Rousseau and the civilization of North America

Rousseau discusses some very interesting ideas about civil society, how it came to be, and what about it is truly important. Like Ross points out in his post, I also noticed the powerfulness of Rousseau’s first sentence of this essay. “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.” This quote stands to act as thesis for the ideas the Rousseau explores in his writing. He goes on to discus the family unit as the oldest form of society. I was surprised to read Rousseau’s view on the family unit, since he suffered such a unique family situation himself, as discussed in the small biography in the text. I found this to be interesting to consider today since the traditional “family” structure is challenged and changing to fit more mixed families, half-siblings, and families in which the parents may be gay or straight. Therefore, it might be hard in today’s society to consider the family a model of political associations as Rousseau does.

Rousseau then spends a lot of time discussing Slavery. He states that every man is born free, and that no one but themselves has a right to dispose of their liberty. This, obviously, is not how slavery was implemented in our in our own country. Then, the children of slaves were considered born into the same slavery as their parents. Rousseau also uses his discussion on slavery to talk about war and what “rights” wartime entails dealing with slavery. Rousseau continues his essay to further discuss social society and the agreements man makes between himself and society.

The most interesting parts of this essay, for me, dealt with the civil sate and property. As I read this, I could not help but think about the Native Americans that were here in North America before the Europeans. I kept thinking about how much the “white man” imposed on the beliefs and way of life of the indigenous people that were here before they arrived. Rousseau states, “What a man loses as a result of the Social Contract is his natural liberty and his unqualified right to lay hands on all that tempts him, provided only that he can compass its possession. What he gains is civil liberty and the ownership of what belongs to him.” This quote, I think, is wholly contradictory to the way Native Americans view a sort of social contract. They do not see or agree with the very western view point we take on owning land or possessing things that really belong to the Earth, that therefore cannot be “owned” by any human.

We (the white Europeans) also violated the Right of “first occupancy” that Rousseau talks about, because humans were not the first occupants of North American land, and even if they were, the white man arrived even after the indigenous people.

“In order that the right of “first occupancy” may be legalized, the following conditions must be present. (1) There must be no one already living on the land in question. (2) A man must occupy only so much of it as is necessary for his subsistence. (3) He must take possession of it, not by empty ceremony, but by virtue of his intention to work and to cultivate it, for that, in the absence of legal title, along constitutes a claim which will be respected by others.”

Each of these ideas were violated by the white people. When the European white people came over to North America, none of these 3 conditions were present, nor were these ideas followed. It makes me wonder why, if Jean-Jacques Rousseau was so influential in his time, his ideas were not taken seriously and implemented into our own culture until it was too late for so many native people and the lands they lived on.