Current location - Quotes Website - Excellent quotations - Excerpts and Reflections on Famous Sentences in Social Contract Theory
Excerpts and Reflections on Famous Sentences in Social Contract Theory
I took time to read Rousseau's On Social Contract, which was translated by Mr. He Zhaowu on the Internet last month. Read a good place and extract what you think is wonderful. As a heavyweight document of the Western Enlightenment, The Theory of Social Contract is of great help to our understanding of western society.

? volume one

? 1. If I were a monarch or a legislator, I wouldn't waste time talking about what I should do. I will do those things, otherwise, I will keep silent.

As a citizen of a free country and a member of the monarch, no matter how weak my voice is in public affairs, my right to vote in public affairs is enough to oblige me to study them.

Title of the first chapter and the first volume

People are born free, but they are everywhere in chains. He who thinks he is the master of all things is a slave than all things.

Social order is a sacred right and the foundation of all other rights. However, this right is by no means out of nature, but based on agreement.

The second chapter discusses primitive society

5. After the children released their due obedience to their father and the father released their due care for their children, the two sides restored their independence equally.

I have a feeling after reading it: I am talking about the relationship between the state and the sovereign. People can transfer part of their power to the state through contracts, or they can take back their power. )

6. The first rule of human nature is to maintain its own survival, and the primary concern of human nature is the care it deserves; Moreover, once a person reaches a rational age and can judge the appropriate way to maintain his own survival, he will become his own master from now on.

7. Humans are divided into cattle and sheep, and each group has its own leader. The leader protects them only to eat them.

8. Anyone born under slavery is born a slave; This can't be more conclusive. The slaves lost everything under the shackles, and even lost the desire to get rid of the shackles.

? Chapter three discusses the rights of the strongest.

9. Power does not constitute rights, but people only have the obligation to obey legal power.

Chapter IV Slavery

10. Since no one has any natural authority over his own kind, and since power does not produce any rights, only agreement can become the basis of all legal authority in the world.

1 1. Life in prison is also very peaceful. Is this enough to prove that the prison is also good?

12. Children are born as human beings and are free; Their freedom belongs to themselves, and no one else has the right to dispose of it except themselves.

13. It is invalid and contradictory to stipulate that one party is absolute authority and the other party is infinite obedience.

14. Whether it is one person to one person or one person to all people, the following statement is also meaningless: "I made an agreement with you, the responsibility belongs to you completely, and the interests belong to me completely; As long as I am happy, I will keep my promise; And as long as I am happy; You have to keep the appointment, too. "

? 15. Whether it is one person to one person or one person to all people, the following statement is also meaningless: I make an agreement with you, the responsibility is entirely yours, and the interests are entirely mine; As long as I am happy, I will keep my promise; As long as I am happy, you have to keep the appointment. I feel that under slavery, some people only enjoy rights and do not undertake obligations. Capitalist thinkers have made a new exposition on the relationship between rights and obligations: everyone has rights and obligations. )

? Chapter six? On social customs

16. Humans can neither generate new power, but can only combine existing power; Therefore, there is no other way for human beings to survive on their own. Only by uniting to form a sum of forces can we overcome this resistance and be started by a unique motive force to make them cooperate with each other.

After reading it, it is said that a single individual can't live. People are gregarious animals, and they can form a whole strength by combining in some way, but the problem is that slavery is also a way to combine human beings. Therefore, it is not whether to combine, but in what way. Slavery is a passive and compulsory combination of people, and Rousseau's ideal society is that people are free to combine together and grant some power to a certain group through contract. Judging from the tragic degree of the two world wars, if capitalism is not replaced by socialism, mankind will die sooner or later, because the power of capital has been divorced from Rousseau's Contract Theory. )

Chapter seven? On monarch

? 17. Everyone is restricted by two kinds of relations when concluding a treaty with himself: for an individual, he is a member of the monarch; To the monarch, he is a member of the country. However, the norms of civil law are not applicable here, that is, no one needs to abide by the statutes he has made for himself; Because there is a big difference between contracting for yourself and contracting for yourself as a whole.

After reading it, I have a feeling: if you give power to the monarch through a contract, are you still a monarch? How to ensure that after the transfer of power, it can still be held by the original sovereign? Contract, as I understand it, is the law in reality. Who is ultimately in control? )