To understand John Locke’s understanding of freedom and equality one must first look at his ideas in the state of nature. Locke believed men gained natural equality when they left nature and became civilized. Naturally, a government needed to develop in a civilized society to keep everyone on the same page with what is okay to do and what wouldn’t and couldn’t be tolerated in a society. Locke was a social contract theorist, he believed that the goodness of a government relies on the citizens agreeing with what the government is doing, so a level of equality between the two. In Second Treatise on Government John Locke descried the level of power he thought a government should hold and what one should do for its citizens to ensure everyone
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Rousseau actually put down Locke’s view in The Social Contrast where he says, “tranquillity is found also in dungeons; but is that enough to make them desirable places to live?”(71) He then goes on to compare a Lockean society to the Greeks imprisonment where they live happily in a cave while waiting their turns to be eaten alive. In this Rousseau is saying a false sense of temporary happiness is just that, false.
Rousseau believed that for a Lockean view of a happy society to work each new person coming in, whether through moving from a different place or even through birth, would need to give up their natural rights to become a citizen of the society. “Even if each man could alienate himself {relinquish his freedom}, he could not alienate his children: they are born men and free; their liberty belongs to them, and no one but them has the right to dispose of it.”(71) By Rousseau's standard, children at some age would have to be shown all the rules and ways of the society they were born into and asked if they wished to become a part of it. Besides just asking new members if they would like to join the rules of the society, a society under Lockean views would also need to ask every member of the society every so often if they still want to follow the society's rules or would they like to change them now. As quoted by Rousseau, “it would therefore be necessary. to legitimize an arbitrary government, that in every generation the people should be in a position to accept or reject
Rousseau actually put down Locke’s view in The Social Contrast where he says, “tranquillity is found also in dungeons; but is that enough to make them desirable places to live?”(71) He then goes on to compare a Lockean society to the Greeks imprisonment where they live happily in a cave while waiting their turns to be eaten alive. In this Rousseau is saying a false sense of temporary happiness is just that, false.
Rousseau believed that for a Lockean view of a happy society to work each new person coming in, whether through moving from a different place or even through birth, would need to give up their natural rights to become a citizen of the society. “Even if each man could alienate himself {relinquish his freedom}, he could not alienate his children: they are born men and free; their liberty belongs to them, and no one but them has the right to dispose of it.”(71) By Rousseau's standard, children at some age would have to be shown all the rules and ways of the society they were born into and asked if they wished to become a part of it. Besides just asking new members if they would like to join the rules of the society, a society under Lockean views would also need to ask every member of the society every so often if they still want to follow the society's rules or would they like to change them now. As quoted by Rousseau, “it would therefore be necessary. to legitimize an arbitrary government, that in every generation the people should be in a position to accept or reject