Instruction
Answer the questions
Book I. 2
How does Rousseau try to show that we, human beings, have a natural liberty?
Book I.3
Why doesn’t it make any sense for someone to renounce his natural liberty according to Rousseau?
Rousseau claims that human beings aren’t naturally enemies and cannot be in a state of war with each other. What does he mean?
Book I. 6
Why do people feel compelled to leave the state of nature? How is this different from Hobbes’ account?
What is the problem that the social contract is designed to solve? (Please don’t paste in a quotation, answer the question in your own words. Thanks)
Rousseau claims that there is only one cause or condition to the social contract:
“..the total alienation of each associate, together with all his rights, to the whole community” p.7
What does Rousseau mean here? Why does his think this condition as necessary to establish the state or
sovereign?
Book I, 7
What does the act of association involve?
What does Rousseau mean that the sovereign “owes his very existence to the sanctity” to the social contract?
What is the general will?
Book II, 1
What should be the aim of the state? And what is the role of the general will in the state?
Book II, 3
How can Rousseau claim that the general will cannot be wrong? What can be a threat to the general will?
Book III,1
What is the role of government?
Book III, 9
What is the purpose of political association, i.e. state? How is it different from Aristotle’s idea of the purpose of political association? What is a good government?
Book III, 17
What establishes a government?
Book VI, 1
How is the general will indestructible? Does this make sense to you? Why?