Rousseau and the Social Contract

In a recent lecture we talked about another influential western philosopher, Jean-Jaques Rousseau. He is ultimately famous for producing the well-known document the Social Contract that in my opinion is rather invalid.

When studying Rousseau and talking about him in both the lecture and the seminar, I came to realise that he was somewhat a master of contradiction, and the Social Contract, I feel is a good representation of this. The main reason for this being that when describing the State of Nature, which is the state of which all humanity was at before government and social rules were in place, Rousseau uses phrases such as ‘savage’ and ‘chaos’ which of course are negative. So he introduces his theory of the Social Contract, which, in all essence means we surrender all our rights as human beings to the government and have to follow them and their rules like lost sheep. Rousseau himself even held a particular distain for Contract, although I praise him in his ability to be humble in admitting that the Contract was a ‘necessary evil’.

We also learnt in our lecture that Rousseau wrote a book on how to educate children. This is also ironic as he had five children, all of which he placed straight into an orphanage. Rousseau also held in high opinion the classes, which is again ironic due to the fact that said five children we given birth to by his common law wife, a servant.  The irony and outrageousness continues when he introduces the General Will. My general understanding of what Rousseau is trying to say is that we all have an equal mind of what is right and what is wrong, therefore when laws are created, they are created in a equal mind, therefore we are agreeing with ourselves – all of this being an element of freedom. However, if people do not agree with this or go against it, then Rousseau implies that they should be forced to be free – I find this to be an interesting concept that holds an ambiguity of meaning.

In conclusion, Jean-Jagues Rousseau was not so much a rational man, but a passionate one, therefore a distinct founder of romanticism. Despite my initial opinion of him, the fact that he is passionate is something I praise, therefore putting me into a conflicting opinion about him overall.