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Rousseau differed with Locke in his perception of the ideal government. His work 'Social Contract' dealt with the issues related to governments, society, people and property. "Rousseau was one of the first modern writers to seriously attack the institution of private property, and therefore is sometimes considered a forebear of modern socialism and communism. Rousseau also questioned the assumption that majority will is always correct. He argued that the goal of government should be to secure freedom, equality, and justice for all within the state, regardless of the will of the majority" ('Jean-Jacques Rousseau').
If God were considered the supreme lawgiver, then Rousseau's sovereign power in this world would be a person who is assigned the task of implementing those laws to construct a livable society. This man would help in "transforming each individual who by himself is a perfect and solitary whole into part of a larger whole" (SC, p. 69). And he would be considered everything a sovereign power "ought to be" (SC, p. 52) Thus such a person will protect the natural rights of each individual and provide him guidance in matters of general will since people may not have the ability to understand what is good or best for him:...
70-71)
Rousseau was essentially against any social order that curtailed personal freedom or natural liberty. His social contract theory was not based on compromise of all rights but on relinquishing of only those rights, which fell in the social sphere or could have an impact on the rights of the community. Rousseau's social contract theory shaped modern political thought and is still commonly cited when democracy and rights are discussed.
References
Habermas, J. (1998). Three normative models of democracy. In J. Habermas, the inclusion of the other (pp. 240-252). Cambridge, MA: The MIT press.
Rousseau, of the Social Contract (1762), in the Social Contract and Other Later Political Writings, trans. Victor Gourevitch (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997)
Rawls, John, (1971) a Theory of Justice, Harvard University Press, 1999
The social contract: Less original positions. Vol. 354, the Economist, 02-12-2000.
" Rousseau on Political Representation, Democracy, Law, and the Need for Legislators: In Book II, Chapter 3, Rousseau expresses the position that a representative form of democratic government undermines a true democracy where each individual maintains his own point-of-view without aligning himself with any sub-group or political party, because: when factions arise, and partial associations are formed at the expense of the great association, the will of each of these associations becomes general
Social Contract by Jean Jacques Rousseau In The Social Contract, Jean Jacques Rousseau addresses the problem of political obligation and individual freedom. The work consists of four books, each comprising a number of sections that address the above-mentioned issue from several angles. The first book then deals with the troublesome aspect of a human being's apparent perpetual slavery. Book II concerns the issue of sovereignty. Rousseau now shifts his focus
Thus, it becomes necessary for society to compel this individual to act in accordance to the general will in order to stall a descent into arbitrary standards and meaningless identifications, and because acting in accordance with the general will means exercising reason and the freedom of thought and expression, this compelling takes the form of forcing someone to be free. The individual is ultimately compelled by society to utilize
Jean-Jacques Rousseau Personal Background Jean-Jacques Rousseau was born on June 28th 1712, in Geneva, a French-speaking city-state within Switzerland. He received little formal education and, in 1728, left Geneva to live an unsettled existence, travelling throughout Europe. Although mainly self-taught, Rousseau became a respected novelist, composer, musicologist, and botanist, in addition to his most commonly recognized contribution, as a moral, political and educational philosopher. He first came to prominence as a writer
Jean-Jacques Rousseau is one of the European theorists who has been cited as an inspiration for the Founding Fathers as they wrote the U.S. Constitution and created the American form of government. In some ways, however, they were using what Rousseau wrote as a beginning point and then finding a governmental form to refute some of Rousseau's concerns for what representative government might become if not controlled. The authors of
For Smith, however, the development of a commercial and economic society leads to the existence of a social structure. This social structure is furthermore divided into three classes - the landowners, the capitalists and the laborers. This is considered by Smith to be the three great constituent that exist in every single civilized society. For him, the introduction of social structures like government and economic classes are the major causes