Jacques Derrida

John Locke and Garrett Hardin, two men with boundless ideas that took society by storm. Locke’s ideas on property and Hardin’s tragedy of the limits of shared resources had people thinking: “Can we trust other human beings to engage in productive economic life without depriving each other of these very opportunities and harming the Earth?” Well to answer this question in short, sure! Hardin mentions “the commons” multiple times in his famous 1968 analysis. If you really think about it, the…

During the late 18th century there was a revolution amidst the people of France to overthrow the corrupt absolute monarchy. Under this monarchy the King had the authority to do as he pleased. Influences of Enlightenment thinking made worthy contributions to the development of the Declaration of the Rights of Man, most notably from Jean Rousseau’s writings of The Social Contract. The Declaration of Rights of Man was an influential document of the French Revolution because its articles…

Rousseau’s Discourse on The Origin and The Foundations of Inequality Among Men discuss why inequality is social through the comparison of natural men and civilized men. Rousseau believes that the division of labor is due to amour propre, or self-love, that is specific to civilized men. By tracing the differences between natural men and civilized men, Rousseau is able to showcase the effects of division of labor. Division of labor requires human dependency, differentiation and specialization, and…

Explication: Rameau’s Nephew This paper is an explication of a small passage from Denis Diderot’s dialogue, Rameau’s Nephew. First, I will begin by identifying the taxonomic elements I used to examine the text, and then go on to acknowledge the relationships between these elements and how they connect throughout the text. With this evidence, I will proceed by stating a few possibilities of meaning that might be observed in the passage and then tied to the rest of the dialogue. Through this…

The Enlightenment was a time of reformation and a time of change to what was once normal. It was a time filled with philosophers and thinkers who revolutionized theories on how countries should be ruled and how people should be treated. Adam Smith, Voltaire, John Locke, and Mary Wollstonecraft were some of the many Enlightenment thinkers who impacted this time. The main idea of these four Enlightenment thinkers was all people should be equal and have the freedom to do the things they choose.…

There was solace found within society to question old ideas, theories, and convictions. Which brought about the Era of Enlightenment or The Age of Reason. This 18th Century era was monumental for scholars and philosophers like Thomas Hobbes, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and John Locke. Society began to use the scientific method and principles of reason rather than politics and religion to explain aspects of society. Thomas Hobbes is best known for his views on human nature in his book called “The…

Considering these two theorists: John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, this paper will explore the ideas of parent and child relations, with thoughts from Locke and Rousseau as well as the other readings we have had in class-- such as, Alan Richardson’s Children’s Literature and the Work of Culture - Literature, Education, and Romanticism, Lawrence Stone’s The Family, Sex and Marriage: Chapter 9 - Parent-Child Relations, Brown’s The Metamorphic Book: Children’s Print Culture in The Eighteenth…

According to Alexis de Tocqueville in Democracy in America, a democratic society has various characteristics such as individualism and a single-minded pursuit of material wealth. These two characteristics can cause certain dangers to a democratic society such as a despotic and absolute government and also unhappiness. Alexis de Tocqueville in his book Democracy in America presents a behavior that occurs in democratic America. This behavior is called individualism, which is a “reflective and…

The writer and philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau, who with writings such as "The Social Contract," in which he defines the freedom of the people and the Republic as a form of government, influenced greatly the thinking of the French Revolution and is remembered today as one of the first great classical liberal thinkers. Born on June 28, 1712 in Geneva, Switzerland, Jean Jacques Rousseau started early on in his life working as an apprentice to an engraver before moving to Paris where after a few…

Throughout the French Revolution, new ideas arose from the resentment and discontent with the French Monarchy and exploitation of French peasantry. The National Assembly was formed to give the third estate a voice, and with the heavy influence by Jeffersonian Liberalism and the Enlightenment, the representatives of the third estate created the “Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen.” This document addressed many of the issues concerning the equality amongst the estates and the need to…