Jean Jacques Rousseau #2 (His Teaching)

The speaker discusses the teachings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and their impact on the French Revolution. Rousseau's definition of civil government and the functions of government inspired the revolutionaries. He advocated for a democratic form of government where the entire population gather to deliberate and pass laws. However, Rousseau's ideas also led to abuses of power during the French Revolution. He believed in a social contract between the individual citizen and the national government, stripping away traditional institutions that could restrain the government. Rousseau's views on education differed from biblical perspectives, as he believed children were naturally good and should be left to explore and develop on their own. The speaker emphasizes the importance of the civil covenant with God and highlights the differences between the social contract and the national covenant with God. They also mention the biblical model legislation project available on greatbiblereset.com as an Hi everybody, welcome again to greatbiblereset.com, where we focus on a return to the Mosaic Covenant of Exodus 20-24 as our only hope for escaping the tyranny of Kalash Slav's Great Economic Reset. When all else fails, maybe we should read the Operator's Manual, but we don't want to do that, so that's why I keep harping on it every time. So today, we're focusing more on the teaching of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and his impact on the French Revolution at the culmination of the Enlightenment period. The French Revolution was a culmination of enlightenment, of man's great enlightenment, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau was the Kalash Slav of that period. Rousseau's definition of civil government and the functions of civil government was a great inspiration to the French revolutionaries, and first of all, Rousseau specified two motives of government, the legislative and the executive, which corresponds to the moral and physical powers determining human action. The legislative power arises from the will of the people, according to Rousseau, and it's expressed in the executive power, which exerts the will of the people in specific actions. But here's the rub, the great irony is that Rousseau requires the delegation of the people's power with regard to the magistrate, but he forbids it in matters of legislation. Thus, in the name of freedom, he forges the bans of slavery, that whosoever refuses to obey the general will shall be constrained to do so by the whole body, said Rousseau, which means nothing else than that he shall be forced to be free. During the French revolution, the executive power was exercised through committees, what they called committees of public safety, which tyrannized over the public. Every citizen became an informer and could bring charges against a neighbor on mere suspicion of disloyalty to the state, thus were the people forced to be free. This is similar to red flag laws that we have today, related to gun ownership, which are being resurrected in 21st century America, contrary to the second amendment of our constitution. Well, if that's the case, what limits does Rousseau place on civil government? Well, Rousseau placed very little, if any, limit on civil government. The prince alone stands between the government and the people. Let us be content to consider the government as a new body in the state, he says, distinct from the people and from the sovereign, and intermediate between the two. The state exists by itself, while the government exists only through the sovereign. The only other restraint he places on the central government is the democratic assembly of the entire populace en masse. He claims, for example, that such councils occurred frequently in the Roman Republic, and that the democratic mob engaged in deliberation and judgment. According to Rousseau, these assemblies may be convoked by the magistrate or held on appointed dates. Although the general will is always correct, it is nonetheless possible for the resolutions of the people to be misguided or misinformed, and in such cases it is important, then, in order to have a clear declaration of the general will for a single magistrate, such as the great Lysergius of Sparta, to intervene, that the people may not be deceived. Now Rousseau identified three forms of government, depending on the number of members that composed them. Government in the hands of an individual is a monarchy, in the hands of a small number an aristocracy, and in the hands of a large number a democracy. And Rousseau, of course, favors a democratic form in which the entire population gather to deliberate, pass law, and judge certain affairs. Despite its inefficiencies, Rousseau insists that this is the superior form, but he then denies his own principle by placing the sovereignty of the people in the hands of an administrator whose decisions supposedly reflect the general will. The greater the population, the more absolute should be the power of this administrator. It is a monstrous thing, he believes, to attempt to divide the authority of the sovereign into an executive power, a legislative power, a judicial power, and so forth. Such would hinder its unified action as a single body. So here we have shades of Dante. So a centralized government is so great, what mechanisms does Rousseau propose for preventing abuses of the government? Well, Rousseau has stripped away all the traditional institutions of society that might otherwise serve as a restraining influence on government and shield the people from potential tyranny. Rousseau's social contract was a direct agreement between the individual citizen and the national government. Thus, man was totally naked and exposed to the central tyranny. The administrators are supposedly not the masters of the people. The administrators are supposedly not the masters of the people, but its officers, that the people can appoint them and dismiss them at pleasure. This is clearly a forerunner of Marx's dictatorship of the proletariat, in which the dictatorship will naturally dissolve away after the revolution is complete. The problem is nobody ever defines when the revolution is complete. They just keep moving the goalposts, or more aptly, perhaps, they just keep adding football fields. The illusory nature of this restraining power became evident during the French Revolution when Robespierre and his cronies directed the terror with impunity, unchallenged by any democratic body. Rousseau clearly understood the importance of education, but his education is presented in Emile, his other book, were clearly different from traditional and biblical views of education. Rousseau believed that because the child is naturally good, man is naturally good, right? The most effective approach to education is to provide an environment in which that goodness can work itself out naturally. The role of the teacher is simply to create an environment in which the child can explore, experiment, and develop according to his own instincts. Emile is sheltered from the corrupting influences of society, even from such innocent symbols as church bells and toy soldiers. The self-directed child will find his own way in life without the intrusive intervention of teachers or parents. The Bible, on the other hand, portrays the child as sinful, requiring a strong hand of discipline and guidance. Proverb, for example, it says, he that spares the rod hates his son. Proverbs 13, 24. So far from being passive in matters of education, fathers are to take an active role, bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. According to Ephesians 6, 4, which is contrary to Emile, a Christian father would not discourage his young boys from playing with toy soldiers or wooden guns, for example, because such play nurtures them in their future role as protectors. So everybody was writing about the social contract in those days. We had Hobbes, we had Locke, and now Rousseau. So, so what's the difference? Well the purpose of the social contract, the purpose of the social contract was to preserve life, liberty, and property, according to Locke. On the other hand, individual liberty was absorbed in the general will expressed by the state in Rousseau's contract. Thus Rousseau wanted no intermediary institutions, no representatives or government standing between the individual and the national state. With Locke's contract, men give up only enough rights to secure the remainder, but with Rousseau they surrender all rights to the sovereign state. Each of us puts in common his person and his whole power under the supreme direction of the general will, said Rousseau. Moreover Rousseau was more secular, although not irreligious. He was one of the first to make the people the sovereign source of governing authority and reason a goddess. Locke at least gave lip service to God and quoted scripture, although Hobbes reduced the religious hierarchy to a department of state. So you see how it works. With every iteration things get a little bit more out of control, a little bit more centralized. Rousseau sought to eliminate the encrustations of orthodoxy altogether, replacing it with a form of civil religion nourished by the state. What do we have in America today? Civil religion. In spite of these superficial differences, the common thread among all three was elimination of the civil covenant with God and his word, God's word, in favor of a social contract among men. And that's a huge difference. Most of our Christian America authors today like to eliminate that difference. They say there's no difference between the social contract and the national covenant with God. But there's a huge difference. They're complete opposites. The general will that Rousseau was so enthralled with was an underlying political reality that unified all of life. Because man is a social or political animal, politics supplied the common thread by which all of life was bound together and was expressed through this so-called general will. This was the supposed consensus of opinion that arose from the people, but was given expression by the platonic elite. Pure allegiances or factions are surface phenomena and should be eliminated to the extent possible. According to Rousseau, the election of representatives to a legislative assembly is a surrender of liberty, but the gathering of all citizens in a democratic assembly is the purest expression of the general will. Even the representatives of the national government must defer to the democratic assembly. Rousseau romanticized the citizens' assemblies of the Roman Republic to allegedly demonstrate this point. The comrades of the French Revolution greeted one another as citizens in an expression of this fundamental political unity. All of life was politicized under Rousseau. So in response to that, we've got the biblical model legislation project contained in the free book you can pick up at greatbiblereset.com. And if you're grappling with the question of alternatives to the secular government school system, you'll find help with a free spreadsheet or cheat sheet which you can pick up at kingswayschool.us forward slash high school. kingswayschool.us forward slash high school. Or if you're struggling with all the demands of homeschooling, trying to balance the demands of your tots and your teens, including how to pay for an outrageously priced college education looming on the horizon, you can get five simple steps you must follow at kingswayschool.us forward slash homeschool. kingswayschool.us forward slash homeschool. And we'll see you next week for a biblical analysis of the life and teaching of Jean-Jacques Rousseau.