John Locke And Jean Jacques Rousseau
John Locke
John Locke set a basis that all people are “born with natural rights of life, liberty, and property.” He states that the only reason a state is established is to protect those rights. Locke saw people as basically good and humane; completely different than Thomas Hobbes view as man being “brutish and selfish.” He believed that the only way a law should be passed is if it was “designed for no other end ultimately, but…” for the good of the people under it. Another idea was that taxes should not be raised on the property of the people without their consent. Locke states that the legislative cannot transfer or move the power of law making to anybody else or anywhere. A major aspect of John Locke’s ideas is that if the legislator tries to take or destroy the property of the people or “reduce them into slavery under arbitrary power,” the people have a right to dissolve that government; later, they have the right to establish a new legislative that will provide the security and protection of the peoples rights. After Locke is charged that his ideas will create “frequent rebellion.” Locke then states that slight “mismanagement in the ruling part” and human mistakes are mostly borne by the people without any problems; he states, that its when there are a “long train of abuses” and mismanagement that the people have a right to rise up and replace the government that will provide for their rights.
Jean Jacques Rousseau
Jean Jacques Rousseau was totally against absolute monarch, and that true freedom consists of the general will’s laws. Rousseau states that “tranquility is found also in dungeons” and that even “the Greeks imprisoned in the cave of the Cyclops lived there very tranquilly, while they were awaiting their turn to be devoured.” Rousseau doesn’t believe in the Locke principal that each citizen possesses their own individual rights independently from the state and against the state. He believes that the best way to rule...
Please login to view the full essay...