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19791
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Natural mankind is too fragmented for states of peace, or of war and enmity [Rousseau]
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Full Idea:
Men are not naturally enemies, for the simple reason that men living in their original state of independence do not have sufficiently constant relationships among themselves to bring about either a state of peace or a state of war.
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From:
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], I.4)
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A reaction:
He sees people in a state of nature as more or less solitary, and certainly in groups any more organised than a small family. One might then be in a state of permanent feud, rather than war, but without settlements people can move away.
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19792
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To overcome obstacles, people must unite their forces into a single unified power [Rousseau]
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Full Idea:
Men have no other means of maintaining themselves but to form by aggregation a sum of forces that could gain the upper hand over the resistance of obstacles, so that their forces are directed by means of a single moving power and made to act in concert.
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From:
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], I.6)
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A reaction:
I prefer the Aristotelian view, that men are naturally gregarious and social (like bees and ants), so this act of solidarity in superfluous. A human people is only broken up by violence or disaster, like kicking over an ants' nest.
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19812
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Human nature changes among a people, into a moral and partial existence [Rousseau]
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Full Idea:
The establisher of a people is in a position to change human nature, to transform each individual into a part of a larger whole from which the individual receives his life and being, to substitute a partial and moral existence for natural independence.
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From:
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], II.07)
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A reaction:
The 'partial' part is obvious, in the compromises of society, but he says we only become moral in a people, and even more so when that people constitute a state. In the state of nature, morality seems to be unneeded, rather than absent.
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19814
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A state must be big enough to preserve itself, but small enough to be governable [Rousseau]
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Full Idea:
Like a well-formed man, there are limits to the size a state can have, so as not to be too large to be capable of being well governed, nor too small to be capable of preserving itself on its own.
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From:
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], II.09)
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A reaction:
Geneva was his model, and it is close to the size of a Greek polis. Presumably even Scotland would be thought ungovernable, never mind the United States. Luxembourg might be his ideal nowadays. Thousands of them!
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19815
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Too much land is a struggle, producing defensive war; too little makes dependence, and offensive war [Rousseau]
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Full Idea:
Too much land makes its defence is onerous, its cultivation inadequate, and its yield surplus, which causes defensive wars. If there is not enough land, the state is at the discretion of its neighbours for what it needs as surplus, causing offensive wars.
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From:
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], II.10)
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A reaction:
This sounds much too simplistic, like the causes of squabbles in a kindergarten. Certainly inequalities between nations (such as the USA and Mexico) produces frictions. Advances in agriculture technology have transformed this problem.
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