Anthem Forces Order On The Society example essay topic

At first reading, Jean Rousseau's "The Social Contract" and Ayn Rand's "Anthem" seem to contain two different philosophies, including completely different views on how a society should be run. While one is free, another is bound by rules. However the goal of both social doctrines is the achievement of happiness. Both of these philosophies impose order on society.

Rousseau's society views social order based on the natural inclination to find freedom. Anthem forces order on the society from the outside, rules and laws. Both Rousseau and Rand seek a harmonious society, but Anthem begins with a different means of trying to achieve that goal. Rousseau feels that in order to be free, you must first agree to it. He relies on the society to help itself and do what ever is best for self preservation. "Duty and interest therefore equally oblige the two contracting parties to give each other help"; (Ch.

5) Rousseau realizes that individuals may have interests contrary to society as a whole. "In fact, each individual, as a man, may have a particular will contrary or dissimilar to the general will which he has as a citizen". (Ch. 5) How ever, he notes: "in order than that the social compact may not be an empty formula, it tacitly includes the undertaking, which alone can give force to the rest, that whoever refuses to obey the general will shall be compelled to do so by the whole body". (Ch. 5) Rousseau refers to this as forced freedom.

Rand as well is looking for happiness, but uses means of force from the outside to get there. .".. it is not proper to smile without reason". (p. 26) Rand's arbitrary government has rules and laws to prevent the people from getting out of order. International 4-8818 and we are friends. This is an evil thing to say, for it is a transgression, the great Transgression of Preference to love any among men better than the others, since we must love all men and all men are our friends". (p. 27) The society in Anthem has a higher state or a World Council of Scholars that makes all decisions for the society. Under the social contract the society is run by itself. Rousseau would allow a council that only one that is voluntary accepted by the individuals, not one that is imposed.

"The problem is to find a form of association which will defend and protect with the whole common force the person and goods of each associate, and in which each, while uniting himself with all, may still obey himself alone and remain as free as before". (Ch. 4) In Anthem, the hero invents a new form of light and introduces it to the council. He is rebuked for disrupting the order of the society. He escapes from the town and is thrown in the wild where he begins to live by his own guidelines, or as Rousseau calls it, his natural state.

Rand implies that this natural state is how man is supposed live, "We cannot understand this new life which we have found, yet it seems so clear and so simple". (p. 96). Rousseau believes that the natural state is living as an animal. "That primitive race would perish unless it changed its manner of existence". (Ch. 4) Is Rand rejecting Rousseau? Certain phrases at the end of Anthem suggest she is not.

Rand is rejecting a totalitarian society imposed on the individual but she does not nessicarly propose at total individual existence. Everything the hero talks about includes others despite the sacred word "ego". Equality 7-2521 states "And here, in this uncharted wilderness, I an they, my chosen friends, my fellow-builders, show right the first chapter in the new history of man". (p. 118) At the end the hero exclaims, "Here, on this mountain, I and my sons and my chosen friends shall build are new land and our fort". (P. 122) His home will become the capital of the world". (p. 122) Rand dosn't reject society in favor of total individualism, Rand rejects imposed society without individual thought. The book ends with the impression that the hero intends create a new society with his sons and chosen friends, but a society based on the freedom of man. Although Rand's beginning society was completely different than Rousseau's the member of the society his natural state to state than it almost exact to Rousseau life. After living in the natural state the main character meets up with his love and discovers a home.

He reads books in his home that introduce the word "I" to him which he has never herd or used before. He branches off of this word by into carving the word "ego" onto his house. He is evolving into Rousseau citizen, he has gained his own order from within. While the man has left his of society to live on his own, he repeatedly states that he and his friends will be living in this new society. It will be a collective group. "To renounce liberty is to renounce being a man", according to Rousseau.

That is exactly what Equality 7-2521 realizes at the end. Anthem can only be viewed as a refutation of "The social contract" if Rousseau is misunderstood to require a society that is not imposed by consent of each person. Rand did not denounce any kind of authority, but only authority that governs without consideration of individual thought.