This fortnight's central focus has been lit on a founder of Romantic thought and advocate of its doctrines, Jean-Jacque Rousseau, whose opinions on the prior proposals of the state of nature by philosophers like Thomas Hobbes (who posited that life before society was characterised by a nasty, brutish and short strain of behaviour in humans) and John Locke (who believed that the rational brain was born of the discovery of natural laws by man, which are essentially innate - property, too, was a necessity of the rational behaviour of man) differed firmly and individually. His succession of the state of nature theory can be seen as one of the more defining adaptations of philosophy by any Western philosopher and thinker, alongside the train of thought that advocated the age of enlightenment, which opposes Romantic thought.
Rousseau himself was a man of passionate proclivities; he was intent on waging a war with the prevailing notions of scientific and philosophical advancement that were propelling his contemporaries to believing even further beyond the original state of man. According to Rousseau, the state of nature was animalistic (not ravenous, but at physical and spiritual peace) and free - man was as equal as the boar, despite Rousseau's conceived first 'species of inequality', natural inequality (where man and other animal are the same, but differ physically and in advantage, which applies within mankind to those who out-compete the weaker). But he also states that, with the emergence of social patterns and precepts, the state of nature in which man is a part of has undergone an intervention and been worn away - his statue is a perfect example for his theory. Once mankind entered in a social contract with itself, it signed away its original status among other beings, thus demarcating it, and the once smooth and unadulterated statue that represented it was thereby tarnished and immersed in mental conflict - a conflict untouched by the original state of nature.
What Rousseau termed as the moral inequality is that which concerns the social recognition of advantages and disadvantages, and the abuse of this understanding, in men in general. For instance: the slave is subjugated by the landlord because he is without wealthy advantages; he lacks money and is therefore perceived by those with authority as inferior and, condescendingly, a form of currency himself. This moral inequality was entered into, according to Rousseau, just as the social contract itself was hypothetically signed. What I find most interesting about Rousseau's take on the social contract theory is that he believes we have almost completely betrayed our original, God-intended nature - that nature being the purity of the human spirit before society. But how, in practice, can we be betraying our nature when it has been seemingly proven through the course of human history that we are innately inclined to question all that is around us? This Cartesian mind's eye of mankind distinguishes us from our animal others, as we are gifted with the ability to doubt, and develop based on this doubt.
Rousseau's Romanticism, which concentrates on the emotional and passionate bias, is the stark opposite to Newtonian enlightenment (Newton being the main figure for scientific discovery because of his mine of innovative theories and studies), and is reminiscent about a state of nature that nobody's even sure existed as he proposed it did. And, based on the animalism of Romanticism - often depicted by a liberal quality in the arts, e.g. speculation of emotions in ballads - Rousseau concluded that the only way for a society to be fair to the individual, the animal of man, was for it to be conducted on the basis of the 'general will'. This general will is a theoretical form of a direct democracy, which entails a running of society by those who constitute it in all walks of life. To Rousseau, public and private were the same; no discrimination could be made in his society, for the general will appeased the accepted emotions and passions of all men. But, as we all know, this communistic ideology has never prevailed.
Rousseau controversially admitted that some would probably have to be "forced to be free", as not everyone can agree on the same beliefs, values and ideas that the majority sanctions. This revelatory statement of totalitarian leaning reminds me of the authoritative exercises of infamous social leaders like Stalin, who promised everything the people desired, but merely sought to achieve a superior global ends unjustified by his cruel persecution of those Soviet ideology enshrined as its heroes.
For me, as much as I would love for Rousseau's ideas to be prevalent (as it would enable a much simpler, less bureaucratic social environment), I cannot admit to wanting our current and historical successes to be erased from the pages of history. For this would be a crime against all the positive achievements that have been made by some of the great, good thinkers of our kind, like Louis Pasteur, the genius behind the breakthrough germ theory, and George Orwell, an outstanding writer with a knack for noting down extreme social inequalities (someone Rousseau would have most liked to have met and exchanged ideas with). Hell, with the progress of science and technology, we'll probably be able to unite the great minds of our history together in one room and have them bounce ideas off each other, just as soon as we master time travel - no Doctor Who emulations please.
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