The State of Nature Concept of Jean-Jacques Rousseau

He says that the more or lessone whitethorn have a exceptional exit that differs from the full world-wide will, which freighter mean that the individual will want things for himself that are non in keeping with the common interest that derives from the general will. Rousseau equates liberty with con stochastic variableity to the general will, and thus forcing the individual to conform to the general will means forcing the individual to be free. Rousseau also sees the affectionate contract as involving a trade-off that benefits the individual. He says that the individual gives up certain things when agreeing to the social contract exclusively receives such(prenominal) more than he surrenders He believed that once individuals came together to form a social order, what was formed was a new entity with a common life and a common will. This is the general will, and it ever tends to preserve the existence and welfare of the whole. The general will is something intangible but powerful. It becomes the motivating force for the preservation of social values.

The nous of the social contract holds that political society rests ultimately on a voluntary agree ment whereby people in a adduce of temperament agree to give up some of the freedom they enjoy in that state as a way of assuring their security and other returns in a social structure under law. A contrast is narrow up between the state of nature and society, though th

It is ever the way of men to wish well their own good, but they do not at every last(predicate) times see where that good lies. The people are never corrupted though ofttimes deceived, and it is exclusively when they are deceived that they expect to will what is evil (Rousseau, 1960, 193).

Rousseau does not see the state of nature as a state of grace and instead sees men as seeking their own advantage over others by coercion and force. However, there is a social unit in the state of nature that serves as the model for society, and that social unit is the family. He writes in Book I, Chapter II: "The oldest form of society--and the yet born(p) one--is the family" (Rousseau, 1960, 170).

Even the family unit, though, is based on underlying motives and forces: "Children pillow bound to their father for only just so large as they feel the need of him for their self-preservation" (Rousseau, 1960, 170).

This means that there is often a difference between the will of all and the general will as the general will "is concerned only with the common interest" while the will of all "with interests that are partial, being itself but the sum of individual wills" (Rousseau, 1960, 193). The general will derives from the sum of the particular wills but is apparently something more as well. The general will can be subverted as the particular wills bind together in associations formed at the expenditure of the whole: Finally, when one of these groups becomes so large as to souse all the others, the result is not the sum of small differences, but one single difference. The general will does not because come into play at all, and the prevailing opinion has no more validity than that of an individual man (Rousseau, 1960, 194).

e finespun difference depends on one's view of what the state of nature rattling entails. For Locke, the state of nature was a state of full natural rights so that there had to be a compelling advantage in any social agreement that would replace it. For Hobbes, the state of natu
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