Marx’s Resolution Of Rousseau’s Paradox Of Freedom And Equality

In class society,the proposition of "freedom and equality" frequently appears together with the words "possession of the means of production" "political rights and obligations" and "justice".There is an inherent tension between freedom and equality.Many philosophers have tried to resolve the conflict between them,and they either give priority to freedom or equality,and they are not sure what to do.Rousseau,as a pioneer of the great revolution,tried to reconcile the inherent contradiction between freedom and equality,and conceived a system of political philosophy with the social contract theory as its core.But in Marx’s view,Rousseau’s abstract design based on a priori rationality in essence further exacerbated the antagonism between freedom and equality.By recovering the essence of freedom and equality,which was misinterpreted by Rousseau,Marx dispels the paradoxical obstacles in Rousseau’s theory and shows a practical path to the substantive unification of freedom and equality.The thesis is divided into three parts: the first part carefully analyzes Rousseau’s a priori rationalist conception of freedom and equality and analyzes the paradoxes implied in it.Rousseau’s discussion of freedom and equality has merits,and his attribution of human freedom and inequality,his understanding of freedom and equality,and his choice of the path to achieve freedom and equality all implicitly reveal his process dialectic thinking.Both Rousseau and Marx agree that the attribution of human society’s unfreedom and inequality is due to the obstruction of private ownership.Freedom and equality are dialectically developed and can only coexist in a community;before that,all unfreedoms and inequalities are inevitable.Focusing on a priori rationality,Rousseau pushes back the root causes of human unliberty and inequality,trying to achieve a reconciliation between hypothesis and reality,public and private will,freedom and equality,but inevitably falls into paradox in the end.The second part of the dissertation focuses on Marx’s critique and reconstruction of Rousseau’s paradox of liberty and equality,since there are fundamental differences between Rousseau and Marx in terms of the starting point,the way of realization and the ultimate purpose of the theory of liberty and equality.Through a deeper deconstruction of Rousseau’s theories of premise,subject,means,and purpose,Marx completely dissolves the paradoxes in Rousseau’s theory of freedom and equality and achieves a fundamental transcendence of Rousseau’s theory.The starting point of Rousseau’s concept of freedom and equality is the state of nature and the abstract human beings living in it,while Marx takes the realistic and historically generated human and social relations as the basis;Rousseau takes the political sphere as the base and draws general presumptions under the guidance of a priori reason,while Marx focuses on the economic sphere and insists on scientific judgment from the height of historical materialism;Rousseau’s constructive approach is rooted in abstract moral human nature,while Marx takes the real live human nature as the basis.Whereas Rousseau’s constructive approach was rooted in abstract moral human nature,Marx’s constructive approach was based on the reality of living human beings;whereas Rousseau tried to build a contractual society with common will as the supreme domination by subjective imagination,Marx put "practice" into practice and put into practice a communist society with freedom and equality for all.Rousseau’s attempt to reconcile freedom and equality through a social contract has merit,but in Marx’s view,it is always difficult to justify and inevitably falls into paradox.The third part elaborates on the significance of Marx’s dissolution of Rousseau’s paradox of freedom and equality from both theoretical and practical aspects.Marx’s scientific,thorough,realistic and feasible,and genuine concept of freedom and equality is a thorough transcendence of Rousseau’s theory under a priori rationalism.In theory,it manifests Marx’s concern for the free and equal development of every person and inspires the further development of Rawls’ s theory of social contract;in reality,it clarifies the task of dealing with the relationship between freedom and equality in the new era in China and is the theoretical basis for building a "community of human destiny" in the new era.