Jean Jacques Rousseau and The Romanticism

Jean Jacques Rousseau & The Romanticism

Jean Jacques Rousseau believed ” man are born free”, he believed that society and rules constrained man and their animalistic natural state. He thinks that man should be allowed to live free off their impulses. However he does concede that civil liberty does have its advantages as impulse can be used in line with reason and logic, this being a positive outcome from obeying rules and becoming part of a community. In his essay he goes on to say that to give up freedom (i.e slavery) is to give up being a man. He relates this to kings conquering countries, and argues that as war is a fight between the two states and not individual men therefore the conquerer has no right to claim slaves as a reward for victory.
Rosseau is believed to be the equivellant to a modern day individual rights campaigner. He says that ” all men are born free”. With regards to property he thought that there was too much emphisis put on it and that property was something that belonged to everyone and not one person deserves to have acres of property as everyone is equal. In this respect he goes against thinkers like Hobbes who believes strongly in the value of property.
The right of the strongest is a section from Rosseau’s book that talks about the idea of having one leader. He thought that the physically strongest man of one community does not deserve to lead and make all the descions, as this should be the job of what he calls the; ‘general will’. His words were thought to have greatly influenced the forthcoming French revolution; because he said that everyone deserves to be equal and have their opinion heard as part of a group. This was considered to be the defintion of freedom, however if you were in the minority and were part of the few who disagreed with the general will of the public you could be ‘forced to be free’. It was these words that were read by revolutionists in France and lead to a bloody uprise across the country.
In summary I beleive that Rousseau was in a small way a hypocrite. He beleived in freedom and equal rights however if anyone were to go against the general will they were forced to agree thusly they were no longer free or equal. It could argue that this makes his logic very flawed and asinine.