Jean-Jacque Rousseau (inspire French revolution)
Second contract published in 1762
Robert Filmer: Divine right theory—ridiculous idea.
Republicanism
Natural liberty political liberty
Divine right
Nature subject political subject
Hobbes
Natural liberty political subjection
Locke
Natural libertypolitical liberty
Rousseau
Natural liberty political liberty
Rousseau’s project: Critique of society
Rousseau’s central insight:
1) man is by nature free, equal and good,
2) but is corrupted by society
-morally: civilization corrupts the virtues: society creates people of poor quality;
alienated from their humanity; incapable of meaningful self-realization
- politically: authority as a mask for oppression(压迫) and exploitation(利用)，
political command, and the hierarchy of ruler and the people ruled.
Q: how can one live a life that is authentically one’s own? How can individuals be
virtuous and institution legitimate.
Diagnosis 诊断(Two discourses of Rousseau)
-account of human nature and (speculative) history, as basis for:
-criticism of inequality and oppression
Remedy 治疗: (theoretically)
Rousseau’s claim: so far philosophers and theologians have not understood
human nature; they have treated as natural what is actually SOCIAL.
Methodological problem: how to escape the theorist’s own social and historical
context
State of nature (harmonies)
Original goodness, liberty, equal
-
Natural goodness: pre-moral sense, virtue can only exist in society, we don’t
perceive others as threatens
Liberty: no constraint, not constrained by others
Equality: descriptive (Hobbes) and normative (lack of moral distinction)
Natural drives
Self-preservation
Sympathy for others
(similar to Locke, but for Locke is more moral, for Rousseau is psychological)
Contrasts with society
- Social virtue/vice, cultivated in community (moral distinction)
- Mutual dependence, exploitation, oppression
1)[depend on each other to live, none of us can live isolated and take care of
ourselves, so we live dependently on the society
2) [then even everyone needs to depend on others, there will be a problem of
exploitation. Because someone is in the privilege status…]
- Inequality (wealth, status, power)
- Drive for distinction/ superiority: derive our self-worth and self-esteem from
the eyes of others. To seek for the distinction and superiority. Rousseau thinks
we should derive the self-esteem from our authenticity, in others’ eyes that is
conformism.
State of nature in social contact
men are NOT naturally enemies, because they live in their original state of
independence do not have self-sufficiently constant relationship among themselves
to bring about either a state of peace or a state of war
From state of nature to society—why leave the state of nature?
Necessity: ‘I suppose that men have reached the point where obstacles that are
harmful to their maintenance in the stat of nature gain the upper hand by their
resistance to the forces that each individual can bring to bear to maintain himself in
the state, such being the case, that original state cannot subsist any longer, and the
human race would perish if it did not alter its mode if existence’
Rousseau didn’t elaborate clearly what the state is about, but it’s roughly a state that
we cannot be self-sufficient, maybe the population grows and the scarcity…then we
increase the interaction between each other, in the situation that we encounter each
other more and more, we discover the inequality, and weaken the drives of build the
esteem in the eyes of others.
Rousseau is more concerned with explaining how we might be free in political
society, than to explain why the institution was arose.(for some reason we institute
the society :)
Civilization = slavery
‘Aristotle: some people are naturally slaves, and some are born to be dominate.
Rousseau: Aristotle is right, but he took the effect for the cause. Every man born in
slavery is born for slavery; nothing is more certain. In their chains, slaves lose
everything, even the desire to escape. If there are slaves by nature, it is because
there have been slaves contrary to nature. Force has produced the first slaves; their
cowardice 怯懦 has perpetuated 使永久 them. Slaves are rose to be slaves.
‘civilized man is born and dies a slave. All his life is imprisoned by our institutions. We
live in the eyes of others to seek for self-esteem, and do what the society wants us to
do.
Social contract in second discourse
 Social contract as institutionalization of relations of dependence, for the benefit


of the privileged class (两个贵族骑在农民头上)
Institution of authority, right, and property as a ruse, a trick: a solution to a
Hobbesian problem but one that leads to repression and exploitation
Q: is there a conceivable way to legitimate political authority? Make it equal?
On the social contract
 How is a legitimate political order even conceivable?
Central question:
 ‘whether there can be some legitimate and sure and secure rule of
administration in the civil order, taking men as they are and law as they
might be.’
 ‘man is born free, and everywhere he is in chain. He who believes himself
the master of others does not escae being more of a slave than they.
人是生而自由，却无往不在枷锁之中。自以为是其他一切的主人的人，反而比其他一切更
是奴隶.
在自由状态下， 人与人之间处于一种隔绝孤立的状态，不存在任何人与人之间的联系。
这种情况下，人们之间不会发生意志上的屈服，也就拥有自己的自由。 这里的自然状态
下的自由是一种【不发生意志上的屈服的自由】， 所以卢梭眼中的不自由是一种【个体
在意志上依附于人】人在进入社会之后，不可避免地由于财富地位生存而对他人产生依
附。
即是是农民背上的贵族，他们以为自己是 master，但实际上也是依附于农民的 slave,
they cannot sustain themselves
Desiderata for a solution
 Explain the difference between right and might
- The difference between force and legitimate power. To give in to force is an act
of necessity, not of will (霍布斯说人不得不往水里扔东西去救自己的命是
will)
 Conceive political power as conventional, not natural
 Respect our human dignity by securing liberty.
- Slaver and right are mutually exclusive
- Renouncing one’s liberty is renouncing one’s dignity as a man, the rights of
humanity and even its duties. An appropriate institution account for securing
our dignity by securing our liberty.
How to reconcile freedom and authority
Social contract
It is an act of self-transformation:
 The individual becomes both
- Citizen (member of ‘sovereign’) participant in making the laws
- Subject (owing obedience to the law) bound by law [you are co-legislator/coauthor of the law]
 The multitude becomes a ‘people’
- General will—expressed by law
- Popular sovereignty: the sovereignty is ALL of us together.
Hobbes: sovereignty is the REPRESENTATIVE of the people. One agency’s voice
is the law. Not all the participants have the right to make the law
‘At once, in place of the individual person of each contracting party, this act of
association produces a moral and collective body composed of as many as members
as there are voices in the assembly the state is the totality of person, each one can
have a voice to say what the law should be. Vote and decide which receives from
this same act its unity, its common self. Its life, and its will. This public person (the
collective of all of us)… takes the name republic or body politic.
Called state by its members when it is passive
Called sovereign when it is active, to see what to be done, what not
Called power when compared to others like itself-international relationship.
As for the associates, they collectively take the name people
Individually they are called citizens
As they are participants in the sovereign authority
They are subjected to the law of the state
Social contract
 You become a member of society by unanimous agreement (consent) to
transfer yourself into the two identities: citizen & subject
 Agreement to what?
 the total alienation of each associate together with all of his rights to the
entire community, which is, the transformation. Your nature right is exchanged
for your political right that the community grants you as a whole. We give up
ALL of our nature rights (Locke: we retained some of our rights and our
property, our body. Hobbes: we give up all power to the particular sovereign
instead of the collective of all of us)
 each of us place his person and all his power in common under the
supreme direction of the general will  and as one we receive each member
as an indivisible part of the whole. We regard each other as citizens/colegislators/equal in the community.
 in giving himself to all, each person gives himself to no one.
 the total alienation of each associate, together with all of his rights to the
entire community.
Locke: transfer with reservation, Rousseau: transfer without reservation
♣ So: how is it that in giving oneself to the community, one obeys only
oneself?
 ‘general will’ we make the law by ourselves, so we are obeying our own
will
♣ people can be forced to be free?
Every man as a subject, don’t want to pay the tax (private will contrary to
the general) but you are forced to obey your will as a citizen—the law
LIBERTY
♣Natural liberty: unbound, independent, master of oneself (in the
state of nature)
♣Civil liberty: not bound by the particular will of others; space to
move within legal bounds
♣Moral liberty
being the author of the law
‘makes man truly the master of himself. For to be driven by
appetite alone is slavery and obedience to the law one has
prescribed for oneself is liberty. Obey your passion is slavery. Only
obey the law you set for yourself is the real free and selfgoverning. Autonomy. Acting rationally.
Positive law, made by the quote of general will