Rousseau

            
             Jean Jacques Rousseau was one of the many great minds in the eighteenth and nineteenth century who made many contributions to society. Rousseau had numerous ideas and thoughts on society and how people evolved to become who they were. Rousseau's thoughts on how people evolved and his contradicting ways of life, is what was intriguing to me and lead me to researching his life.
             Rousseau believed, in contrast to Hobbes, that all people were good by nature. However, he felt that society or the industrialized world made people bad. One of Rousseau's most famous quotes was that, " Man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains." I agree totally with this thought of Rousseau. I believe that human beings are born free and pure and it is actually society that makes them evil or corrupt. If you look at a newborn child all they want is to be loved and cared for. They don't know right from wrong, good from bad. It is life that teaches them these lessons. Rousseau believed that if you take two newborn children and raise one in the city and raise one in the unindustrialized world, that the one in the city will be evil and the one in the unindustrialized world would be good. I agree somewhat with Rousseau's theory, but I don't think that the one in the city would definitely be bad, but I do believe that the chances are higher. If the child in the city, grows up in an area where violence, drugs, and sex is all that's around them, then yes I feel the child's chances of being bad a very good, but on the contrary the child in the country can be evil and bad also. Just because one child isn't around buildings and industrialized life doesn't mean that he won't become evil. Many times the child in the country is taught to kill and fight much more than the one in the city, in order to survive. .
             Rousseau believed in the "Noble Savage." His belief is that a man in the unindustialized world living like Tarzan is considered good.