![]() ![]() In Book II, Rousseau argues that a state is only legitimate when the people rule, or have sovereignty, over themselves. Therefore, while forming a nation requires citizens to give up certain freedoms that they still had in the state of nature, it replaces these freedoms with the far more valuable “civil freedom” of living in society, which allows citizens to more fully develop themselves morally and rationally. In The Social Contract, the influential 18th-century philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau addresses two interrelated questions that play a core role in social philosophy: how can people remain free while living under the authority of a state, and what makes such a state’s power valid (or legitimate)? In Book I of The Social Contract, Rousseau answers both of these questions by concluding that citizens form their own nations “by uniting their separate powers” through a kind of covenant, or social contract, in which they agree to govern themselves as a collective and protect one another’s rights. ![]()
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