Hello! I wanted a textual analysis done of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s “Origin of Civil Society.” Below the line I have included the instructions provided by my professor.
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Your second essay assignment is a textual analysis. By the end of this section of the class, we will have read Niccolò Machiavelli’s “The Qualities of the Prince,” Lao-Tzu’s “Thoughts from the Tao-te Ching,” and Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s “The Origin of Civil Society.” These three texts all explore the interaction between government and the individual. You may use additional outside sources.
At the core of any idea of government is the belief that individuals need an organized allocation of authority to protect their well-being. Lao-tzu reflects on the ruler who would, by careful management, maintain a happy citizenry. He makes clear that the success of the existing form of government depends on good relations between the leader and the people. His view is that the less the Master needs to do—or the less government needs to intervene—the happier the people will be. Machiavelli places the survival of the prince (rules) above all other considerations of government and, unlike Lao-tzu, ignores the concerns and rights of the individual. His commitment to a powerful prince is based on his view that in the long run strength will guarantee the peace and happiness of the citizen for whom independence is otherwise irrelevant. Rousseau’s emphasis on the social contract focuses on the theory that citizens voluntarily submit to governance in the hope of gaining greater personal freedom. A fundamental principle in his essay is that the individual’s agreement with the state is designed to increase the individual’s freedoms rather than to diminish them.
Your assignment is to write an essay analyzing the ideas of these three authors. Which author’s ideas do you most agree with and why? What do these authors imply about the obligation of the state to the individual it governs, and about the obligation of the individual to the state? Is one more important than the other?
In answering these questions, you will want to also consider the following thoughts:
Consider what each author sees as the ultimate purpose of government.
Consider what each author sees as the main work of the state.
Consider the attitudes each author has toward the essential goodness of people.
Note: You should not try to answer the bullet point questions posed above in your essay because that isn’t manageable for a paper of this length. Those ideas are given to you simply to give you a jump start in your analysis. They are akin to the pre-reading questions that accompany each of these three texts.
Audience: You are writing to your peers at Delta College; they are your audience. You should assume that they have read the essays but have not explored them as thoroughly as you have.
Textual analysis consists of breaking a text down into its component parts (its language), determining what these parts mean, and then concluding how these parts relate to the whole. A textual analysis is simply a persuasive essay. It is a kind of map: the thesis says, “I am here,” and then proceeds to lead the reader to that place by laying out and explaining the evidence piece by piece. The best evidence for your thesis will be summary, paraphrase, and direct quotations from the texts. It may be helpful for you to think about writing your papers as if you were a lawyer making your case. In your thesis statement, you want to be clear about what exactly you want to show (this will state your answers to the above questions). The rest of your paper will provide evidence to back up your case.
