Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Philosophy

Perhaps the greatest of the philosophes was Jean-Jacques Rousseau, a mentally unstable but brilliant writer of a Swiss Protestant lower-class origin. Although he led a very unsatisfactory and troubled life, his profound insight can be found in almost every trace of modern philosophy today. Somewhat complicated and ambiguous, Rousseau's general philosophy tried to grasp an emotional and passionate side of man which he felt was left out of most philosophe thinking. According to German philosopher Immanuel Kant, perhaps the most influential of all Western philosophers, Rousseau gave considerable insight into the nature of rights.

Rousseau basically says that man is essentially good, a "noble savage" when in the state of nature (the state of all the other animals and the condition man is in before the creation of civilization and society) and in his "[purest]" form, and that good people are made unhappy and corrupted by their experiences in society. His overall view of society is that it's very "articficial" and "corrupt," with reason alone a false guide when looke to as the only mechanism for truth. Because of this, Rousseau has doubts about the Enlightenment values of progress and development, because the furthering of society results in the furthering unhappiness of man. In his Discourse on the Arts and Sciences (1750) and his Discourse on the Orgin of Inequality (1753), Rousseau states that civilization is the source for much evil, and that the state of nature is the true situation of purity. Nature is good because of it's most prominent traits: kindness, unselfishness, honesty, and understanding. On the issue of religion, Rousseau asserts that "churchly" understanding is not necessary, only the personalized connection with God and the cosmos. Many of these ideas would be used in the development of Romanticism later in time.

Perhaps his most important political work is The Social Contract (1762), describing the relationship of man with society. As opposed to earlier work, Rousseau claims now that the state of nature is indeed a brutish condition without law or morality, and that good men are only a result of society's presence. In the state of nature, man is prone to be in frequent competition with all fellow men due to a lack of common standards. Because man can be more successful in facing threats when joining with other men in contrast to fending for himself in the state of nature, he has the impetus to do so. At that stage of human development, he comes to a point where he joins together with fellow men to form the collective human presence known as society. The Social Contract is the "compact" agreed to among such men in the state of nature which sets the conditions for doing so, an agreement which every man must enter into before becoming a member of society thereafter. Rousseau's agreement is not like the social contracts of previous social contract thinkers, who thought that it was one between the individual and an abstract "society." There would be a general understanding among the participants upon entering into this contract, the General Will, an entity to which all individuals were to surrender their natural liberty to in order for all wills to "fuse" into one will. The future rulings of this General Will would be final, for it was to be the sovereign power of the society, an entity which would be "absolute," "sacred," and inviolable.

Rousseau never points out as to how such a task was to be carried out, because he considered any form of government as secondary to its importance (by merely being a thinly veiled oppressor of the "true will"). He feels as if people can find a deeper connection in their own governance than just votes. Rousseau had perhaps the most direct influence on the Romantic and Idealistic thinkers of the early 19th century, namely G. F. W. Hegel and J. G. Fichte. Some have used this to justify totalitarianism as a credible form of rule, and have been greatly affected by Rousseau's thinking, although most thinkers feel that he is simply looking for a deep and mutual connection created among men to create a perfect society. Indeed, because of his inconsistency and ambiguity, it is sometimes difficult to analyze Rousseau's true meaning.