"Man Is Born Free"-On Rousseau's View Of Liberty

Jean-Jacques Rousseau regards "man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains. One, thinks himself as the master of others, and still remains a greater slave than them."[ 1 ] How did this change come about? Rousseau affirms that the man's liberty is primitive, inborn, good and legitimate. But at the same time. Rousseau regards that man lives without liberty in reality. So man lives in paradox of "ought to be" and "to be". This is attributed to social evil and that man abuses his reason, which cause the inequality and man's alienation. And these result in that man lives without of himself, as a salve. So, liberty is a state of someone being his own master and being within himself, and its manifestation is equality. Rousseau explores liberty from logical beginning of inborn liberty, i.e. natural liberty, and from the logical beginning, he infers that for liberty and equality, man must overturn the society and then institute a government by social contract, so that break the evil of the society and the inequality of right, property and even spirit. The liberty also is the moral liberty, i.e. the liberty of will. So, there are three states of the liberty: the natural liberty, the civil liberty and the moral liberty. The natural liberty which is inborn follows the natural positive passions of "amour de soi-meme" and pity. The civil liberty which is the base of equality follows the general will, and its essence is that citizens share the Sovereignty equally. The moral liberty by which man lives within himself is self-discipline of the will and obeys the law of conscience.