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John Locke, an influential early liberal English philosopher, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, a brilliant political theorist and one of the main figures of the enlightenment, have a considerable importance in political thought, for which they are best known. The Second Treatise of Government by John Locke places sovereignty into the hands of people. Locke imagined an original state of nature in which individuals rely upon their own strength. His argument is that people are equal and invested with natural rights in a state of nature in which they live free from inside and outside rule. The state of nature has a base on the law of everyone being equal and independent. However, though this be a state of liberty, yet it is not a state of license.
Therefore, no one ought to harm one another in his life, health, liberty or possessions. Nobody has the right to treat human beings as instruments to their own satisfaction or even have power over another human being; everyone is free and enjoy the gain from their own work. If someone violates the natural law, he is considered as an aggressor and every man has the right to make the aggressor pay for his aggression. On Locke's view, all rights begin in the individual property interest created by an investment of labor. So, common property could be turned into private property if one mixes ones physical labor with it. However, the enjoyment of the property...
in this state is very unsafe, very unsecure. Locke believes that people will understand that in order to protect themselves and their property, they must come together into some sort of body politic and agree to certain standards of behavior. Although each individual in the state of nature has the right to enforce the natural law in defense of property interests, the formation of a civil society requires that all individuals voluntarily surrender this right to the community at large. So, in this civil society, the people submit natural freedoms, when they have so consented, to the common laws of the society in order to receive the protection of the government. Locke says that whenever the legislative shall take away and destroy the property of the people... or reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power...
or put into the hands of any other, an absolute power over the lives, liberties, and estates of the people... , the people have a right to resume their original freedom and establish a new legislature as they shall think fit. The government exists to serve the people, and if it ceases to function properly and represent the people, the people may, and should, rebel against their government and replace it with one that will remember its trust. In the Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality Among Men, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, just like Locke, notes that perfect freedom is the natural condition of human beings and, similarly to Locke, he says, It is labor alone which, giving the cultivator a right to the product of the land he has tilled, gives him a right to the soil as a consequence... which, creating continuous possession, is easily transformed into property.
However, in contrast to Locke, Rousseau strongly emphasizes that the natural condition of humanity is disguised by the corruptive influence of society. From the cultivation of land, its division necessarily followed; and from property once recognized; the first rules of justice. Since people are born with different talents, there is natural inequality among men; therefore, one would use his mind, beauty, strength, or skill for his own advantage. This, as Rousseau says, led to deceptive cunning, conspicuous ostentation, and all the vices that follow from them, and it destroyed natural freedom. As a result, the human race, debased and desolated, no longer able to turn back or renounce the unhappy acquisitions it had made, and working only toward its shame by abusing the faculties that honor it, brought itself to the brink of its ruin. To resolve the problem, Rousseau proposes each individual to trade the natural liberty of independent life for the civil liberty secured by the state in order to best protect oneself and ones property.
However, in contrast to Locke, Rousseau suggests to unite not only for mutual protection, but also to protect the weak from oppression by making wise laws which will compensate in some way for the caprices of fortune by equally subjecting the powerful and the weak to mutual duties. Compensating for inequality, on Rousseau's view, will make the state stronger and it will maintain people in an eternal concord. Locke and Rousseau have a lot in common defining the nature and functions of government. They both view civil society built upon the natural rights common to people who need and welcome an executive power and who submit their natural freedoms to the common laws of the government, which, in return, protects their property and liberties.
However, Rousseau extends the purposes of uniting and making civil laws, which serve to protect not only ones property, but also the unfortunate ones. Bibliography:
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Research essay sample on Jean Jacques Rousseau State Of Nature
