Alexander Collier November 14th 2017
Philosophy Term Assignment The social contract, or as it is better known “contractarianism”. Is a way of describing what is objectively moral within a society. It is described as objective morality decided by presupposed rules made to define what exactly morality is. Within this essay I will bring up propositions and conclusions from both Rousseau and Nietzsche and their assumed arguments against each other.
Let’s start with Rousseau, the patron of “The Social Contract” and the author of “Discourse on Inequality”. To start, he concludes that good government is a democracy, but not any democracy, a well-tempered democracy, but one can only have that with time1. His propositions for this conclusion are …show more content…
That means that Rousseau’s view on how the person lives for them selves is the exact opposite view compared Nietzsche. Nietzsche would say that we live to serve and to honour others. The virtues he looks for in to be moral are: honesty, courage, fidelity, generosity and others. According to Nietzsche moral distinctions originated from social and political distinctions, saying that nobility used to be a social distinction but now it is considered to be a moral praise/distinction. The current setting in morality within contractarianism is to follow the rules, the many weak Vs. the few strong. According to Nietzsche, Rousseau was wrong in his account of human …show more content…
He states that to have a society you must have a well tempered government or effectively, a good democracy. But to have a good government you must have the peoples moral standpoints in mind, but the only way to have morals is by having rules that the government make (with the help and votes of the free people that is). Nietzsche even points this out in his works and says that it is an inconsistent set of claims. Due to the fact that you are required to have a good government to have morals but are also needed to have morals to have a good government.
In conclusion, the two arguments about contractarianism are both relatively believable but personally, I find that Nietzsche has the stronger, more logical argument. Despite Rousseau being the one for contractarianism, he is wrong in many cases about human nature in a historical context, therefore, I deem Nietzsche’s argument to be stronger than
Philosophy Term Assignment The social contract, or as it is better known “contractarianism”. Is a way of describing what is objectively moral within a society. It is described as objective morality decided by presupposed rules made to define what exactly morality is. Within this essay I will bring up propositions and conclusions from both Rousseau and Nietzsche and their assumed arguments against each other.
Let’s start with Rousseau, the patron of “The Social Contract” and the author of “Discourse on Inequality”. To start, he concludes that good government is a democracy, but not any democracy, a well-tempered democracy, but one can only have that with time1. His propositions for this conclusion are …show more content…
That means that Rousseau’s view on how the person lives for them selves is the exact opposite view compared Nietzsche. Nietzsche would say that we live to serve and to honour others. The virtues he looks for in to be moral are: honesty, courage, fidelity, generosity and others. According to Nietzsche moral distinctions originated from social and political distinctions, saying that nobility used to be a social distinction but now it is considered to be a moral praise/distinction. The current setting in morality within contractarianism is to follow the rules, the many weak Vs. the few strong. According to Nietzsche, Rousseau was wrong in his account of human …show more content…
He states that to have a society you must have a well tempered government or effectively, a good democracy. But to have a good government you must have the peoples moral standpoints in mind, but the only way to have morals is by having rules that the government make (with the help and votes of the free people that is). Nietzsche even points this out in his works and says that it is an inconsistent set of claims. Due to the fact that you are required to have a good government to have morals but are also needed to have morals to have a good government.
In conclusion, the two arguments about contractarianism are both relatively believable but personally, I find that Nietzsche has the stronger, more logical argument. Despite Rousseau being the one for contractarianism, he is wrong in many cases about human nature in a historical context, therefore, I deem Nietzsche’s argument to be stronger than