The social Contract

Racha Moubarak
Prof. Dania Adra
English 203
9 October 2015

Difficulty

“Man was born free and he is everywhere in chains”, is one of the most famous quotations from Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s writings.  According to Rousseau, these chains result from the obligations and duties that each person has to the society, and these communal duties are based upon convention; so he interprets the fact that legitimate political authority is found neither by nature nor by force: “But the social order isn’t to be understood in terms of force; it’s a sacred right on which all other rights re based” (Rousseau, 114). Throughout “The Social Contract”, Rousseau claims that man has moved from the state of nature to the civil state where “he is deprived of many advantages that he got from nature, but he gets enormous benefits in return”(Rousseau, 114). In the light of this, the civil statement is the reflection of the domination of the “rich” over the “poor”, the “strong” over the “weak”… hence, property owners tried to create a “government” to protect their properties, taken by force, and then was established the “government” through a “contract” that provides equality and protection for all without exception, despite the fact that the real purpose of the establishment of such a government is devoted to “inequality”, which results from the  private property, what Rousseau thinks is the reason for the suffering of modern  societies. In the light of this, nowadays governments, especially in Lebanon, offer us a long list of civil and communal rights, but in the same time apply a larger number of consequences and difficulties that forbids us from benefiting from these rights. According to this idea, I found the picture attached above a real impressive and towering example on how the Lebanese government gave us the freedom of speech and the right to choose our representative and president, based on a so called “democratic” system, meanwhile these representatives allow themselves to change the laws and even more extend the mandate of their rule. So referring to Rousseau’s text, by nature we benefit from a natural liberty, which is in the picture above the freedom of speech, that we must distinguish from the civil liberty, overloaded by the government’s authority and laws. For instance, every person’s participation in the civil society is an essential step in the consecration of the civil liberty, built on the foundations and beliefs that do not derivate man from his nature freedom.

 

 

 

Work Cited

  Rousseau, Jean-Jacques.  "The Social Contract". Shifting narratives.Ed.  Zane S. Sinno, Lina Bioghlu-              Karkanawi, Dorota Fleszar, Najla Jarkas, Emma Moughabghab, Jennifer M. Nish, Rima

               Rantisi, and Abir Ward.  Beirut:  Center for educational consultation and Research, Educart

               (Middle East)  2015. 112-115 .  Print.