Christine Condon
Professor Brandon Ives
GVPT241
19 November, 2017
Jean-Jacques Rousseau: The Strongest Contributor to Western Government
Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau each offer competing explanations of governmental origins and analyses of human nature. They offer different standards, too, for what makes a government legitimate. Among them, Rousseau stands out. He succeeds where Hobbes and Locke fail, by embracing inequality in his theory rather than ignoring it, and by laying out a system of continual consent from the governed. In order to be legitimate, a government must be accountable to those it represents, or else it cannot serve and protect them as they wish. Rousseau’s argument also begins with an accurate evaluation …show more content…
Locke’s theory, which centers around man’s right to property, contends that “The labour of his body, and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever then he removes out of the state that nature hath provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his labour with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property” (Locke). But Locke refuses to acknowledge that this doesn’t apply to everyone. He refused to acknowledge the systems of slavery in his world, wherein people put work into the land, but did not reap the benefits of property ownership. Hobbes didn’t ignore slavery, but made steps to justify it instead. For him, conquest was a kind of contract. He wrote that slaves accepted their status in exchange for their conqueror sparing their lives, but he refused to consider the immorality of conquest (Hobbes). In the case of African slaves brought to the Americas, for example, European and American nationals simply masqueraded the immoral harvesting of resources, human and natural, as legitimate conflict. But they had no right to lord over human life, however different from their own. Rousseau, unlike his predecessors, makes inequality a cornerstone of his theory. As men began to form communities, they also began to compare themselves to others, he writes. Herein lies the root of inequality, which only worsened as civilization developed. As agriculture emerged, land was parceled out among different members of societies, often on hierarchical terms. Later came the accumulation of wealth, and from there, inequality started to spin out of control. When societies began forming government, it was done by the powerful and the rich, and therefore the unequal system was only solidified. In addressing inequality, Rousseau’s theory is the most realistic, as it doesn’t skirt the issue. In this way, his text is crucially critical of the
Professor Brandon Ives
GVPT241
19 November, 2017
Jean-Jacques Rousseau: The Strongest Contributor to Western Government
Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau each offer competing explanations of governmental origins and analyses of human nature. They offer different standards, too, for what makes a government legitimate. Among them, Rousseau stands out. He succeeds where Hobbes and Locke fail, by embracing inequality in his theory rather than ignoring it, and by laying out a system of continual consent from the governed. In order to be legitimate, a government must be accountable to those it represents, or else it cannot serve and protect them as they wish. Rousseau’s argument also begins with an accurate evaluation …show more content…
Locke’s theory, which centers around man’s right to property, contends that “The labour of his body, and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever then he removes out of the state that nature hath provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his labour with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property” (Locke). But Locke refuses to acknowledge that this doesn’t apply to everyone. He refused to acknowledge the systems of slavery in his world, wherein people put work into the land, but did not reap the benefits of property ownership. Hobbes didn’t ignore slavery, but made steps to justify it instead. For him, conquest was a kind of contract. He wrote that slaves accepted their status in exchange for their conqueror sparing their lives, but he refused to consider the immorality of conquest (Hobbes). In the case of African slaves brought to the Americas, for example, European and American nationals simply masqueraded the immoral harvesting of resources, human and natural, as legitimate conflict. But they had no right to lord over human life, however different from their own. Rousseau, unlike his predecessors, makes inequality a cornerstone of his theory. As men began to form communities, they also began to compare themselves to others, he writes. Herein lies the root of inequality, which only worsened as civilization developed. As agriculture emerged, land was parceled out among different members of societies, often on hierarchical terms. Later came the accumulation of wealth, and from there, inequality started to spin out of control. When societies began forming government, it was done by the powerful and the rich, and therefore the unequal system was only solidified. In addressing inequality, Rousseau’s theory is the most realistic, as it doesn’t skirt the issue. In this way, his text is crucially critical of the