Preview

How Did Rousseau Support The Government

Satisfactory Essays
Open Document
Open Document
70 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
How Did Rousseau Support The Government
Rousseau argues that sovereignty should be in the hands of the people, he also makes a distinction between sovereign and government. The government in charged of implementing and enforcing the general will. The government consists of a small group of citizens, known as magistrates. Rousseau opposed to the idea that the people should exercise sovereignty by a representative assembly. Rousseau supported the idea that they should create the laws directly.

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    According to Locke, the purpose of a government is to help people achieve equal natural rights. The government is obligated to defend and protect its citizens. However, the government must rule with the consent of the people. Also if the citizens have given their voluntary consent, they must support and obey a government that has claimed power. The citizens are obliged to obey the government if it has established legitimacy. However, one cannot be obligated to obey the government unless one has…

    • 789 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Rousseau made a distinction of natural liberty, civil liberty, and moral liberty. This is basically his classification of various categories of freedom. Natural liberty is the most basic and thrives in the state of nature, in natural liberty, man has unlimited freedom and right to anything he/she desires and is capable of attaining. Civil liberty is gained upon entry into a civil society through a social contract. Men give up the natural liberty which is less secure in exchange for civil liberty which is secured collectively. Rousseau, however, believes that the loss of natural liberty is a fundamental loss…

    • 799 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Rousseau added to the idea of democracy by creating the idea that people are born good but can be corrupted by society, therefore they need to make the laws themselves and willingly obey them. He believed that if left to itself, society would follow these equally created laws and society would maintain its naturally born goodness. He believes that only the general society is capable enough to run themselves with laws created by the people for the people. Much of these ideas are still around today combined with other ideas in our own…

    • 507 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    For the past many years, people have been trying to figure out the relationship between the government and nature of man. The theories of Thomas Hobbes, John Locke and Jean Jacques Rousseau about the connection between nature of man and the government have been debated for many years. These three philosophers have remarkably influenced the way our system works today. Although each theory had its flaws and merits, Jean Jacques Rousseau’s theory is superior in comparison to Thomas Hobbes and John Locke.…

    • 514 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    He also thinks citizens should have the right to revolt and government should always give and protect our rights. However, the Enlightenment thinker Jean-Jacques Rousseau, feels we protect our own rights by working together. In class we discussed how his belief is similar to the phrase: If we all have superpowers the no one has superpowers. We considered this phrase because if everyone were to have superpowers, then we wouldn't wish to have them anymore since everyone has them. Rousseau also stated we must use reason to give the individual rights of life, liberty, and property. Locke shows his views on liberty by inferring one should have the ability to choose who governs them, as well as having their freedom of religion protected. Rousseau expresses his conception toward liberty by explaining whatever the majority of the people want should become law and rules should be strictly enforced if the people are in…

    • 489 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    John Locke also said that government derived “from the consent of the people” and not by divine right. And therefore, if the people did not like what the government was doing, they had the right of rebellion. This is a great influence because this is why America wanted to write the Declaration of Independence in the first place.…

    • 444 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In years past, the majority of governmental ideas were based on a ruler with absolute power, such as the king or queen of a country. The common belief of the ruling class during the pre enlightenment period was that humans were born dirty, unhealthy, and were generally unable to govern themselves. With a “caring” and “fair” ruler they could be saved from the burden of their own judgement. In contrast, Enlightenment thinkers like John Locke, Baron De Montesquieu, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau thought that people were born pure and only were bad from the “corruption of society”, thus they should have a say in…

    • 496 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    All of these authors share some similar points, but the majority spoken is disagreement. I would expect this when there are men and women speaking their views during enlightenment. Of course, the men see women as objects to look good for them while requiring no education or the ability to reason.…

    • 759 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    To keep the government working towards the general good of the people, Rousseau believed that any governing body should be elected by the individuals of a nation. In the American republic, mayors, senators, even the President, are elected by the citizens. In this fashion, the general good is put before individual interests.…

    • 291 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Rousseau Analysis

    • 677 Words
    • 3 Pages

    In ancient times all men lived in a state of nature until hardships and the necessity to form a civil society between one another became eminent. Jean Jacques Rousseau’s “The Social Contract,” analyses the steps and reasoning behind this transition. In Rousseau’s work he focuses on several key terms in order to define this transition clearly, they include: state of nature, social contract, civil society, general will, and the sovereign.…

    • 677 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Declaration of Independence is the foundation of America. It contains “the words that made America,” (Fink, 9). Five of the founding fathers got together and penned this important document. As they penned this document, they were inspired by a number of European philosophers and writers. One of these philosophers was Jean-Jacques Rousseau. “Jean-Jacques Rousseau played a significant role in three different revolutions: in politics, his work inspired and shaped revolutionary sentiment in the American colonies and France; in philosophy, he proposed radically unsettling ideas about human nature, justice, and progress that disrupted the dominant Enlightenment thinking of the moment and helped to spark the Romantic movement; and in literature, he invented a major new genre: the modern autobiography,” (Puchner, 381). In this essay, I will discuss the depictions of the individual, human nature, and positive relationships that were inspired by Rousseau’s writing that can be found in the U. S. Declaration of Independence.…

    • 730 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Scientific Revolution to the study of human society. One way of doing so was to…

    • 10935 Words
    • 44 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    The enlightenment era, can be said, produced some of the most critical ideas that clearly impacted the development of democracy. This intellectual period that roughly lasted from the 17th to the 18th century is responsible for producing some of the most brilliant political philosophers. Amongst these philosophers and philosophes were political revolutionaries such as Voltaire, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Cesare Baccaria, Baron de Montesquieu, David Hume, and John Locke. The ideas they promoted and would later be adopted by flourishing democracies included the individual’s freedom of expression and religion by Voltaire, the separation of powers and checks and balances by Montesquieu, rights in the field of criminal justice by Baccaria, federalism by David Hume, and the idea of natural rights by John Locke. One of the most critical enlightenment ideas that contributed greatly to the understanding of the role of government was Rousseau’s social contract. This idea was viewed and generally accepted by many contemporary philosophers and seen as genuine and practical. According to Rousseau, legitimate political authority comes only from a Social Contract agreed upon by all citizens for their mutual preservation. The collective grouping of all citizens, or the “sovereign” he states, expresses the general will that aims for the common good. Thomas Paine further explains this point in his essay Rights of man (1791) by writing that government is not a compact between those who govern and those who are governed, but instead it is a compact between the individuals themselves to produce a government.1 According to both, the general will finds its clearest expression in the general and abstract laws of the state2. Furthermore John Locke viewed the Social Contract as a form of giving legitimacy to a government only through the consent of those whom it governs and that the objective of the government is to protect the individual’s natural rights. Paine further explains that a…

    • 964 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    was not directly created by the citizens is not valid, and if those laws are…

    • 958 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    God gives a sovereign the power to govern the people so he can represent the will of their Creator. Domat mentions in his essay, "Since government is necessary for the public good, and God Himself has established it". A sovereign who was selected by God should be compliant and society should obey the government. An individual should also respect the sovereign the same way he/she does for God. If a sovereign doesn't follow the rules himself, then his government will have its demise. A person who rules the government should know the purpose of God's will and incorporate the divine power given to him.…

    • 498 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays