PSYCH-155 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Nationstates, Legislature, Compulsory Voting
Document Summary
Dr. danoff"s lecture notes on rousseau, the social contract. When we read rousseau"s discourse on inequality, we saw that for rousseau, people are happy, good, free, and equal in the state of nature, but then they become corrupt as civilization develops. Rousseau"s goal in the social contract is to try to describe a form of government that would improve us rather than corrupt us. Granted, it will not be the exact same type of happiness, freedom, and equality that we had in the state of nature. However, in many ways, the happiness, freedom, and equality that one can have in a well-constituted state is actually superior to the kind of happiness, freedom, and equality provided by the state of nature, according to rousseau. At the opening of book i, chapter i of the social contract, rousseau famously declares: man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains (p. 427).
