Jean Jacque Rousseau: Politics and Law

1. Jean Jacque Rousseau: Politics and Law Billy Blaha, Genevieve Brown, Callie Downing, Joey Hussey, and Michael Price

2. “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains. Those who think themselves the masters of others are indeed greater slaves than they.” — Jean Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract, 1762

3. The Social Contract Jean Jacque Rousseau was a French deist and an important leader during the Enlightenment, a period of time that helped fueled the French Revolution. Rousseau’s most important work was The Social Contract, published in 1762. It became an influential work in political philosophy and outlined the foundation of classical republicanism, which was a form of republicanism influenced by Aristotle, Polybius, and Cicero in the Renaissance era.

4. The Idea of the General Will • Individuals have private wills that correspond to their own selfish interests and objectives • Individuals, as long as they both identify with the collective as a whole and as a citizen, should set aside selfish interest in favor of being subjected to a set of laws that allow all to coexist under conditions of equal freedom • Individuals should identify with the will of the population as a whole because they are part of it

5. Social Contract and Abandonment of Natural Rights According to Rousseau, people can only remain free by joining together both through social contract and abandoning their claims of free will, which was a main idea in the Declaration of Independence.

6. Social Contract and Abandonment of Natural Rights In summary, acquiesce submission to the laws of the majority protect people against being forced to obey the wills of individual people. This also ensures that individuals collectively obey themselves because they, together, are the authors of the law.

7. Natural Rights Rousseau claimed that nature itself was free of laws and morality, and that humans were required to adopt forms of law and government as society grew larger. Rousseau also claimed that individuals are inclined to both compete with others and have consanguineous reliance on them, too, which can threaten their free will or chance of survival.

8. Sovereignty Rousseau argued that sovereignty, the power to make laws, should be in the hands of the people, not the government. The government is also composed of people, but their jobs are simply to candidly implement and enforce the will of the general population, because despotism or usurpation would cause conflict.

9. Moral Action Rousseau claimed that freedom to choose is the basis of all moral action. In The Social Contract, the connection between freedom of choice and morality is one of the main points to his argument against tyrannical government.

10. Moral Action He wrote that the abandonment of freedom is contrary to human nature, and that precipitately taking away someone’s freedom in favor of another person's authority deprives them of their moral actions.

11. Declaration of Independence “We hold these truths to be self-evident… that all men…are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights…that to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” The Declaration of Independence uses a main idea from The Social Contract, that the job of the government is to implement and enforce the will of the general population, which is the only way to create a fair relationship between the governed and the government.

12. Works Cited Bertram, Christopher. "Jean Jacques Rousseau." Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. N.p., 27 Sept. 2010. Web. 22 Oct. 2012. <http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rousseau/>. Frey, Raymond. "The Social Contract." Masterplots, Fourth Edition (2010): 1-3. Literary Reference Center. Web. 22 Oct. 2012. Kreis, Steven. "Jean Jacques Rousseau, 1712-1778." The History Guide. N.p., 4 Sept. 2009. Web. 22 Oct. 2012. <http://www.historyguide.org/europe/rousseau.html>.