Jean-Jacques Rousseau claims that in order to ensure the legitimacy of civil commitments and to prevent them from becoming meaningless, tyrannical, and abusive, one can be "forced to be free." It is unclear, however, how forcing citizens to conform to the general will leads to a society which is any...

Rousseau's "State of Nature" What was man like in his earliest form? When left to his own devices, how did he comport himself? For centuries scholars have pondered man's true "state of nature," which can be defined as the condition of mankind in the "ab...

In the sixteen to nineteenth centuries, philosophers such as John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau had clearly opposing opinions on the European settlement of the Native American inhabitation; this was due to their very distinctive notions on private property. These settlers found in North America a...

Rawls begins his thought experiment with something he calls the "Original Position." The Original Position is the equivalent to what other political philosopher's call the "state of nature." Like the idea of the state of nature, the Original Position is not something that actually exists in the worl...

Government, the term applied to the institutions and processes, whether formally established or not, by which individuals and groups within a state or society are controlled and regulated for various purposes, such as common defense, general welfare, or internal peace. Thus government is an agency o...