Suchergebnisse

Rousseau is often portrayed as an educational and social reformer whose aim was to increase individual freedom. In this 2006 volume David Gauthier examines Rousseau's evolving notion of freedom, where he focuses on a single quest: Can freedom and the independent self be regained? Rousseau's first answer is given in Emile, where he seeks to create a self-sufficient individual, neither materially nor psychologically enslaved to others. His second is in the Social Contract, where he seeks to create a citizen who identifies totally with his community, experiencing his dependence on it only as a dependence on himself. Rousseau implicitly recognized the failure of these solutions. His third answer is one of the main themes of the Confessions and Reveries, where he is made for a love that merges the selves of the lovers into a single, psychologically sufficient unity that makes each 'better than free'. But is this response a chimaera?

The conditions under which a man is entitled to inherit the estate of his father play an essential part in two of Locke's principal arguments in the Second Treatise of Civil Government. First, in criticizing those who contend that birth, not consent, makes man a member of an established civil society, Locke argues that inheritance, rather than birth, determines membership, and that consent is a condition of inheritance. Second, in rejecting the view that conquest in a just war confers political power upon the conqueror, Locke argues that this would be incompatible with the right of the descendants of the conquered to their inheritance.These two arguments appear opposed. If consent to established government is a legitimate condition of inheritance, then is consent to the government of a conqueror not also a legitimate condition? Or, if the right to inherit cannot be limited by requiring obedience to a just conqueror, then can this right be limited by requiring obedience to any existing authority? A close discussion of Locke's arguments should reveal the extent of this opposition, and so determine the consistency of his account of inheritance.Locke first introduces inheritance in distinguishing paternal from political power. His treatment here anticipates his later account of the relation between inheritance and consent, and so is worth brief attention.