. His most famous work ' The social contract ' talks of the contract between the ruler and ruled.
Rousseau's account of the operation of society focuses on its various stages. In modern societies, however, inequality derives from a process of human evolution that has corrupted man's nature and subjected him to laws and property, both of which support a new, unjustifiable kind of inequality, termed moral inequality.
