The private property in Jean-Jacques Rousseau: origin and legitimation
Private property; state of nature; marital status; inequalities; Sovereign.
This dissertation explores a theoretical debate about the origin and legitimation of private property in the ethical and political works of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. These are themes that surround private property and the relationships established before and after its establishment in civil society. Based on the reading of the works: Discourse on the sciences and the arts (1750); Discourse on the origin of the inequality among the men (1754); Social Contract (1762); Treaty on Political Economy (1755), the dissertation is divided into two chapters. The first deals with the relation between the nature present in man as well as outside it, demonstrating the existence of a system that includes faculties and feelings exclusive to man, as it is also ordered universally. The second discusses the foundation of the contract of the rich and the legitimation of sovereign power in defense of the right to civil liberty and political, economic and social equality. In short, private property does not conceive the origin of the state, but it represents an element that united the wills and shows that a right is only really valid when all men can enjoy the same conditions necessary for the guarantee of their humanity and their life.