Edmund Burke And Jean-Jacques Rousseau

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Political participation, and to what extent an individual may take part in legislation, is a matter of opinion. In each of their texts, Edmund Burke, John Stuart Mill, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, each discussed, extensively, the political and social provisions of civil life, and who shall have the right to participate in politics. Each writer has his own terms regarding political participation, and among all three there are resemblances as frequent as there are contraries when it comes to who should be legislating and why that individual or group should legislate. In Edmund Burke's letter on his Reflections on the Revolution in France, the father of conservatism proclaimed the importance of a political social order as a means to counter political…show more content…
Upon leaving behind one’s natural rights, societal members have forfeited any privileges, which tend to favor the strongest over the weakest. In his social compact text, Rousseau wrote of a form of democracy he admitted would be best for a society of men, who could not conduct a perfect society as the gods. In his text, Rousseau created different offices of the sovereign and the legislator. The legislator is an office of one, who has "nothing in common with human govern-ment." It was the belief of Rousseau that "he who rules men ought not to control legislation, and he who controls legislation ought not to rule men." In his reasoning, Rousseau considered the consequences of one man ruling and legislating in his own favor, which suppresses the will of the people. Rousseau's legislator is a member of moral code, carrying out the laws set by the sovereign people, adhering to their…show more content…
Some form of democracy, as democratic or undemocratic as it may be for the people, was the intention of a perfect, and superior establishment of government. For Burke, it was the rule under the aristocracy and the king- the minority ruling by their knowledge and wisdom. In the terms provided by Mill, it was based on decisions the people deliberated and fully agreed upon in order assume utility within the society. However for Rousseau the participation of all in making laws as the sovereign and subjecting themselves to those laws is what would force people to make decisions for the sake of the whole, rather than just voting for the benefit of
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