Rousseau
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 social
contract. This is held to be possible via
utilisation of the doctrine of the
General Will.
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”.
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.
Conditions of the General Will
Pinchin summarises the conditions as follows:
1. The will must take into account the voice of all individuals
2. All are obligated equally under the general will
3. The will is only concerned with the common cause, not
private interest
4. 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.
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!
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.
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.