> Since this has turned into a political philosophy discussion, I have a question to ask. I happen to be taking Idiot Amerian Gov't and Politics for Credit 101, and the rote memorization that's obviously been in textbooks for several generations now is that John Locke came up with the idea of a social contract. But in my philosophy class, we read some original Locke and some original Rousseau, and it seems to me that though Locke was probably more responsible for the way that the Constitution has been interpreted, the idea of a social contract was at least as much Rousseau's. My question, then, is who came first, and who came up with social contract first? My philosophy teacher, for whom I have great respect, seemed to be hinting that Jefferson was referring to Rousseau two or three times in the Declaration of Independence, but I don't know.

I haven't read any Rousseau since High School, and all I remember about him was his "noble savage" concepts. A quick check at philosophypages.com yields some interesting results. First of all, Locke was dead before Rousseau was even born. But it definitely appears that both men played a role in the development of social contract theory, as did Thomas Hobbes. Hobbes' concept seems to have come first, though it is perhaps not as relevant to modern thought.

So long as we're talking about American government, though, I don't think we can underestimate the influence of Locke's writings. His "Second Treatise of Government" clearly states that man has the natural right to "life, liberty, property" (phrased in the Declaration as "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," though all who signed the last clause *meant* property). It also details the overthrowing of governments, etc. The treatise was used specifically by the British Parliament to justify the overthrowing of King James II, which was particularly important to the American rebels in using these concepts in the Declaration to justify their creation of a new government.

I would be interested to know what phrases in the Declaration are references to Rousseau, though I shouldn't be surprised to find that they are there. The link below provides for more detailed reading, and the page linked to has links to online copies of Locke's treatises as well as Rousseau's work "The Social Contract."

Stephen