Jean-Jacques
Rousseau
The Social Contract
The Social Contract
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Rousseauean Democracy
The Social Production of
Liberty
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“Man is/was born free, and everywhere he is
in chains…”
Human history
The Social Production of
Liberty

“Man is/was born free, and everywhere he is
in chains…”
Human history
Primeval slime
The Social Production of
Liberty

“Man is/was born free, and everywhere he is
in chains…”
Human history
Primeval slime
Modern society
The Social Production of
Liberty
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“Man is/was born free, and everywhere he is
in chains…”
No natural differences could conceivably put people in dependent position
Human history
Primeval slime
Modern society
The Social Production of
Liberty

“Man is/was born free, and everywhere he is
in chains…”
No natural differences could conceivably put people in dependent position
Human history
Primeval slime
Modern society
Yet today, vast majority of world’s population is being brutally oppressed
The Social Production of
Liberty
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The question Rousseau is raising, is how
could naturally equal creatures get
themselves in the position of allowing the
convention that inequality is permissible?
How did we get into this situation?
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Not by nature (Book I, chapter 2)
Not by justice (Book 1, chapter 3)
The Social Production of
Liberty
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Note the trajectory of history
Rousseau is not going to suggest that we can go
backwards
Human history
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We can choose specific states or conditions of our
society, but we cannot decide whether or not to be
members of society
The Social Production of
Liberty
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Need to find a way to build on the nature that
we have and fashion institutions and social
arrangements to foster liberty
Why liberty?
The Social Production of
Liberty
“To renounce liberty is to renounce being a
man, to surrender the rights of humanity and
even its duties. For him who renounces
everything no indemnity is possible. Such a
renunciation is incompatible with man's
nature; to remove all liberty from his will is to
remove all morality from his acts.”
-- Social Contract, Book I, chapter IV
The Social Production of
Liberty
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What are the moral implications of selling or
otherwise alienating our liberty?
If we could do something like that, we would
be providing ourselves with the means of
avoiding morality
To renounce liberty is like ceding our moral
sense as we can claim our action was the
result of slavery
The Social Production of
Liberty
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We can ask ourselves, what if everybody did
that?
What if everybody was able to escape moral
responsibilities by claiming that their actions
were not authentically theirs?
Holding people accountable for their actions
is part of what being free entails
The Social Production of
Liberty
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Liberty becomes integral to my conception of
myself – to our definition of what a human
being is – what is implied in saying this life is
my life.
Personal life plans demands liberty
Liberty then means being in a position where
I am not dependent on the will of any other
person
Rousseau’s social contract (Book I, chp. vi)
The Social Contract
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But what kind of liberty are we talking about?
Natural liberty vs civil liberty (Book I, chp. 8)
Natural liberty is self defeating (recall PD)
Civil liberty
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Not having to obey any laws except those which
are in some sense an expression of my own will
Civil liberty is a human creation
The Social Contract
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It is only with this type of liberty – with civil
liberty – that we can say that we are free
And thus only with this type of liberty that we
can be fully human
If we follow only those laws which are an
expression of my will, then my life really is my
life – every action will be an action I choose
to do
The Social Contract
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What do we say about a person who did not
value this kind of liberty?
They are not being all that they could be, they
are not fully human in that they are not
participating in moral discourse
Rousseau is saying our humanity stems from
the fact that we can reflect on the status of
our affairs
The Social Contract
We can ask questions
like
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How should I live?
What is justice?
What would be a good
life for me? For you?
For us?
Animals can’t do this
The Social Contract
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Problem is, how do we realize this in society?
For example… the more elaborate our social
interdependence becomes, the more we have a
division of labor
Each of us performs ever more exact functions
The more the specialization progresses, the greater
the likelihood that some people will occupy
strategically important positions
These people will be able to exploit their position to
exercise power over others
The Social Contract
The Social Contract
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How do we organize our social lives so that
we can enjoy civil liberty?
How do we create a set of social institutions
so that we trade natural liberty for civil liberty
Rousseau astutely builds his theory by using
our dependence as the means of securing
our liberty
Only way civil liberty will work is if it is a
product of social cooperation
The Social Contract
“One who dares to undertake the founding of a
people should feel that he is capable of changing
human nature, so to speak; of transforming each
individual, who by himself is a perfect and solitary
whole, into a part of a larger whole from which this
individual receives, in a sense, his life and his being;
of altering man’s constitution in order to strengthen
it; of substituting a partial and moral existence for
the physical and independent existence we have
received from nature” (Book 2, chp. vii).
The Social Contract
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The only way civil liberty will work is if it is a
product of social cooperation
Contrast with Locke’s view
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Locke mistakenly postulates a liberty not
predicated on the necessity of our social ties
The liberty Locke describes is the freedom to be
unencumbered by societal considerations, each
of us decides for ourselves whether or not to be
part of the society
The Social Contract
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Rousseau argues that Locke is wrong
Society is not a club, not a voluntary
organization
Locke errs by treating people in socially
advantageous slots as if they were naturally
advantaged and thus free to pack up and go
home if the social arrangements are not to
their liking
The Social Contract
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Locke erroneously assumes property rights
are natural rights and thus those who have
property are free to defect from society when
property is threatened
Rousseau is arguing that this is wrong since
the property these individuals possess is
secured by a system of social cooperation.
The Social Contract
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So if Locke’s version of the social contract is
incorrect, what type of social contract would
be adopted?
Book 1, chp. vi
Rousseau’s contract presupposes that the
only morally acceptable contract is one which
insures that each person is at the same time
governor and governed
The Social Contract
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We should recognize that neither Hobbes’ nor
Locke’s contract would be chosen by individuals
ontologically structured such that they have liberty
and liberty is the essence of humanity
Hobbes is easy to see, but what about Locke?
Recall thieves in alley example
Locke merely provides a peaceful way to make
coercion regular
The Social Contract
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For example, look at modern U.S.
How are laws passed?
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Hold elections where most people don’t vote
Where winners go through all this deal making to
get laws passed in their own private interest
How are losers not at the mercy of the
majority?
In what sense am I obeying only myself?
The Social Contract
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The system is good insofar as it is better to
count heads than to break them
But because the system stabilizes a situation
does not make it just
Look at the contract Rousseau proposes
Create a process in which everything is
alienated, but unlike Hobbes, we’re not giving
it to any particular person or institution
The Social Contract
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In other words, we need to develop a social
decision making process whereby we can all
submit to and become dependent on no one
in particular
Need some sort of democracy where each
person counts equally
Rousseauean Democracy
Is this the case in the U.S.?
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Compromises reached are built on the
inequalities which pervade the process at the
start
In the US, we have dependency relations,
and we’ve stabilized a bad social system,
but…
Rousseauean Democracy
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All that means is that when you have better
or worse masters, you don’t have freedom,
and we have no moral reason for not bolting
from the master when we can
In US, we have a fairly stable,
institutionalized way of making decisions, but
it doesn’t make people free
What would it take to make people free?
Rousseauean Democracy
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The only social decision process which would
make people free – or, more exactly, secure
their freedom – would be one where no one
had more power or input than anyone else
How do we do that?
Rousseauean Democracy
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Roots are democratic, since, equality is the
basis of freedom and democracy is the only
system which incorporates an egalitarian
premise
But, instilling democratic institutions alone is
insufficient for a morally acceptable
democracy
Rousseauean Democracy
Three steps
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1.
2.
Need to insure that the decision process is not
based on prior social conditions that reflect
power relations
Redistribute to insure that no socially strategic
positions exist
Rousseauean Democracy
“I have already defined civil liberty; by equality, we
should understand, not that the degrees of power
and riches are to be absolutely identical for
everybody; but that power shall never be great
enough for violence, and shall always be exercised
by virtue of rank and law; and that, in respect of
riches, no citizen shall ever be wealthy enough to
buy another, and none poor enough to be forced to
sell himself: which implies, on the part of the great,
moderation in goods and position, and, on the side
of the common sort, moderation in avarice and
covetousness.” -- Book 2, chapter 11
Rousseauean Democracy
Three steps
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1.
2.
3.
Need to insure that the decision process is not based on
prior social conditions that reflect power relations
Redistribute to insure that no socially strategic positions
exist
People don’t vote on private interests
Note: if we’ve done Steps 1 and 2 correctly, we
will have no difficulty with this step
Two kinds of will:
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Particular Will
General Will
Rousseauean Democracy
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Particular will
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Private considerations
Ask “what would be good for me”
Basis is narrow self interest
Rousseauean Democracy
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General Will
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Public considerations/collective interest
Ask “what would be good for us?”
General will is general in essence and object
Think of the Prisoners’ Dilemma matrix
The GW is like voting based on cooperative
outcome
Rousseauean Democracy
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Compare Rousseau’s democracy with
modern U.S.
In US, need to vote on particular will or you
will get hammered
Dependence? In US, the winners impose
power on the losers
In Rousseau? Who are we dependent upon?
Since vote is on general will, we are not
dependent on anybody