Tonight's Lost: Locke and Rousseau.

[AP]

John Locke's the bald guy. Tonight we met Rousseau.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau makes it explicitly clear in his writings, “The Social Contract and Discourses” that he believes strongly in personal freedom and autonomy. Rousseau believed that a truly free government is one where everyone votes, every citizen. Rousseau argues that by everyone surrendering his or her rights to the sovereign equally they maintain freedom. He believes man has the most freedom in the state of nature, but because man has the ability to rationalize and the desire to be social, he must enter a social contract with others in order to have a free and equal society. Rousseau adamantly defends his belief in autonomy in his Discourses on the State of Nature, the Social Contract, and Sovereignty.


Rousseau believes that for man to exit a State of Nature he must agree to a Social Contract. Rousseau’s “Social Contract” in the simplest terms is, “each of us puts his person and all his power in common under the supreme direction of the general will, and in our capacity, we receive each member as indivisible part of the whole” (Rousseau. P. 192). Unfortunately, this Social Contract will require all individuals to relinquish their rights to the legislative whish is to be made up of all citizens, and raises a question about personal autonomy and freedom in Rousseau’s philosophy. The Social Contract allows individuals in the State of Nature to establish a whole community. It may be argued that by asking people to give up their rights, that they are subjecting themselves to inequality. Rousseau counters that argument:

These clauses, properly understood, may be reduced to one, the total alienation of each associate, together with all his rights, to the whole community; for, in the first place, as each gives himself absolutely, the conditions are the same for all; and, this being so, no one has any interest in making them burdensome to others. (Rousseau, John-Jacque. “The Social Contract.” The Social Contract and Discourses, P. 191)


If people did not give up their rights, they could not leave the State of Nature. Rousseau claims that everyone gives up his or her rights equally...

http://ctct.essortment.com/lockeandrouss_rqkw.htm

[AP]

1. From the same link, Locke:

John Locke was the son of a wealthy family who sought to maintain and justify his family's wealth in the chapter “Of Property” in his Second Treatise of Government. Locke believes that the purpose of government is to protect property and that societies were set up to avoid civil or foreign wars that may occur over the dispute of property. Locke attempts to rationalize the right of men having “unequal possessions of the earth” (Locke 29), but fails because he does not recognize that unequal ownership of property does not allow for the basis of his argument that ownership of property is only justified if there is good and enough for others (Locke, 20).


Locke believes that at the beginning man lived in common ownership of the earth (Locke, 18). Man is blessed with the ownership of property in his own person (Locke, 19). Rousseau argues, the contrary, saying man is not property. When man combines his labour, with land that is common to all men, he appropriates property in the land he tilled (Locke, 20). Ownership of anything was the fruit of man’s labor. The man who picks the apples has ownership in those apples, because he combined his labour with that of nature (Locke, 19). Like Rousseau, Locke discusses the State of Nature. Locke’s State of Nature differs from Rousseau’s. Locke believes man in the State of Nature has the right to:

as much as any one can make use of to any advantage of life before it spoils, so much he may by his labour fix a property in: whatever is beyond this, is more than his share, and belongs to others. Nothing was made by god for man to spoil or destroy. (Locke, 20)


Man obtained property through his labour and the availability that there was good and enough for others and that he would not appropriate more than he can use. Locke’s argument so far is sound, but greedy. However, when he tries to use this argument as the foundation of his justification for unequal property he contradicts himself.

[semillama]

2. That's pretty interesting...

not that I needed any more reasons to be glued to this show!

[Piperay]

3. Just using names like

that shows how different Lost is from most other network programming, the show has really depth.