Man Is Born Free but Everywhere in Chains free essay sample

Born free merely means not born into slavery. But it is arguable whether anyone is born free. We are all enslaved by society to some degree. As a child we are at the mercy of our parents and teachers. Our parents can screw us up so easily with wrong food , wrong support, wrong advice, etc. Our teachers can fill our minds with the wrong ideas and knowledge. But we have to do what they say. Later we may have to serve in the army, whether we want to or not. When they say jump you say Yessir. How high, sir? As an adult we have to work 9 to 5 five days a week for a boss to earn money to live. This means doing what were told by the boss. At all times we are expected to obey thousands of laws, most of which we dont even know exist. If we dont we can lose our liberty. We will write a custom essay sample on Man Is Born Free but Everywhere in Chains or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page To travel we are searched and have to carry a passport. At one time it was even compulsory to go to church. So freedom is not as easily come by as all that. All the above are chains of one sort or another. Perhaps Rousseaus most important work is The Social Contract, which outlines the basis for a legitimate political order.Published in 1762, it became one of the most influential works of political philosophy in the Western tradition. It developed some of the ideas mentioned in an earlier work, the article Economie Politique, featured in Diderots Encyclopedie. The treatise begins with the dramatic opening lines, Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains. One man thinks himself the master of others, but remains more of a slave than they. Rousseau claimed that the state of nature was a primitive condition without law or morality, which human beings left for the benefits and necessity of cooperation.As society developed, division of labour and private property required the human race to adopt institutions of law. In the degenerate phase of society, man is prone to be in frequent competition with his fellow men while at the same time becoming increasingly dependent on them. This double pressure threatens both his survival and his freedom. According to Rousseau, by joining together through the social contract and abandoning their claims of natural right, individuals can both preserve themselves and remain free. This is because submission to the authority of the general will of the people as a whole guarantees individuals against being subordinated to the wills of others and also ensures that they obey themselves because they are, collectively, the authors of the law. While Rousseau argues that sovereignty should be in the hands of the people, he also makes a sharp distinction between sovereignty and government. The government is charged with implementing and enforcing the general will and is composed of a smaller group of citizens, known as magistrates.Rousseau was bitterly opposed to the idea that the people should exercise sovereignty via a representative assembly. Rather, they should make the laws directly. It was argued that this would prevent Rousseaus ideal state from being realized in a large society, such as France was at the time. Much of the subsequent controversy about Rousseaus work has hinged on disagreements concerning his claims that citizens constrained to obey the g eneral will are thereby rendered free.