The Research Of Rousseau’s Thought Of Civic Virtue

The core of civic virtue is citizen. The word ‘citizen’ is a political concept of ‘human’. Therefore, the research should start from the Rousseau’s knowledge of humanity which is the basic of civic virtue. The Rousseau’s thought of civic virtue was not based on self-love、rational、pity, but from the pride of emotion, autonomy and patriotism is the core. As the‘legislator’of Corsica and Polish, Rousseau considered that the civic virtue can be shaped by the civic religion, legislators and honor. On the one hand, Rousseau’s thought of civic virtue has a strong times, for one things, he saw human walked step by step toward slavery and gave the way of the prescription of the times, on the other hand, his excessive emphasis on public interests also made him bear the stigma of totalitarianism. We can find in his research that this‘Geneva Citizens’ who spent his whole life chasing freedom, is neither an individualist nor a collectivist. In his opinion, the citizen’s salvation and redemption of the country are two sides of the same coin.The paper is divided into four parts besides preface and conclusion:The first part, with the history time as the main line, this paper discusses the origin of Rousseau’s civic virtue thought, and consider the origin comes not only from Sparta, the ancient Rome, the classical ideas of Plato and Machiavelli, but also from the contemporary encyclopedia school supplies.The second part, with the clue of Rousseau’s philosophy of human nature, and combined with his view of rationality, self-love, pity, pride, we are going to discuss Rousseau’s civic virtue is established on the basis of the proud. We can see the Rousseau’s civic virtue is not divided, and is inseparable with his entire political philosophy.The third part, use Rousseau’s freedom conception as an entry point, we analyze the autonomy and patriotism are the main content of Rousseau’s civic virtue ideology, but also point out he is not a talk thinker. Facing the decay of virtue and alienation of humanity,he put forward that we could shape civic virtue by legislators, civil religion, and honor three ways.The fourth part, based on the above discussion, we summarized the thought of Rousseau’s civic virtue, says the Rousseau’s great is that he saw the man’s alienation and put forward the path to citizens of redemption, but Rousseau’s civic virtue thought limited by his personal space is one of the largest defect.