| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立政治大學 === 政治學系 === 88 === The essence of Rousseau‘s thought is rich. A wide variety of focuses are thus occurred due to various scholar’s different concerns. Their research subjects are different too. For example, some scholars concern the position and influence of Rousseau’s thought on the idea of history, while others concern the components of democracy and authoritarianism of his thought. Nevertheless, the concerning of the elements of Rousseau’s thought on civic republicanism is not very prevailing. The main purpose of this thesis is from the core concept of civic republicanism, i.e., corruption and virtue, to analyze Rousseau’s political thought.
Based on this research core, the second chapter of this thesis discusses the meaning of corruption, its process and the factors in causing corruption, as well as to divide the phenomena of corruption into political corruption and social corruption which is relevant to property. Rousseau dealt these corrupt phenomena with virtue. One the one hand, he applied virtue as the standard to criticize the contemporary political and social corruption. On the other hand, he applied virtue as the foundation to reconstruct ideal political community. The thought of Rousseau seems to be influenced by the classical republicanism thinkers and the two ancient Republic, i. e., Sparta and Rome Republic. Rousseau’s view toward virtue will be discussed in the third chapter of this thesis.
The foundation of reconstructing political community by virtue will be found in Rousseau’s theory of social contract and to be proved in Rousseau’s drafting the manuscript of constitution reform policy for other states. Social contract reveals the stereotype of ideal political community, however , the binding and the maintaining of social contract depends on an outstanding legislator. On the one hand, he transforms and eliminates the various factors of corruption formation. On the other hand, he creates the various environment of virtue cultivation, enforcing the “Republic of virtue” to be realized.
Not every thinker’s way of thinking toward corruption is the same with Rousseau. Montesquieu’s and Constant’s thinking are different from Rousseau. The last part of this thesis will discuss the differences among them.
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