Jacques Lacan

Rousseau, on the other hand, theorized that there were two types of inequality: natural and moral (1:1). Natural inequality is one which can easily be defined by age, health, strength, and the like (1:1). Moral, or political inequality, however, originates from society through the consent of man, and creates privilege or oppression of man based on possessions, money, honor and power; this idea is consistent with Smith’s observation of inequality (8/31). Before man was civilized he was in a…

no particular relation to the body politic, leaves the laws with only the force the derive from themselves without adding any force to them, and, due to this, one of the great bonds of any particular society remains ineffectual” Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 268). Rousseau goes more in detail in his argument against Christianity and believes Christianity alone can lead to vice and destruction in any regime, “What is more, far from attaching the citizens’ hearts to the state, it detaches them from…

genders, nationalities, and economic and political statuses. One might begin to wonder: how did such imbalance arise in people who are, in essence, very much the same? In his Discourse on the Origin, and the Foundation of Inequality Among Men, Jean-Jacque Rousseau discusses his theories about the sources of inequality in humankind. He, along with other authors, has much evidence to argue that the injustices in society came about as a result of the formation of civilization. In his Discourse on…

Law and society, although different, are directly related to each other. Laws are meant to be rules that reflect values of the society, although this is often not the case. Laws are often created and applied in ways that help the majority and marginalized unwanted groups such as the poor and minority groups. While Rousseau views law and society as a tool used to maintain the divide between the wealthy and the poor from the onset of civilization, Barkman sees law and society as a pure idea that…

Locke and Rousseau were both concerned about the relationship between liberty and the civil state. The civil state is a potential threat to the liberty of its citizens. For both authors this liberty exists naturally in the state of nature. Both authors use the state of nature to establish that liberty preceded political society and how a properly designed government can maintain this natural liberty. Because their method of deriving the ideal state from the state of nature is the same, the stark…

Baron de la Brede et de Montesquieu (1689-1775) Montesquieu disagreed with both Hobbes and Locke because Hobbes and Locke both describe a “presocial” nature and this to Montesquieu was futile (p.15), and in order to understand society we must understand it through observation. Montesquieu discussed three types of government; Republic, Monarchy and Despotism (p.15). “In a Republic, individuals are citizens and are therefore equal. In a Monarchy, the principle of honour produces hierarchies of…

Civilization’s Degrading Effect on Man In The First and Second Discourses, Jean-Jacques Rousseau presents his argument that man’s progress has removed him from his natural state, and that this removal has been to his detriment. He asserts that vanity, avarice, and other sins are not part of this natural state, but rather products of the progression of the arts and sciences. Rousseau describes natural man as better than civilized man because, “His desires do not exceed his physical needs, the…

The Haitian Revolution as a Function of Independent Perspective In my final essay, I would like to examine the focal argument of Adom Getachew’s “Universalism After the Postcolonial Turn: Interpreting the Haitian Revolution” through the lens of CLR James’ revolutionary history The Black Jacobins. Getachew’s essay presents a challenging historiography, studying the way that we write history to centralize Europe and the ideologies that spill forth from it. Primarily, she urges spectators of…

government, eventually formed from a revolution against Great Britain, could even be seen as a direct result of the Enlightenment ideas on politics, as many of the early documents are said to be inspired by the ideas in the writings of John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and some of the founding fathers involved in the Continental Congress responsible for the Declaration of Independence were also significant philosophers of the Enlightenment…

The Truth about Human Nature The social contract is something that we all automatically agree to once we’re born into society. William Golding’s Lord of the Flies investigates, like many philosophers before him, this social contract and its extent of control over people. He does this through the story of a plane full of young boys when it crash lands on a desert island, leaving them to create their own society. Some people believe that the social contract is forced upon us by society and…