A Short History of Western Thought by Stephen Trombley

Author:Stephen Trombley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atlantic Books Ltd
Published: 2011-11-14T16:00:00+00:00

The improvement of man

The moral and social perfectibility of man preoccupied thinkers in the early modern period. How could philosophy help? The Swiss philosopher and writer Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–78), whose most enduring work is The Social Contract, or Principles of Political Right (1762), believed that man was by nature good, but was corrupted by society. In The Social Contract he famously declared, ‘Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.’

Rousseau’s idea of a social contract between the governing and the governed followed from his Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality among Men (1754) and his Discourse on Political Economy (1755). Rousseau elaborated a version of popular sovereignty that defines political legislation as acts of the ‘general will’, which applies to all citizens equally, because it derives from all citizens alike. (Such thinking would later offer the ideologues behind the French Revolution a justification for their radical actions.) Following in the new tradition of philosopher-novelists like Voltaire, Rousseau published Julie, or the New Héloïse (1761), which explored the issues of human freedom raised by the love affair of Abélard and Héloïse (see p.75). Rousseau considered his most important book to be Émile, or On Education (1762), which was extremely influential in shaping the French educational system after the Revolution.

I mean to inquire if, in the civil order, there can be any sure and legitimate rule of administration, men being taken as they are and laws as they might be. In this inquiry I shall endeavour always to unite what right sanctions with what is prescribed by interest, in order that justice and utility may in no case be divided.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract (1762)

(trans. G. D. H. Cole, 1923)

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.