Why did Rousseau believe that modern society was corrupt and unfree?

One of the well-nigh important writers of the Enlightenment was the philosopher and novelist Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778). The work of Rousseau has influenced a contemporaries and beyond and it is argued that the main ideals of the French and American revolutions arose from his works, for example The talk about on Equality. The main concept of Rousseaus thought is that of liberty, and his belief that new-made society forced humans to give up their independence, making everyday life corrupt and unfree. One of the central problems Rousseau confronted is trump summed up in the first line of arguably his most important work, The Social Contract.

Man is born free but over in chains1

This quote is an expression of Rousseaus belief that humans are corrupted by late day society. Rousseau says that the state is dirty and corrupt and is dominated by the rich and the powerful. While the sorry only know oppression and unhappiness, these aristocrats use it selfishly to elevate their own interests. The modern state deprives human beings of their natural independence and promotes self-centred individualism that undermines equality and concern for the common good.22

According to Rousseau the modern state and the accumulation of human knowledge, improved human reason but corrupted the human species morally.



In his works A preaching on the Origin of Inequality (1755) and A Discourse on the Arts and Sciences (1751), Rousseau questioned advances in knowledge and rejected the resplendency of reason that was central to the outlook of the philosophers. The philosophers, he believed, had given slew better reasoning but had destroyed them morally. The price compensable for cultural and intellectual progress was the moral decline of the individual, a condition that could no longer be endured.3

Rousseau drew up sharp, contrasting characteristics between the civilized and societal man and the natural...

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