Over the past few decades, scholars have reassessed the role of amour-propre in Rousseau’s thought. While it was once believed that he had an entirely negative valuation of the emotion, it is now widely held that he finds it useful and employs it to strengthen moral attachments, conjugal love, civic virtue and moral heroism. At the same time, scholars are divided as to whether this positive amour-propre is an antidote to the negative or dangerous form. Some scholars are confident (...) that ‘inflamed’ amour-propre can be overcome while others adopt a more fatalistic view. While mindful of Rousseau’s pessimism in his most famous works, this essay seeks to identify a middle position. By contending Rousseau’s discussion of amour-propre is largely concerned with the problems surrounding identity construction in commercial, urban societies, it will be argued that amour-propre can be lessened to manageable levels in more rural societies, that is, agrarian provincial life. (shrink)

John Locke (29 August 1632 - 28 October 1704) was an English philosopher and physician, widely regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers and commonly known as the "Father of Liberalism". Considered one of the first of the British empiricists, following the tradition of Sir Francis Bacon, he is equally important to social contract theory. His work greatly affected the development of epistemology and political philosophy. His writings influenced Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, many Scottish Enlightenment (...) thinkers, as well as the American revolutionaries. His contributions to classical republicanism and liberal theory are reflected in the United States Declaration of Independence.Locke's theory of mind is often cited as the origin of modern conceptions of identity and the self, figuring prominently in the work of later philosophers such as David Hume, Rousseau, and Immanuel Kant. Locke was the first to define the self through a continuity of consciousness. He postulated that, at birth, the mind was a blank slate or tabula rasa. Contrary to Cartesian philosophy based on pre-existing concepts, he maintained that we are born without innate ideas, and that knowledge is instead determined only by experience derived from sense perception. This is now known as empiricism. An example of Locke's belief in Empiricism can be seen in his quote, "whatever I write, as soon as I discover it not to be true, my hand shall be the forwardest to throw it into the fire." This shows the ideology of science in his observations in that something must be capable of being tested repeatedly and that nothing is exempt from being disproven. Challenging the work of others, Locke is said to have established the method of introspection, or observing the emotions and behaviors of one's self.Locke's concept of man started with the belief in creation. We have been "sent into the World by order, and about his business, are his Property, whose Workmanship are, made to last during his, not one anothers Pleasure." Like the two other very influential natural-law philosophers, Hugo Grotius and Samuel Pufendorf, Locke equated natural law with the biblical revelation, since in their view both had originated in God and could therefore not contradict each other. "As a philosopher, Locke was intensely interested in Christian doctrine, and in the Reasonableness he insisted that most men could not hope to understand the detailed requirements of the law of nature without the assistance of the teachings and example of Jesus.". (shrink)

Rousseau’s story about Emile having his first moral lesson in property rights by planting beans in a garden plot has educationally been discussed from various perspectives. What remains unexplored in such readings, however, is the connection of the theory of the natural learner with the Lockean rationalization of appropriation of land through cultivation. We will show that this connection forms the subtext of the ‘beans’ episode and grounds the rich and complex textual operations that give to the episode a (...) strong political character. The aim is to unearth the common, colonial cause that the ideas of the natural learner, property as original relation to land and contractuality may make in Locke-inspired, early modern pedagogy and to explore the ambivalences in Rousseau’s text that are thus created. (shrink)

Abstract:Many scientists argue that the world is becoming increasingly dominated by human activity, much to the detriment of the natural world. In what scholars have dubbed the Anthropocene, the current geological epoch during which time human activity has been the dominating force over climate and the environment, many questions of environmental ethics have arisen. Who does the earth belong to? What is the relationship between humans and the environment? What is the moral standing of non-human life? Locke and (...) class='Hi'>Rousseau provide varying answers to these questions, which are central to discussions of environmental ethics. In many ways, Locke and Rousseau's answers are opposed to each other, suggesting a differing world view when it comes to environmental ethics. Locke's understanding of environmental ethics seems to dominate, and perhaps even cause, the onset of the Anthropocene, but Rousseau's response, and a potential turn toward his understanding of environmental ethics marks an ideological shift in the way that humans understand their relationship with the world around them. This paper argues that the writings of Locke and Rousseau correspond to different stages of the Anthropocene with significant effects on both environmental ethics and environmental governance and policy. (shrink)

John Locke's educational program has long been considered to have two primary aims: to habituate children to reason and to raise children capable of meeting the demands of citizenship that he details in his Two Treatises of Government. Yet Locke's educational prescriptions undermine citizens’ capacity for honesty, a critical political virtue for Locke. To explain how Locke's educational prescriptions are self-undermining, we turn to Rousseau's extended critique of Locke's Some Thoughts on Education in his (...) Émile. We argue that Rousseau explains why such an education allows a natural desire to dominate to flourish, rendering children who receive it dishonest and incapable of self-government. Rousseau's critique exposes how a liberal education focused solely on autonomy cannot produce the kinds of citizens a Lockean politics requires. (shrink)

This is a review of a volume including Locke's Second Treatise, Rousseau's Social Contract, and Hume's "Of the Original Contract." The Rousseau essay is translated by Gerard Hopkins, and Ernest Baker provides an introduction to the texts.

Presents an historical analysis of social contract theory by considering the works of prominent philosophers.

The paper attempts to construct a global model of a social contract using well-known metaphors of two great philosophers: Jean-Jacques Rousseau and John Locke. By modelling a global social contract, I mean the formulation of a social contract using two sets of data: one is global citizens' preferences about values and norms while the other is sovereign states' participation in multilateral treaties. Both Rousseau and Locke formulate their versions of social contract theories in the national context (...) of eighteenth-century Europe. This paper tries my hands on extending their theories to the global context. This paper attempts to link empirically the relationship between global citizens' preferences as gauged by the World Values Survey and sovereign states' participation in 120 multilateral treaties deposited to the United Nations. To see the link between citizens and treaties (quasi-legislative outcomes, sort of), dimensional similarities of the cosmos of citizens' preference and the cosmos of sovereign states' willingness to join multilateral treaties are examined. Once done, all the sovereign states are located in each of the two cosmoses, citizens and states, and the correlation coefficients between them are measured. Based on these empirical results, the nature of the global quasi-legislative process is clarified. Conclusions and implications are drawn. (shrink)

O artigo examina a questão do ideológico nos discurssos de Locke e Rousseau, e conclui que os critérios de leitura de um e de outro,originários da própria natureza destes,não devem ser unívocos porque as respectivas subjetividades são marcadas por práticas historicamente diferentes.

The concept of power shapes both the political philosophy and the general worldview of the modern age. For this reason, two areas of philosophy - ontology and political philosophy - which were hitherto treated separately, must be brought together. Freedom, Equality, Power brings out the ontological framework shared by the political philosophies of Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau. In the last chapter (The Ontological Consequences), the author uses the results of his earlier analyses as the stepping stone for developing (...) some themes belonging to ontology in general. (shrink)

This rich collection will introduce students of philosophy and politics to the contemporary critical literature on the classical social contract political thinkers Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. A dozen essays and book excerpts have been selected to guide students through the texts and to introduce them to current scholarly controversies surrounding the contractarian political theories of these three thinkers.

The self is a topic that crosses a great many disciplinary boundaries; concepts of the self are central to political science, psychoanalysis, philosophy, sociology, and classical studies. In this book, C.Fred Alford sets forth a psychoanalytic account of the self and applies it to texts by Plato, Hobbes, Locke, Rawis, and Rouseau in order to draw out their implicit, often inchoate, assumptions about the self.

This rich collection will introduce students of philosophy and politics to the contemporary critical literature on the classical social contract political thinkers Thomas Hobbes , John Locke , and Jean-Jacques Rousseau . A dozen essays and book excerpts have been selected to guide students through the texts and to introduce them to current scholarly controversies surrounding the contractarian political theories of these three thinkers.

Este trabajo analiza cómo la interpretación de incertidumbre afecta las propuestas de diseño institucional. Para ello, revisamos los contratos sociales en las obras de Hobbes, Locke y Rousseau a la luz del neoinstitucionalismo de la elección racional. Nuestro argumento es que los contratos sociales propuestos por cada uno de estos autores tienen como objetivo superar problemas de incertidumbre. Sin embargo, cada uno de ellos, dadas sus circunstancias históricas, los concibió de manera distinta. Esto último tiene consecuencias sobre cómo (...) las instituciones distribuyen el poder político. (shrink)

Buscar-se-á no presente trabalho analisar os discursos acerca da formação do Estado em Rousseau e Locke. Os autores compartilham a teoria de uma forma de contrato social – um acordo deliberado entre seres humanos cuja condição selvagem se extingue neste momento decisório. Dessa forma, em ambos os autores, o Estado surge como um agente, ou corpo, protetor. Em contrapartida, os estudos de Pierre Clastres – etnólogo francês – referentes a grupos primitivos contemporâneos demonstram a existência de uma permanente (...) conjuração contra a possibilidade do surgimento de um poder político alienado do controle do grupo como um todo. Ou seja, uma conjuração contra o Estado. Nesse sentido, o objetivo geral desse trabalho é colidir tais ideias, assim como suas possíveis reverberações atuais. (shrink)

Locke's Education for Liberty presents an analysis of the crucial but often underestimated place of education and the family within Lockean liberalism. Nathan Tarcov shows that Locke's neglected work Some Thoughts Concerning Education compares with Plato's Republic and Rousseau's Emile as a treatise on education embodying a comprehensive vision of moral and social life. Locke believed that the family can be the agency, not the enemy, of individual liberty and equality. Tarcov's superb reevaluation reveals to the (...) modern reader a breadth and unity heretofore unrecognized in Locke's thought. (shrink)

Critics have claimed that Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a primitivist who was uncritically preoccupied with "noble savages" and that he remained oblivious to the African slave trade. Fugitive Rousseau demonstrates why these charges are wrong and argues that a fresh, "fugitive" perspective on political freedom is bound up with the themes of primitivism and slavery in Rousseau's political theory. Rather than trace Rousseau's arguments primarily to the social contract tradition of Hobbes and Locke, Fugitive Rousseau (...) places Rousseau squarely in two imperial contexts: European empire in his contemporary Atlantic world and Roman imperial philosophy. Anyone who aims to understand the implications of Rousseau's famous sentence "Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains" or wants to know how Rousseauian arguments can support a radical democratic politics of diversity, discontinuity, and exodus will find Fugitive Rousseau indispensable. (shrink)

Este estudio pretende demostrar el origen metodológico común del concepto de soberanía popular de Rousseau y Carl Schmitt, entendido como aquella autoridad política cuya legitimidad descansa en un principio democrático verdaderamente sustantivo. En primer lugar, se intentará probar cómo ambas obras serían la expresión de una común reacción al formalismo de una dogmática liberal que identifica metodológicamente la legalidad formal con la legitimidad política. Así, Rousseau critica un enunciado de la ley natural procedente de Locke que legitima (...) la desigualdad social y política y justifica el gobierno burgués de los propietarios y Schmitt cuestiona un positivismo jurídico cuyo normativismo habría ocultado el auténtico valor sociológico del poder y la soberanía. En segundo lugar, una vez avanzada una crítica de las representaciones políticas que niegan el carácter sustantivo del pueblo soberano, se estudia el modo en que ambos formulan una propuesta metodológica alternativa. Aquí se prestará especial atención al modo en que la elaboración schmittiana incorpora, en un contexto de crisis de las formas liberales, una reelaboración de la crítica de Rousseau. (shrink)

Obwohl hierzu schon einige grundlegende Arbeiten aus den zwanziger und den frühen dreißiger Jahren vorlagen, war es erst Richard Schottkys Dissertation, welche die Fichtesche Rechts- und Staatsphilosophie in die Linie der großen Staatskonzeptionen der Neuzeit richtig einzustellen vermochte. Hier fiel nicht mehr der Blick auf sie aus nationalem Interesse, sondern Fichtes Entwurf wurde als ein notwendiger Schritt erkennbar, der aus Rousseaus contrat social und dessen Reaktionen auf Thomas Hobbes auf der einen Seite, wie auf Locke auf der anderen Seite, (...) zur Grundlage des autonomen Rechtsstaates überhaupt erst führte. Die Abhandlung Das Problem der Gewaltenteilung bei Rousseau und Fichte ergänzt die Dissertation, insbesondere was Fichtes Staatskonzeption betrifft, indem sie auch die späte Rechts- und Staatslehre berücksichtigt und Fichtes erneute Wandlung einbezieht, mit der er in der Spätphilosophie um eine sittliche Fundierung der Rechtssphäre, die den Staat trägt, bemüht ist. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 133 argument that the third dream contains an anticipation of the "Cogito, ergo sum," in that Descartes, towards the end of the dream, recognizes that he is dreaming. This monograph is rounded out with Sebba's reflections on some of the problems involved in writing the history of philosophy, including the need for the historian to be philosophic in a way which exceeds the need for a historian (...) of science to be an active scientist. Here Sebba expressed his debt to his friend and mentor, the intellectual historian Eric Voegelin. As an indication of his plans (sadly, never to be realized), Watson has also included some notes Sebba put together, in which he reacted especially to Richard Popkin's work on the history of scepticism. The Descartes student is grateful not only to Sebba for these studies, but also to Professors Watson and Popkin for the care they have taken to bring this work before the public via the Journal of the History of Philosophy Monograph Series. In the light of their generosity, it seems churlish to wish they had added an index and a bibliography of works referred to. DESMOND J. FITZGERALD University of San Francisco Andrzej Rapaczynski. Nature and Politics: Liberalism in the Philosophies of Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987. Pp. xi + 3o2. $29.95. Ruth W. Grant.John Locke'sLiberalism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987. Pp. viii + 22o. $~4.95. Both Grant and Rapaczynski claim that their books clarify the place of Locke's political theory with respect to liberalism as a set of beliefs and social practices transmitted from one generation to the next over time, although each author premises this claim upon a different interpretive approach to Locke's political thought. Professor Rapaczynski maintains that a historical dimension is indispensable to an understanding of political theory (a), but since he offers no historical evidence, uncovers no new facts or information, and generally fails even to make use of available evidence produced by other historians, this pronouncement appears to be little more than a defensive piece of rhetoric divorced from his actual interpretive practice. Historical accuracy is an important element of interpretation, he writes, "but I have not felt bound by the strictures that would constrain a more narrowly historical work" (5), and he is "quite prepared," he insists, for the objection that his reading of Locke is anachronistic (15). Well might he be prepared for such a criticism, for his interpretation of Locke's thought is not only anachronistic, but replete with errors and unsubstantiated assertions. Apparently, for Rapaczynski, historical accuracy is a necessary ingredient of a "narrowly historical" work of scholarship or a "narrowly contextualist reading" of Locke's Two TreatisesofGovernment, but in order to grasp "the proper historical meaning of liberal doctrine" (5, 15-16) and Locke's place in the tradition of liberalism, interpretive leaps into the evidential void are required. Rapaczynski is right to focus upon the recovery of meanings from a text, for that is what interpreters do. Yet, meanings are neither arbitrarily created by the author (or ~34 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 28:1 JANUARY I990 the interpreter) nor are they wholly contained "in" the text; rather, meanings are conventional, embedded in social practices, and are significandy affected by those factors which increase or decrease the causal efficacy of beliefs in relation to the execution of actions with which those beliefs are assumed to be associated. If, therefore, Rapaczynski interprets Locke's ideas as expressing a secular viewpoint, an indifferent attitude towards nature, an understanding of natural law premised upon a mechanistic model of natural science, and as the embodiment of an unqualified defense of capitalism (117-~5), the question arises, from what source are such meanings to be drawn? They are certainly not reflections of Locke's intentions or authorial meaning, nor are they expressions of the conventional meanings accepted by Restoration thinkers. They cannot even draw upon the general authority of "the political tradition to which Locke's readers have belonged," as Rapaczynski assumes (5), for that tradition includes Paine and Adam Smith, Bentham and Hegel, Defoe and John Stuart Mill, individuals for whom Locke's arguments carried... (shrink)

Volume 24, Issue 3-4, May - June 2019, Page 454-456.

This paper not only describes a confusing network of terms, thus defining a problem of interpretation, but also partially solves the problem. One result is that Locke turns out to differ in at least one important way from those theorists of social contract supposedly belonging to the same tradition, especially Hobbes, Rousseau, and Rawls. The Two Treatises lacks any social contract, that is, a contract constituting society in the inclusive sense usually given “society” in discussions of “social contract”. (...) Locke’s concept of “political society” deserves a closer look, since it has largely been overlooked until now. (shrink)

Resumo: Uma das características comuns dos primeiros filósofos modernos da Europa Ocidental é a ênfase na liberdade e na igualdade. Os filósofos desse período buscavam respostas para “o que é liberdade e igualdade?” e transformaram a liberdade e a igualdade em direitos humanos fundamentais. De John Locke a Montesquieu e Jean Jacques Rousseau, todos consideram a liberdade e a igualdade como direitos naturais do ser humano. O conceito de liberdade e igualdade de Rousseau é refletido em O (...) Contrato Social. No início desse trabalho, ele comentou, com uma famosa frase de abertura: “O homem nasce livre, mas está em toda parte acorrentado.” Esse é o argumento fundamental para dar uma visão única de liberdade e igualdade. Dentro do escopo do artigo, o autor se concentra em analisar seus pontos de vista sobre liberdade e igualdade, em muitos aspectos diferentes - liberdade e igualdade, no estado de natureza, liberdade e igualdade, na sociedade civil, e como alcançar a liberdade e a igualdade - apresentando, assim, os valores e as limitações de seus pontos de vista sobre liberdade e igualdade. (shrink)

The initial problem which motivated the writing of this thesis arose from reading of Emile by Rousseau. In this work, it was possible to detect the influence of different theoretical approaches, such as rationalism and empiricism, inspiring the development of the educational plan designed by Rousseau for his imaginary student (Emile). The very core question of the present thesis regards to whether there was a theory of knowledge pertaining to Rousseau’s philosophical thinking and, if so, how it (...) was related to his theories of education. In the set of his oeuvre, Rousseau’s affiliation to authors like Descartes, Leibniz, Locke and Malebranche, as well as Condillac, Diderot, D’Holbach and Helvétius was discovered. As the reading of the great philosophical work of Rousseau progressed, an original knowledge theory was discovered, of the kind which accepts the coexistence of opposite thoughts. Pedagogy, in the context of (the work) Emile, arose out of the miscellany of such theories and also for the intense philosophical maturing process on the core of Rousseau’s thinking. This study intended, therefore, to understand the origin and development of Rousseau’s theory of knowledge, and also to figure out how the philosopher formulated his theories on Education, especially in Emile. The object of this research, materialized through the extensive bibliography of the Swiss philosopher, was intensively read and analyzed. The methodology used was that of comparative, descriptive and critical documentary research of the mentioned authors. This research is divided into three sections: the first one intends to investigate the philosophical influence from different authors on the foundations of Rousseau’s epistemology; the second section addresses Rousseau’s theories of Education; the third and final part investigates the link between theory of knowledge and Education within Rousseau’s philosophical thought. -/- . (shrink)

A luta por reconhecimento é uma das questões centrais do debate político contemporâneo. Diversos pensadores transformaram esta temática no centro de suas reflexões. No entanto, este debate tem suas origens na obra do pensador Maquiavel. A perspectiva política de Maquiavel, que envolve a questão do reconhecimento, foi fundamental no debate travado entre os pensadores contratualistas como Hobbes, Locke e Rousseau. Assim, como para Maquiavel, o tema da luta por reconhecimento é fundamental para Rousseau. É inegável a influência (...) de Maquiavel sobre os contratualistas, incluindo o pensador genebrino e seu pensamento em torno da luta por reconhecimento. Neste sentido, Rousseau se encontra no conjunto dos leitores de Maquiavel. Desta forma, o texto se debruça sobre o tema da luta pelo reconhecimento na obra de Maquiavel e os reflexos que se desdobram na obra de Rousseau. (shrink)