Inferring Freedom and Equality. Speaks of Jean Jacques Rousseau

Essay by John WiseA+, November 1996

download word file, 4 pages 3.0

Downloaded 144 times

Many of Earth's organisms and processes depend on each other to survive the natural world. Jean Jacques Rousseau employed this aspect of natural dependency to connect the ideas of freedom and equality together. Rousseau theorized many ingenious ideas for an upcoming legitimate government. The American Constitution and the basis of this nation's bureaucracy adopted many of his opinions, along with John Locke and Thomas Hobbes, into the making of legitimate society. The American government still displays many factors from Rousseau's model of a legitimate society after two hundred years of evolving into the late 20th century nation of America; also, Rousseau would be pleased of the result of a government abiding by a constitution with many of his doctrines.

First of all, freedom, or 'forced to be free,' and equality presuppose each other in some instances, but sometimes they are interdependent. For example, if you look into the lower class, people within that class are equal among others in that class.

Also, they have freedom inside the boundaries of their status quo. As the view broadens to the whole society, that certain class loses some of its freedom and equality to the aristocracy. In this example, the amount of freedom and equality you receive all depends on money and power. Wealth corrupts the balance of freedom and equality between the social classes in the nation. In all, everyone in a legitimate society has some equality and freedom, however, the how much you get relies on where you stand in the social triangle. In every valid government, every citizen has freedom of their basic rights, but the sense of equality will never be distributed equally between them. This problem is constantly going to true because of the definition of general will: an individual has to alienate some of his natural rights...