According to this theory all men are born free and equal. Society came into existence because of the agreement entered into by the individuals. Thomas Hobbes Thomas Hobbes was of opinion that society came into being as a means for the protection of men against the consequences of their own nature.
He argued for freedom in music, and he pointed to the Italian composers as models to be followed. European music had taken a new direction. But Rousseau himself composed no more operas. Despite the success of Le Devin du village, or rather because of its success, Rousseau felt that, as a moralist who had decided to make a break with worldly values, he could not allow himself to go on working for the theatre.
He decided to devote his energies henceforth to literature and philosophy. Indeed, he decided to return to that city, repudiate his Catholicism, and seek readmission to the Protestant church. To the surprise of his friends, he took her with him to Geneva, presenting her as a nurse.
Although her presence caused some murmurings, Rousseau was readmitted easily to the Calvinist communion, his literary fame having made him very welcome to a city that prided itself as much on its culture as on its morals.
Rousseau had by that time completed a second Discourse in response to a question set by the Academy of Dijon: The argument follows on that of his first Discourse by developing the proposition that people are naturally good and then tracing the successive stages by which they have descended from primitive innocence to corrupt sophistication.
It is the inequalities of the latter sort that he set out to explain. Human vices, he argued, date from the time when societies were formed. Rousseau thus exonerates nature and blames society.
He says that passions that generate vices hardly existed in the state of nature but began to develop as soon as people formed societies.
He goes on to suggest that societies started when people built their first huts, a development that facilitated cohabitation of males and females; that in turn produced the habit of living as a family and associating with neighbours.
Only it did not endure. With the tender passion of love there was also born the destructive passion of jealousy.
Their innocent self-love turned into culpable pride, as each person wanted to be better than everyone else. The introduction of property marked a further step toward inequality, since it made law and government necessary as a means of protecting it.
Those passages in his second Discourse excited later revolutionaries such as Karl Marx and Vladimir Ilich Leninbut Rousseau himself did not think that the past could be undone in any way. There was no point in dreaming of a return to the golden age. Civil societyas Rousseau describes it, comes into being to serve two purposes: It is thus of some advantage to everyone, but mostly to the advantage of the rich, since it transforms their de facto ownership into rightful ownership and keeps the poor dispossessed.
It is a somewhat fraudulent social contract that introduces government, since the poor get so much less out of it than do the rich. Even so, the rich are no happier in civil society than are the poor because people in society are never satisfied.
Society leads people to hate one another to the extent that their interests conflict, and the best they are able to do is to hide their hostility behind a mask of courtesy.The Origin of Civil Society By Jean Jacques Rousseau Presented By: Aayush, Erika, Lauren, Jeongmin, and Sean Pronkovia King Yost Rousseau's Main Ideas.
The outbreak of the French Revolution in the summer of stirred the imagination of nearly all Europeans. The French revolutionaries - that is, those men and women who made conscious choices - sensed in their hearts and minds that they were witnessing the birth of a new age.
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Go to: Distributed Proofreaders. Social Contract Theory. Social contract theory, nearly as old as philosophy itself, is the view that persons' moral and/or political obligations are dependent upon a contract or agreement among them to form the society in which they live.
A DISSERTATION ON THE ORIGIN AND FOUNDATION OF THE INEQUALITY OF MANKIND. IT is of man that I have to speak; and the question I am investigating shows me that it is to men that I must address myself: for questions of this sort are not asked by those who are afraid to honour truth.
I shall then confidently uphold the cause of humanity before the wise men who invite me to do so, and shall . Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men (French: Discours sur l'origine et les fondements de l'inégalité parmi les hommes), also commonly known as the "Second Discourse", is a work by philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau..
Rousseau first exposes in this work his conception of a human state of nature, broadly believed to be a hypothetical thought exercise and of human.