Jean-Jacques Rousseau: On the Social Contract

1. Jean-Jacques Rousseau:On the Social Contract PHIL 1003 2008-09

2. “All that is challenging in The Social Contract had previously appeared in the Discourse on Inequality…” (Confs., Bk 9).

3. Two kinds of social contracts: 1. Unjust (the norm): exploitation wears cloak of legitimacy (DOI); 2. Just ones: the “Social Contract”; each freely obeys himself.

4. Unjust ‘contract’ (DOI) • “…man, who had been free and independent, is now…subjugated by a multitude of new needs”; • “rich, he needs [others’] services; poor, he needs their help”; • “Laws…gave the weak new fetters and the rich new forces…[they] transformed a skillful usurpation into an irrevocable right” (II.33).

5. “Once Peoples are accustomed to Masters, they can no longer do without them” (CUP ed. 1997, 115, [6]).

6. Social contracts of Hobbes and Locke: Hobbes: individuals agree to subordinate themselves to the sovereign; Locke: individuals agree to form common-wealth; gov’t may be overturned if it does not serve preservation of property, liberty.

7. On the Social Contract Book I

8. SC, Book I • Man is/was born free (SC 1.1) • But he is everywhere in chains, a slave: • Clever/strong enslave the less clever/weak; • We become desperate for protection; • In society we run to meet our chains; • This is an illegitimate contract, an absurdity because a “contract” to enslave oneself!

9. Slavery, while the norm, is null and void; contrary to what it means to be human (1.4).

10. Are there such cases of alleged voluntary enslavement? • Yes, even today! • Why are these contracts always to the disadvantage of the inferior party (the slave)? • Actual cases: • ancient Athens before Solon (6th cent. BCE): people sold themselves to pay off debts (Aristotle, Const. of Ath., vi); • Indentured servitude (17th-18th cents.); 7 years in return for passage to colonies; • Chinese smuggled to the West; work for no or low wages for years in return for passage; often abandoned by “snakeheads” and left to die.

11. The Political Association • Necessitated by “obstacles that interfere with [men’s] preservation” (1.6 [1]); • Each surrenders natural powers (freedom, right to act as judge, jury and executioner); • “total alienation of each associate with all of his rights to the whole community” (1.6 [6]); • No associate to be exploited or forced to obey others; • He obligates and obeys only himself!

12. Tennis Court Oath, Versailles 1789

13. Transformation of Man • Passage from S of N to civil state “produces a most remarkable change in man” (I.8.1): • The new, moral man (inspiration for Kant) • Free from appetite, self-interest: autonomous: lit. one gives the law to oneself; • Natural liberty is exchanged for morality, duty, i.e. general will (common good); • Reason prevails over inclination (recall Aristotle). • Advantages of civil state far outweigh S of N: all life possibilities are expanded!

14. State, Sovereign, or Power • Each is to receive in return: • no greater burden than is imposed on anyone else; • Membership in a perfect union; • “Each by giving himself to all, gives himself to no one…one gains the equivalent of all one loses, and more force to preserve what one has” (1.6 [8]). • One’s person and power are under “general will”; • Each member an indivisible part of whole, “a moral and collective body” (1.6 [10]).

15. Sovereign, cont. • Cannot be obligated by any law it may not break, e.g. a Bill of Rights; • Sovereign may not alienate part of itself, or do anything else that detracts from SC; • No need for citizens’ rights to be guaranteed since Sovereign could never want to hurt part of itself: • “The Sovereign, by the mere fact that it is, is always everything that it ought to be” (1.7.5) .

16. On the Social Contract Book 2

17. Freedom Two Freedoms (Sir Isaiah Berlin): Ancient: people’s freedom to rule itself Modern: freedom from restraint Rousseau tries to reconcile them. Equality Sufficient that one man cannot buy another (SC 2.11); But not absolute; Discourse on the Origin of Inequality: Against law of nature for many to starve while few live in luxury! Book 2: two major principles

18. Rousseau’s two principles • First: “…the greatest good of all consists in….Freedom, because any individual dependence is that much force taken away from the State; • Second: “…equality because freedom cannot subsist without it.” • “as for wealth, no citizen should be so very rich that he can buy another, • And none so poor that he is compelled to sell himself…” (Social Contract, 2.11).

19. The General Will:as standard and decision • Common good; public utility—a standard; • Also a collective decision: • Not your private interest or sum of private or partial interests of some citizens. • Constrains you as citizen: • you may not do anything that goes against it, or • you become an enemy of the Sovereign (1.7.8); • see II.5 on the death penalty.

20. How the GW may err • “…the general will is always upright…but it does not follow…that the people’s deliberations are always equally upright”; • “One always wants one’s good, but one does not always see it” (II.3.1); • “By itself the people always wills the good, but by itself it does not always see it”; • The general will is always upright, but the judgment which guides it is not always enlightened” (II.6.10).

21. Will of all vs general will (II.3.2) • Will of all does NOT = general will! • GW = common interest • But GW can be derived from “sum of small [private] differences”: • “…if, from these same wills, one takes away the pluses and the minuses which cancel each other out, what is left as the sums of the differences is the general will” (II.3.2).

22. Assumptions behind GW • Perfect information • No political parties, ‘PACs’, lobbies, factions: • “no partial society in the State, and every citizen state[s] only his own opinion” (II.3.4). • Example: “troops of peasants seen attending to affairs of State under an oak tree and always acting wisely” (IV.1.1).

23. Enforcement of GW—Totalitarian? • Each has a particular will (private interest) as individual; • And general will as citizen; • As an individual he may not want to give what is required by general will/Sovereign; • Hence S. needs to enforce compliance: • “whoever refuses to obey the general will shall be constrained to do so by the entire body”; • “he shall be forced to be free” (1.7.8).

24. Public Utility Limitation (II.4.3) • “It is agreed that each man alienates by the social pact only that portion of his power, his goods, his freedom, which it is important for the community to be able to use, but it should also be agreed to that the Sovereign is alone judge of that importance.”

25. Why is GW “indestructible” (IV.1)?

26. Questions • Book I of The Social Contract begins with the claim: "Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains." • What are these restrictions on man's liberty and how are they affected by the social contract? • Rousseau says that "whenever one believes one sees sovereignty divided, one is mistaken.” How can sovereignty not be divided when the individual's will is not necessarily the general will? • What does Rousseau mean by the "general will?" (Does he mean that it's the will that's most represented?) • What is Rousseau's input on equality for individuals under the Social Contract?