In Rousseau’s Discourse on Inequality, he posits that the beginnings of the social contract lie in the fears of the rich. In a state of nature, one in which there is no government or law to control the interactions of people, the rich would have great difficulty protecting the property that they possess. Thus, the rich turn to the mechanism of the social contract to shore up the holdings Rousseau views as “hoarded.” The concept of a social contract is appealing to the poor, because the poor fear death in a state of lawlessness and thus seek protection. To obtain assent to the contract, the rich focus their rhetoric on a seeming equality of obligation by creating rules that apply equally to all members of society. This system, however, simply systematizes the “theft” the rich had perpetrated on the poor in the pre-law state of nature.
Rousseau then begins to develop his own vision of a social contract, through which he attempts to right these injustices. His first departure from earlier theorists is in the formation of the sovereign. Rather than members of the state surrendering their rights to another person—an irrational course of action tantamount to surrendering oneself into slavery—they surrender their right to all members of the society and thus to no one. Rousseau refers to this “sovereign” as the “general will” and it has the task of legislating for the new civil society that is created in the contract.
It can be inferred from the passage that Rousseau would believe which of the following of a society of people living without the primary structures of civilization?
A. Their wealth would inevitably be equally distributed across the population.
B. Those with more wealth would be at risk of losing it to those with less.
C. Property would not be hoarded by those who had the most power.
D. A social contract would be created in order to protect and support the poor.
E. Property would only be taken if it had not been previously occupied and was necessary for the subsistence of those taking it.
Select the sentence in the first paragraph that explains the mechanism by which a privileged group is able to secure widespread approval for the systematized “theft” it achieves through hoarding.
“To obtain assent to the contract, the rich focus their rhetoric on a seeming equality of obligation by creating rules that apply equally to all members of society.”
In the context in which it appears, “
assent” most nearly means
A. agreement
B. signatories
C. wealth
D. addendums
E. opposition
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14 Nov 2024, 00:50
67% (02:55) correct
