John Locke
Jean-Jacques Rousseau Rousseau agreed with Locke’s system of industriousness, productivity and individual
rights, however he differed in that man in this system became a mediocre, petty individual, lacking depth and culture,
thus coining the term “bourgeois,” a term used to describe the center which both the left (rational) and the right
(passionate) have despised. He disagreed with Locke and St. Augustine that man’s nature is selfish and that he
was born in sin. Instead man’s nature is essentially good, yet unlike Locke, he is not close to nature in that
he should dominate it, but rather, he is distant from it and that is why he lacks depth and culture. He needs to
return to nature and wholeness. Thus came depth psychology and Freud’s study of the unconscious motives of man,
the conservation and environmentalists and ideas that man must return to nature to restore wholeness in that of
the earth and that of man himself, to restore his depth, his culture, his sentiment, his aesthetic ability to go
beyond surface capitalism and industriousness. 
Locke saw that man’s nature was selfish and the need was for self-preservation. Man
was enlightened, he no longer had a God that watched over him, no longer a paradise to restore, but rather, he
was an amazing creature that has survived the harshness of nature and survived to increase in science and knowledge.
What man needed were his “rights” and a system based on each individual’s rights was needed. In agreement with
St. Augustine that man was naturally inclined as selfish, Locke differed in that man no longer was in the position
between man and soul, where man had to repress his desires according to his soul, but rather, man was in the position
between society and nature. In order to solve his problem, man needed to conquer the harsh nature, to become industrious
and harbor nature for his benefit. Instead of man endorsing brotherhood and love as the answer, fighting between
his self nature to preserve over the whole, he now need to dominate nature to produce to supply his needs, have
his rights protects and honor the rights of others to do the same. This is the system, that of “life, liberty and
the pursuit of individual rights” from Hobbes and Locke that make up the American democracy.
Neither longing, nor enthsiasm belongs to the bourgeois. . . The story of philosophy and the arts under Rousseau's
influence has been the search for, or fabrication of, plausible objects of longing to counter bourgeois wel-being
and self-satisfaction. Part of that story has been the bourgeois' effort to acquire the culture of longing as part
of its self-satisfaction." Allan Bloom, Closing of the Amercan Mind, p. 169