TITLE:
An Analysis of Dystopian Political Philosophy in Nineteen Eighty Four—in Rousseau’s Social Contract View
AUTHORS:
Xiaomeng Lin
KEYWORDS:
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Social Contract, Dystopia, Nineteen Eighty-Four, Political Philosophy
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Social Sciences,
Vol.12 No.12,
December
3,
2024
ABSTRACT: A highly centralized, oligarchy politics is constructed in satirical political allegory Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell. The rationale of social contract is distorted through a zero-sum game between public will and public opinion, the reversal of power and rights, the paradoxical relationship of freedom and slavery, and dissolution of rationality of the rule of law and government, where the complex and sophisticated social power mechanisms have effectively achieved the purpose of manipulating the masses’ mind, maintaining centralized rule, thereby constructing a political dystopian society. After the review and reference to the Western social contract thoughts, this paper seeks recourse to Rousseau’s contract philosophy, trying to probe into the components in social contract and its practical logic of absurdity and regression in the dystopian society depicted in Nineteen Eighty-Four. According to the study, in 1984, the government power formed by the transfer rights by the people obliterated the legitimacy of power source, disguised the will of all in the ruling class as a fallacious general will, and utilised the law and political power as a tool to invalidate the rights of people. Eventually, the contract assurance to freedom with reasonable constraints was reduced to a nominal tool of servile rule, which caused the deplorable fact that the democratic nature of social contract is evaporated, and the social contract converted into an accomplice of the oligarchy dictatorship.