Chapter 09: Reconstruction of a Student Paper

Chapter 09: Reconstruction of a Student Paper

In the exercise that follows, you will reconstruct the order of paragraphs in a student paper written for a survey course in Modern European History.

In the exercise that follows, you will reconstruct the order of paragraphs in a student paper written for a survey course in Modern European History. The writer’s topic, a comparison of Edmund Burke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, belongs to Chapters 3 and 4, but the paper is so accomplished that we’ve used it here.

The prompt:

Rousseau and Burke were near contemporaries, one French and the other British. Compare and contrast their ideas about equality, property, and government.

INSTRUCTIONS: Number the paragraphs in the order in which you believe they appear in the original.

  • The primary distinction between the belief systems of Edmund Burke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau lies in their understanding of human nature. One way to see this distinction is by comparing their philosophies of equality, property, and government—philosophies developed by Rousseau in “Discourse on the Origin of Inequality Among Men” and by Burke in “Reflections on the Revolution in France.”
  • In these works, Rousseau and Burke express very different opinions about the equality of men. Burke believes that people born into nobility deserve their position because it is their birthright and follows the “natural order of things.” The French, he argues, are operating on “false ideas” in believing that they can remove the hierarchical system present in their country. Hierarchy, he proposes, is part of the natural order of the human race and cannot be expunged.
  • Rousseau’s ideas about equality are different. Rousseau believes that all men start out equal and become unequal only because of the constraints of society:

     

    The moment one man needed the help of another…then equality disappeared. Property was introduced, work became necessary… one could soon see slavery and misery germinating and ripening along with the crops.

     

    Rousseau states that inequality originates in the creation of private property rather than “the natural state of man.”

  • Rousseau and Burke agree that property plays a crucial role in society, but their ideas about property differ greatly. Burke believes that private property is essential in maintaining any form of order within a society. “The power of perpetuating our property in our families,” he states, “tends the most to the perpetuation of society itself.” (209). Burke explains that progress in society is contingent upon the existence of private property and its orderly transfer from generation to generation. Property owners, he argues, tend to push a society to keep its continuity with tradition, and thus help fend off dangerous innovation.
  • Rousseau, on the other hand, believes that private property is at the core of all inequality, avarice, and war:

     

    Competition and rivalry on the one hand, opposition of interests on the other, and everywhere the hidden desire to profit at the expense of others -- all these evils are the initial effect of property and the burgeoning inequality that comes inevitably in its wake.

     

    Rousseau explains that the creation of private property led to a sort of domino effect that ultimately caused the evils of society. It is for this reason that Rousseau believes that the current hierarchical system of government is fundamentally flawed.

  • Rousseau and Burke’s views on government are also opposed. Burke adamantly believes that the current state of the British government as a hierarchical system is very effective, and is the product of societal reforms that have taken place over many generations of mankind. Burke believes that the masses are not intellectually capable of making important political decisions. He believes that the complexity of running a government is beyond the understanding of most people, and that the current people in positions of power obtained these positions through the success of ancestral generations: 

     

    We are afraid to put men to live and trade each on his own private stock of reason, because we suspect that the stock in each man is small, and that the individuals would do better to avail themselves of the general bank and capital of nations and of ages. (213).

     

    Burke believes that a drastic change in the current state of British society is very foolish because he thinks that people are not capable of achieving significant positive societal reformation in such a short period of time.

  • Rousseau, in contrast, feels that the current state of government needs to be drastically changed to undo the negative aspects of society that were caused by the creation of private property:

     

    The political state always remained imperfect…since it had been badly begun, time could never correct the vices of its constitution merely by discovering defects and suggesting remedies. One constantly made adjustments, instead of beginning, as one ought to have done, by clearing the air and getting rid of all the old materials…and then going on to put up a solid edifice.

     

    Unlike Burke, Rousseau stresses the need for a drastic political “rebuilding,” and explains that through the years of societal progression people have made alterations to an inherently flawed system that can never be corrected because at its core it works against “the natural state of man.”

  • Rousseau and Burke have different ideas about the “natural state of man” (Rousseau) and “the natural order of things” (Burke). Rousseau believes that the evils perpetrated by man are a direct result of the creation of private property, and ultimately, a society founded on greed and an insatiable desire for more power. Burke believes that all men are innately unequal, and that society is a medium through which the inherent inequalities among men are displayed, not created.
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