Philosophy of Rousseau and Locke

Rousseau deepens purely negative reaction against the philosophy of the Enlightenment. While philosophers-enlighteners discover one-sided worship of reason too, Rousseau highlights the cult of feelings. While philosophers-enlighteners extol the individual and personal interests, Rousseau extols the community and the common will. While the enlighteners talk about progress, Rousseau puts forward the slogan "back to nature". In the same time, this does not mean that Rousseau, in all positions, is in opposition to the philosophers-enlighteners. Often he completely shares their views - for example Rousseau also believes that a person is kind by nature.

The Enlighteners believed that evil stems from ignorance and intolerance, supported by traditions and privileges. Therefore, enlightenment should serve as a medicine. When reason and science win, the good in man will grow, following the progress of civilization. Rousseau was convinced that evil lies in civilization itself. Civilization leads to an artificial and degenerate life. Often Rousseau criticizes faith in progress and paves the way for romanticism: urban life and science distort the good and natural that is in man.

I saw Rousseau point in the statement that we must go back to nature. I was little confused with this statement and ask myself: By saying this did he mean a return to primitive life? I agree that a person is part of the community. Apparently, according to Rousseau, we must return to nature in the sense of "the embodiment of a natural and virtuous life in the human community." In this case, his thesis is directed against both what he considered an overcivilized decline and against uncivilized primitivism.

We can interpret Rousseau's criticism of philosophers-enlighteners as an expression of the relation of the lower layers of the middle classes to the higher classes. So his ideas were: direct democracy, equality in relation to property, the sovereign "common will," the public education of all members of the state.

Rousseau puts such simple virtues of everyday life of ordinary people as family life, sympathy, religiosity and conscientious work of artisans and peasants, higher polished manners, indifference and calculability of large traders and representatives of a new science. Far from appealing to return to primitive conditions, Rousseau defends the simple life of the lower layers of the middle classes. He defends the everyday moral notions and the unreflective faith of people of modest prosperity from the caustic abstruse critique of intellectuals, for which clearly there is nothing sacred. Thus, Rousseau acts as the spokesman for the irritated and preoccupied lower stratum of the middle class, who, convinced of his own moral superiority, is outraged by intellectual criticism of time-honored faiths and traditions. In addition, this class fears that such criticism threatens the basics of its being. Since members of this class, because of a lack of education, were not always able to defend themselves in a rational way, their reaction often consisted in the total condemnation of the mind and in the sentimental exaltation of the senses.

Speaking about Locke, he substantiated his political views and attitudes using the philosophy of history, the core of which were the teachings of natural law and social contract. Based on the lecture “Locke believed that we came into the world as a clean sheet of paper. We don’t have innate ideas, although we do have innate rational abilities that work on the material that gets printed on the sheets of paper that are our minds” (Provost). We can see it in Locke’s statement saying that there was a natural state of people, but it was not Hobbes "war of all against all." In this state, mutual benevolence reigned; everyone had enough fruits, land and water, and everyone could accumulate sufficient property for him. In other words, private property existed long before the establishment of state power and regardless of its origin. Locke developed the provisions previously expressed by other British figures of the times of the mid-17th century revolution.

Lockean construction of "natural law" - this is not just a system of theoretical postulates, intended to explain the foregone. This is a direct declaration of "inalienable rights", the totality of which is conceived as the basic law of a newly established (reasonable) social system. The doctrine of Locke directly relies on the constitutional practice of the North American states, their famous bills on rights. Locke was the first in the history of philosophy to participate in the drafting of a pervasive state act: on the recommendation of Shaftsbury, he wrote a constitution for North Carolina, which in 1669, was approved by the assembly of people's representatives and entered into force.