Rousseau

1. Rousseau

2. Jean Jacques Rousseau: Social Contract (1762) • Key Work: The Social Contract • Ideology: Legitimate political authority comes only from a social contract agreed upon by all citizens for their mutual preservation. • Rousseau calls the collective grouping of all citizens the "sovereign," and claims that it should be considered in many ways to be like an individual person. • Such collectivism has seen some political historians place Rousseau’s ideological standpoint alongside that of Marx’s.

3. Consent and legitimate authority • Rousseau reacts against Hobbes’ vision of the social contract where humans consent to be conquered! • Under such a system, people obey out of fear, not out of moral obligation. • Legitimate authority can only be achieved through involvement in the political process and the giving of personal consent. • Thus, authority is to come from the people who, collectively, are to be Sovereign.

4. The state of nature • Rousseau severely criticises Hobbes’ understanding of human nature. • He asks how Hobbes’ ferocious, brutal, selfish creatures could ever form a community, even when subject to the coercive rule of the Sovereign. • Rousseau believes that man is defined by his natural freedom and endeavours to create a system whereby society and individual freedom can be conjoined. The noble savage – man in the state of nature. A positive diagnosis.

5. Rousseau on freedom • Rousseau argues that increasing freedom of an individual can lead to eventual decrease of his positive freedom. • Examples: Person becoming addicted to alcohol and nicotine. They are no longer as free as they were before as they are burdened with this addiction. • Recent smoking ban in enclosed places will mean smokers will have less freedom than non-smokers. • An example from politics would be a party that offers more freedom to the voters such as reduced tax, but are actually corrupt and use the same methods as before once they get into power. This leads to a reduced freedom for the citizens • Rousseau says that citizens should be made aware of such possible losses of freedom, and then they will be able to decide whether to accept this coercion or not.

6. Positive diagnosis of human nature • Clearly, Rousseau has a much more positive diagnosis of the human condition than Hobbes or, indeed, Locke. He considers man to be innately sympathetic to others and bestowed with natural tendencies to be good. • It is only when corrupted by society that man begins to exhibit negative tendencies. As he put it: "Man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains". • In his educational novel “Emile”, Rousseau illustrates how we might retain our inherent goodness and natural freedom within a socialcontract. This is held to be possible via utilisation of the doctrine of the General Will.

7. The General Will • “Each of us gives his person and his total power to the common cause, under the supreme authority of the general will, and we receive every member as an integral part of our group.” • The General Will is what society should be built on. It is in this common good where sovereignty is to be found. • In order to create the General Will, all individuals must sacrifice personal ambitions and consider what is of public importance. • Ideas of public importance or common good can obviously differ, so Rousseau recommends that all conflicting ideals be removed. Whatever residual is left can be rightly considered “The General Will”.

8. Practical application • Rousseau anticipates that the General Will is discovered through all individuals directly participating in an assembly. Here all will decide what the General Will decrees on all matters. • A Legislator will be required to implement the General Will, but this figure has no political power and is expected to withdraw after the system has been established (link to Marx?) • The body that applies the dictates of the General Will does not matter – be it a democracy, monarchy or Rousseau’s favoured elected aristocracy. Any body will be subject to the General Will and will not hold legislative power of its own. • No individual possesses natural rights. All rights are decreed by the General Will.

9. Conditions of the General Will Pinchin summarises the conditions as follows: • The will must take into account the voice of all individuals • All are obligated equally under the general will • The will is only concerned with the common cause, not private interest • The will can be perfect only if the concern of each one is the public good • For Rousseau, law can only be enacted if it is subject to the General Will.

10. Criticism 1 – too optimistic • Surely condition 4 is far too hopeful! Can Rousseau really believe that all will act for the public good? • Can public and private interest be readily separated? • Often it is only retrospectively that the distinction between the two is revealed. • Rousseau would presumably argue that any miscalculations would not be left in the residual once all conflicts are removed. • Yet, given the scope of possible conflict, it may well be the case that no residual is left – or what remains is so inconsequential as to be rendered useless. Thus, the General Will is empty!

11. C2 – the Social Contract could legitimise oppression • Rousseau believes that coming together under a social contract to implement the General Will is the only way we can retain our natural freedom. • Yet, this process would seem to limit individual freedom – not free to pursue individual interest. • Plus, those who resist the General Will are to be “forced to be free”! • Rousseau may argue that this is less sinister than it sounds and that it simply entails making people realise that freedom is best realised through the General Will. • However, it is easy to see how such a system may be abused by those who wish to exclude certain groups from society.

12. Bentham against Social Contract Theory • In his Fragment on Government (1776), Jeremy Bentham attacks Social Contract Theories on the basis that they rely on historical inaccuracy. • There has never been a state of nature as described by Hobbes et al and such fiction has been used to support the submission of the masses and the legitimacy of monarchic government. • As previously mentioned, the contract theorist’s reply to such an attack is that ideas referring to “the state of nature” are hypothetical. It is to be understood as a concept, not an historical event.