Differences Between Goodness And Virtue

Rousseau is the great French philosopher, educator and litterateur,and he is a pioneer of the French Revolution in the eighteenth century,he also is one of the most outstanding representative of enlightenment.Rousseau occupies a very important position in the history of westernpolitical thought, and the impact of his ideas on the western legal andpolitical system continues today. Based on On Inequality, the authorresolves the "distinction of goodness and virtue--ethical thoughtresearch of Rousseau "to start talking.On Inequality sets off a debate about the human nature. Rousseauclearly shows the reader the natural state and how people go from theinitial natural historical process to human society. Rousseau discussesthe origins of inequality from the state of nature and social staterespectively, which gives people a false impression: It seems thathuman beings have experienced state of nature and social staterespectively. Due to some accidental factors, human beings changefrom the natural state to the social state, however, this view isproblematic. Rousseau believes whether people live in a state ofnature are not proved, and we can’t think of the state of nature as thetruth of history, on the contrary, and we can think of the state ofnature as the some assumptions. We can see that Rousseau cannotconclude the authenticity of the natural state, and he is too skepticalof true of the natural state. The natural state perhaps has not reallyexisted, and it only was an ideal assumption. Since we can not affirmthe truth of the existence of a natural state, why does he write oninequality from the perspective of dichotomy of state of nature and social state? In fact, the concept of state of nature and social state isjust a framework to analyze the problem, and the transition from thestate of nature to the social state is the transformation from thegoodness to the virtues of human emotion. Precisely because thiskind of transformation, it causes the inequality between people, inother words, Rousseau analyzes the origin of inequality from humanfeelings change, for example, Russell believes that we infer somethings outside the human beings from emotions, and Rousseau is thefounder. Therefore, the distinction of "goodness and virtues” is a keyto understand Rousseau thought. This thesis attempts to break thedichotomy of state of nature and social state to interpret OnInequality from inner feelings of human beings, and this can be closerto problems that Rousseau really thinks about.What is the distinction between "goodness and virtue"? Goodnessis the foundation of self-love, and virtue is the basis of self-esteem.Rousseau establishes the state through the equal contract theory,and its purpose is to make human feelings as much as possible closeto the state of self-love, and to reduce the harmful effects ofself-esteem on people by the large degree, in other words, Rousseau’ssocial contract theory not only is to solve the problem of inequalityfrom the social system, and more importantly, social contract theorydoes footnotes for complex relationship between self-love andself-esteem, the transition from the state of nature to the social statusis a essentially reciprocal process between self-love and self-esteem.