The State of Nature as Discussed by Rousseau Essay Example

Before governments and rights existed there was the state of nature. The state of Nature is the conditions we all will be living under when the government didn’t exist. It is every man for himself. Evolution then started and people had to move along the evolution and deciding to create a type of contract that will help the country with its evolution. Thus, creating the Social Contract Theory. The Social Contract Theory is a real or hypothetical agreement regarding the rights and responsibilities of the state and its citizens. Throughout time there have been three philosophers who caught people’s attention with the way they saw the state of nature and described their social contract. They were Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The philosopher whose social contract would be easy and efficient to follow would be Jean-Jacques Rousseau because it creates equality between all its citizens by making everyone equal because inequality makes creates greed or envy between people.

Rousseau’s view of the social contract is meant to respond to this sorry state of affairs and to remedy the social and moral ills that have been produced by the development of society. The evolution of humans led to envy, shame, pride, and temptation. Humans were originally free since the state of nature, but the evolution of humans has lessened people’s freedom through dependence, economic, and social inequalities. It went to the point where one was judging another through what they saw. Having private property makes one unequal from another. Thus, getting rid of private property would create more equality among the people because some have private property while some have to work hard to get it. private property was the fall from grace as it represented by greed, vanity, competition, and vice. The people who claims to be in the interest of everyone equality is just the interest of those who had become richer and stronger through private property.

Rousseau was chosen because in this contract everyone is equal. No one is favored and everyone gets the same amount of rights. The individual member alienates himself, along with his rights, to the whole community. The condition becomes the same for everyone and does not create any temptation to make others equality worst. It links people together meaning you can’t do anything to one member without the community knowing. This creates sympathy among people so one feels guilty for doing greedy thing like ruining someone’s equality for their benefit. Everyone has different jobs to do has a result of division of labor. Division of labor is also between families. Where one to do a job that helps the whole family. It also works in a community where each person has a job and that job help the people in the community.  

The quote from John F. Kennedy, “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask wat you can do for your country”, can also refer to this social contract. If one doesn’t follow the obligations that everyone must be equal in every way than it will cause other people to follow and make the community chaos. It would bring competition, greed, vanity, inequality between the people. People cannot live in large areas as they need to be able to identify each other and know each other. One cannot have an unjust attitude in which could spread and ruin the political body. People cannot do things that will change the general public or do things that are considered unequal.

In all Rousseau’s view is pretty easy to understand. He says that ‘man was born free, and he is everywhere is chains.’. He describes that evolution of mankind had caused the world to substitute freedom from others and cause more distrust among people. Population was small meaning one was never saw what another had, and everything was equal because one was never envious of another because their needs were satisfied by nature and since one never saw another there was no competition. Rousseau’s social contract theory states that ‘we are endowed with freedom and equality by nature, but our nature has been corrupted’ and by following his social contract one can once again claim freedom and equality.