Rousseau and The Social Contract


Rousseau (1712-1778) was a philosopher and author during the Enlightenment, and one of the people who greatly inspired the French Revolution. He was born in Geneva, Switzerland, but later moved to Paris.

He published two books simultaneously in 1762, The Social Contract and Émile, who both received a lot of attention. These two books were publicly burned in Paris and Geneva, and were generally disliked by the officials. In fact, the French Monarchy ordered him to be arrested because of these books, so that he had to flee to the Swiss town of Neachatel!

Both of these books upset the people, or mainly the royalty (at least The Social Contract), but I’ll only be discussing The Social Contract in this article. If you want more info on Émile, which was mainly a book on education, please see the link below.

In The Social Contract, Rousseau said that the government should be one which the people in the country, which he referred to as the “sovereign”, had agreed to. This was because the government should exist to uphold the will of the general people. This could e.g. be accomplished by voting on who you thought should be king! But in this case, people shouldn’t vote according to what was best for them, but according to what was best for everyone. Also, he thought that the government could take on different forms depending on the country. However, he thought that monarchy was the strongest form of government and the best suited one for hot climates, however that affects anything at all, but that aristocracy was the most stable form of government.

Doesn’t this seem like an excellent idea, that the government should heed the people’s will, and that the people got to decide on who was best suited to form the government, no matter which form it would take? I certainly think so, however, the French monarchy did not agree with this at all.

The French monarchy’s worst nightmare was probably that people might want other rulers than them. That’s likely the reason that they hated this book, since this book basically inspired people to rebel against their current government in order to create something better. That was pretty much what happened during the French Revolution.

I can’t really blame the French monarchy for wanting to destroy this book. It was, after all, one of the reasons that the French people rebelled later. And if you’ve got all that power, if you have the power to change and influence France with only a few words, why would you ever want to give all of that power away?

Imagine that you’re the leader of, say, 10 million people. These people are pledged to you, and you can behead a person simply for insulting you or saying something that you disagree with. They also pay taxes to you, so that you can buy all that rich wine and those fancy silks, even though this may lead to your people starving in order for you to live in luxury. Now, you’re either repulsed by this, as this has dictator spelled all over it, or you’re wishing that this was true. Who, after all, doesn’t want power?

If you were one of the people who were repulsed by this idea, you have to imagine yourself being born into this, to be born as a royalty. When you’ve been taking all of this for granted since childhood, it’s not that easy to see how that’s so wrong anymore. If you had been told since birth that you were meant to rule this land, that you can do whatever you want with these people and that you deserve the utmost luxuries, why would you ever question that?

When holding all of this in mind, do you think it was right of the French monarchy to burn the book and try to have him arrested? Or should they have let him say whatever he wanted to, which in the end led to them, the French monarchy, losing their power?

For more info on Rousseau, his books and ideas, please go to:

//Lia

Kommentarer
Postat av: Nora

Well-written article as always!

I think what they did was extremely foolish; if the leader of a country decided to burn a book that would be exactly the book I would want to read! Just to see why it was burnt. I think the best way to make people read a book is to ban it.



I think that the royalty should have tried to change to make the people like them more, to make themselves the government the people would choose and vote for in the end.

:)

2011-04-01 @ 11:17:31
Postat av: Nora

Well-written article as always!

I think what they did was extremely foolish; if the leader of a country decided to burn a book that would be exactly the book I would want to read! Just to see why it was burnt. I think the best way to make people read a book is to ban it. I think that the royalty should have tried to change to make the people like them more, to make themselves the government the people would choose and vote for in the end.

:)

2011-04-01 @ 11:32:50

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