Rousseau

Rousseau believed that an impartial "legislator" would be needed to come into a society in order to implement positive change, while blaming the original negative change on "divine intervention". In this essay I will prove that divine intervention is not the only explanation for this original negative change as well as how a "legislator", is not the only option or even the best option to implement positive societal change. Rousseau's unwillingness to offer any other explanation s for these phenomena weakens his overall position because in order to have a sound theory or argument all angles must be explored before drawing any conclusions that could be considered valid and plausible to those who read it. In this essay I wish to explore these other angles and determine what alternate explanations could be possible for the implementation of the past positive and negative changes other than those provided by Rousseau. First I will try to determine what Burke's idea of a "legislator" is and how he would be able to institute positive change. Then I will examine Burke's idea of "gods" and how he believes that they are responsible for the negative change. Lastly I will compare the two very different ideas between the discussion in the Social Contract of the "legislator" to the discussion the the "gods" in the second discourse.

Burke has a very clear idea of what qualities he sees in a legislator, he would "require a superior intelligence that beheld all the passions of men without feeling any of them" (p.162 Basic Political Writings). Although Rousseau knows what the ideal situation would be he offers a very impractical solution.

...