EIGHT

Rousseau (1712–1778): The General Will and Moral and Political Liberty

Rousseau may be the third thinker in the social contractarian triumvirate of Hobbes, Locke and himself, but he remains one of the first thinkers to offer us a strong critique of modern social and political institutions in the name of the modern values of equality, liberty and democracy. Rousseau’s pulling down of modern institutions is not done in the name of, for example, their having overturned the natural order of hierarchy; instead, he shows us again and again their failure to match their promise of embodying equal and free rights for all. In a very important sense, Rousseau begins the counter tradition of questioning the progressiveness of modernity.

Jean Jacques Rousseau was born in Geneva, a republican city-state surrounded by large monarchical kingdoms. As a republic, Geneva had a general council which theoretically could be attended by all its eligible male heads of households. However, it has been estimated that in the middle of the 18th century, in a population of 25,000, no more than 1,500 citizens could vote in the general council. Real political power lay in the hands of the small council, a much smaller body of 20 members, all drawn from patrician families. The general council may not have enjoyed any real powers (it could not convene its own meetings, nor introduce any new legislation) but its existence crystallized the claim of the ordinary ‘citizens’ and the ‘bourgeois’ (that is, the urban citizens) to a greater share in political decision making. From 1707 to 1738, the conflict between the patrician faction and the citizens’ lobby in Geneva often erupted into overt struggles. Rousseau was born in 1712, and growing up in a neighbourhood of Geneva ‘largely populated by artisans and notorious as a centre of popular agitation’,¹ he was familiar with the arguments for popular sovereignty. When Rousseau left Geneva, he took with him a dream of the possibility of democracy, which remained with him throughout his wanderings.

Rousseau’s mother came from an upper-class family, while his father was a watchmaker. As his mother died within a week of Rousseau’s birth, Rousseau was brought up by his father, who however, abandoned Geneva and his son when Rousseau turned 10. Rousseau was taken in by his mother’s brother, and for the next few years he attended a reputed school with his cousin. The cousin, having completed his schooling, was sent off to begin his training as an army officer, whereas Rousseau was reminded that he had to earn his living and was apprenticed to an engraver, when he was At 16, Rousseau had had enough and he ran away from his apprenticeship, converted to Catholicism, (thus forfeiting his Genevan citizenship) and began moving from one European city to another. He was like a vagabond, with no formal education or university training. Patronized by much older and richer women like Madame de Warens, whom he called maman, and Madame d’Epinay who provided him later with his pastoral retreat, Rousseau was self-taught and used his musical talents to establish himself in Paris. He also became friends with French philosophes like Diderot and d’Alembert and was soon contributing articles to their Encyclopaedia, as well as writing popular musical operas. In 1756, how ever, when he was at the height of his musical career, he left Paris, as if rejecting city life, and settled down in a cottage in the countryside, where he wrote such masterpieces as Social Contract and Emile. Both of these books were published in 1762, both were condemned by the French parliament, causing Rousseau to flee to Switzerland. He also spent a year in England under the protection of David Hume, but returned to France in 1767.²

Rousseau began writing his masterpieces in 1750, and in a spate of 12 years or so, he had written ‘Discourse on the Arts and Sciences’ (1750), ‘Discourse on Inequality’ (1755), the Encyclopaedia article titled ‘Political Economy’ (1755), Emile (1762), and The Social Contract (1762). His other political works include the Constitution for Corsica (1765) and an essay titled ‘Government of Poland’ (1771). Rousseau also wrote a number of autobiographical works, the most famous of which is Confessions, published posthumously, in two parts, in 1782–1789. In 1776, he wrote Rousseau: Judge of Jean Jacques, in which Rousseau analyses and ‘judges’ the work of a thinker called Rousseau, that is, himself. In 1776, he began Reveries of the Solitary Walker, a work which is divided into 10 ‘walks’ during which the walker talks to himself. Disturbed by the banning of his books, much of Rousseau’s autobiographical writings are actually a defence of his philosophical and political ideas.

ROUSSEAU AND ROMANTICISM

Let us begin our discussion of Rousseau with an analysis of his first major piece, the 1750 ‘Discourse on the Arts and Sciences’, which won the first prize of the Academy of Dijon. The Academy had decided on ‘Whether the progress of the arts and sciences has contributed to the purifying of morals?’ as the question posed for their annual essay competition and Rousseau’s first discourse was an answer to this question. Rousseau begins ‘Discourse on the Arts and Sciences’ by seemingly setting up ‘natural man’ and ‘rational man’ as adversaries that is, by contrasting nature with man. ‘It is a noble and beautiful spectacle to see man raising himself, so to speak, from nothing by his own exertions; dissipating by the light of reason, all the thick clouds in which he was, by nature enveloped; encompassing… with giant strides the vast extent of the universe; and, what is still grander and more wonderful, going back into himself, there to study man and get to know his own nature, his duties and his end.’³ Philosophy, the sciences, the arts, literature—these seem to be the means by which man has raised himself, but Rousseau soon lets us know that his judgement on these is resoundingly negative: ‘Our minds have been corrupted in proportion as the arts and sciences have improved’, or, as he puts it later, ‘the progress of the arts and sciences has added nothing to our real happiness; it has corrupted our morals.’⁴

Both the arts and sciences have contributed to the moral corruption of human beings. The arts and sciences were not to be praised as the fruits of civilization. If civilization was to be equated with the development of the arts and sciences, then it was civilization which was responsible for the fall of man. Rousseau states that it is not so much that he is against the arts and sciences, but that he is on the side of virtue. According to him, the cultivation of the arts and sciences has always been prejudicial to military and moral qualities. For Rousseau, this truth is a historical constant. Wherever the arts and sciences had reached a pinnacle, there morality had degenerated, and Rousseau cites the examples of Egypt, Athens, Rome and China to substantiate his claim. Rousseau goes so far as to show how each of the specific arts and sciences originated from a particular vice. Astronomy was born, he writes, of the vice of superstition, eloquence of flattery and ambition, geometry of avarice, physics of idle curiosity and moral philosophy of human pride.⁵

Not only are the arts and sciences antithetical to our morality, they are also opposed to our freedom. The arts and sciences are like flowers bedecking our chains; they are the illusion that makes us unaware of the unhappy position we are in. ‘The arts, literature and the sciences, less despotic though perhaps more powerful, fling garlands of flowers over the chains which weigh them down. They stifle in men’s breasts that sense of original liberty, [and] cause them to love their own slavery.’⁶

Rousseau’s essay made him infamous. ‘Discourse on the Arts and Sciences’ elicited a large number of critical responses in which it was argued that he was completely mistaken about the simplicity of the early barbarians who were far crueller than us moderns. In his replies to these critics, the argument that Rousseau was to make in ‘Discourse on Inequality’ and The Social Contract, is prefigured. Rousseau’s reply was that the culprit behind the corruption of human beings was wealth, private property and inequality. These were the causes of our moral turpitude, not so much the arts and the sciences.

NATURAL DIFFERENCES AND SOCIAL INEQUALITIES

In his next well known essay, ‘Discourse on Inequality’, Rousseau develops this argument in much greater detail by sketching a picture of the history of mankind. Early man, Rousseau writes, lived an animal-like existence. He was a solitary creature, and his interactions with other human beings were episodic and casual, conducted for the purposes of a hunt, or to satisfy a sexual instinct. Early man had no fixed abode, and no continuous social interaction. ‘Let us conclude then, that man in a state of nature, wandering up and down the forests, without industry, without speech, and without home, an equal stranger to all ties, neither standing in need of his fellow creatures, nor having any desire to hurt them, and perhaps not even distinguishing them one from another.’⁷

Here, Rousseau also presents us with his concept of human nature. At this stage in the life of the species, like other animals, man is also characterized by the two natural sentiments of self-love and pity. Every sentient being, Rousseau claims, shares these two emotions. Self-love is the interest every sentient being has in preserving itself, and pity, or compassion is the repugnance every such being feels at the suffering of another living being. Rousseau often gives the example of horses being unwilling to trample live bodies. Self-love, or amour de soi is not the same as amour propre which is an emotion akin to self-aggrandizement. Amour propre develops only in society. Rousseau mentions two characteristics which distinguish human beings from animals: free will and the capacity for self-improvement, which he calls ‘perfectibility’ (see Box 8.1). Not only did human beings have the capacity to determine their choices, they were also able to improve themselves. Rousseau believed that whereas ‘Nature exercised an internal constraint upon animal behaviour’, humans were ‘capable of choice’, ‘because they could always satisfy natural impulses in a variety of ways, [for example] their flexible diet could comprise either fruit or meat, [they could not be said to be] bound by the instincts which impelled and controlled all other creatures.’⁸ Because human nature is indeterminate, human beings could either improve themselves or become worse than before. This, for Rousseau, was the human faculty of self-improvement, which allowed human beings to have, unlike other animals, a history.

Coming back to the process of human development, Rousseau points out, that gradually, these isolated and solitary human beings began some kind of settled and collective existence. Families formed and began to live together, and language developed. Rousseau terms this simple, rustic, communal life, the first revolution in the history of man, calling it the golden age of mankind. The invention of metallurgy and agriculture constituted, for Rousseau, the second revolution in the life of the human species. Rousseau states categorically that ‘it was iron and corn, which first civilized men, and ruined humanity’.⁹ Once human beings learned the skill of agriculture and especially, to make the same piece of land grow crops regularly, it became profitable to try to have sole possession of that land. This is how the concept of private property emerged.

Once private property was accepted, the distinction between the rich and poor emerged. Over time economic inequalities became extreme, the few rich families became afraid of the poor, who were more in number. In order to safeguard their property, the rich came up with the idea of government and law, and apparently impartial administrators who would, ostensibly, look after everybody’s interests. This, according to Rousseau, was the original social contract, a trick played by the rich on the poor, because, as Rousseau points out, this government was not impartial. It pretended to be, but it actually looked after the interests of the rich against the poor.

The distinction between the rich and poor is the first term of inequality, the distinction between the government and governed is the second term of inequality and the distinction between the master and slave is the last and final term of inequality (see Box 8.2). Once government comes to be established, Rousseau argues, those in government use their political power to usurp everybody’s rights, including those of the rich. Very few individuals become, as it were, the masters of the whole community. Once economic inequality is introduced, it will inexorably lead to this extreme political inequality of master and slave, in which situation, there will be a loss not only of natural equality, but also of natural liberty.

Ostensibly, Rousseau’s purpose in writing the second discourse was to refute the suggestion that moral or political inequalities, like the inequalities of wealth and power, are related to natural differences, like the differences in age, bodily strength and wit (see Box 8.3). Whatever differences in bodily strength or wit there may be, and these are slight, they are of no significance in man’s natural state. Whereas for Hobbes and Locke there is a natural equality among men, which is of great significance to what happens in the state of nature, for Rousseau, in the state of nature, men are naturally different from each other. This fact, however, has no significant bearing on their behaviour. These natural differences cannot be held responsible for the social and economic inequalities of society. It is only in society that these inequalities of wealth and power arise and Rousseau holds these social inequalities responsible for man’s corruption. Again, while for the other contractarians, Hobbes and Locke, the transition from the state of nature is to a civil society, for Rousseau, the society created after the emergence of private property is not ‘civil’ at all; it is characterized, above all, by exploitative and antagonistic relations. No wonder, then, that Colletti calls Rousseau, Marx’s precursor.¹⁰

SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS AND MORAL MAN

As we already pointed out earlier, prior to reason, man was characterized by the two sentiments of self-love and pity for other sentient beings. These pure emotions are corrupted in society. Society, characterized by inequality, becomes responsible not only for the corruption of human beings, but also for the lack of liberty in their lives. It is due to these views of Rousseau, that he is often associated with the slogan ‘Back to Nature’. The early Rousseau, of the two discourses, seems to give us an extremely negative judgement on society and civilization. Is this judgement reiterated in Emile? In Emile in 1762, Rousseau, writes that, ‘Everything is good as it comes from the hands of the Author of Nature; but everything degenerates in the hands of man.’¹¹ A little later, he laments that, ‘All our wisdom consists in servile prejudices, all our customs are but servitude, worry and constraint. Civilized man is born, lives and dies in a state of slavery…and as long as he preserves the human form, he is fettered by our institutions.’¹²

Emile, interestingly enough, is a treatise on education. However, if Rousseau really had this contempt for human learning, then why would he write a work on education? By this time, Rousseau had come to the conclusion that education, organized along the right lines, would build on the strengths of our human nature instead of perverting it. Therefore, he advocates the education of Emile, in the countryside; close to nature, and away from the city. Emile is a child who is removed from his parents and sent away, with a tutor, to the countryside. The tutor ensures that the child has the freedom to move about freely in this natural and solitary environment, and keeps him away from any books till the age of 12. Rousseau thinks that the child should learn to reason for himself, on the basis of his experience and not because of what he learns from books. Between 12 and 15, the only book Emile is to be allowed access to, is Robinson Crusoe. During this time Emile is also to learn some basic manual skill or a useful art, like carpentry. As an adolescent, Emile naturally experiences a sexual urge which the tutor is to sublimate into ‘friendship and the general sense of human community’, by using the natural sentiment or pre-rational natural instinct of compassion. It is only when the boy has turned 15, that the tutor introduces him to the study of philosophy and religion. From playing in the lap of nature, when the student turns to metaphysics and religion, he acquires a sense of being part of the natural order. As a created natural order, nature has purposes or ends imbued in it, and with this realization, Emile comes to know himself as a moral being. Rousseau seems to be implying here ‘a natural and painless transition from the study of Nature to the search for its author; and when the idea of God is acquired, as the most reasonable explanation of the cosmos, it follows that with the natural love of self, there will be associated a natural love of the Creator of the self and the universal order, of which the self feels itself to be an integral part…[then is born] an active conscience which, although it operates through feeling, does not supplant reason, but supplements it.’¹³ As a moral being, Emile now has a conscience, which, for Rousseau, is based both on the sentiments and on reason.

It is at the end of this stage, by about the early twenties, that Emile learns that the order of which he is part, is also a social order, and that he has grown up not merely to be a man, but also a citizen. The individualism of Emile does not imply that men in general can find personal fulfilment outside society. ‘Emile is not a primitive, but an artificially-produced natural man for an artificially-produced natural society.’¹⁴

Just as Emile is for a certain kind of education completing or perfecting our nature, similarly, is not The Social Contract about the rightly organized political society building on what nature already provides us with? In the state of nature, not only do we have free will, we also enjoy natural liberty, since ‘no man has a natural authority over his fellow in the state of nature’. However, we have no moral liberty in the state of nature, because we have not yet developed a moral sense. This moral sense can only be born in society, and we need to establish a society in which, not only do we preserve the liberty of the state of nature, but also provide the conditions for us to achieve moral freedom. In place of a society in which a few rule over the many, human beings need to set up a society guaranteeing civil and moral freedom for all. Rousseau defined freedom thus: ‘Obedience to a law which we prescribe to ourselves is liberty.’¹⁵ Which kind of society, however, will establish such freedom?

Rousseau seems to suggest that human beings need to come together in society to achieve a better life, but he is also makes it clear that this society has to be organized on certain lines. As he puts it, ‘The problem is to find a form of association which will defend and protect with the whole common force the person and goods of each associate, and in which each, while uniting himself with all, may still obey himself alone, and remain as free as before.’¹⁶ Rousseau’s solution to this problem is a social contract (see Box 8.4), which states that ‘each of us puts his person and all his power in common under the supreme direction of the general will, and, in our corporate capacity, we receive each member as an indivisible part of the whole’.¹⁷

‘At once, in place of the individual personality of each contracting party, this act of association creates a corporate and collective body….This public person, so formed by the union of all other persons,…now takes [the name] of Republic or body politic; it is called by its members “State” when passive, “Sovereign” when active, and “Power” when compared with others like itself. Those who are associated in it take collectively the name of people, and severally are called citizens, as sharing in the sovereign authority, and subjects, as being under the laws of the State.’¹⁸

In simpler terms, Rousseau’s idea is to vest sovereignty with all the people signing the hypothetical contract, so that the same people are both the sovereign as well as the subjects. It is the people who collectively make the laws, and it is the same people who then obey these laws. Since, according to Rousseau liberty is living according to self-prescribed rules, in civil society all the people are free, because they live as subjects under laws which they have framed themselves.

If we establish a society following these steps, we replace the natural liberty of the state of nature, with civil and moral liberty. These two kinds of liberty can only exist if sovereignty in civil society is vested, not simply in the people, but more specifically, in the general will of the people. Therefore, we now have to examine what one means by the term ‘general will’.

THE GENERAL WILL

Rousseau states that for the general will to be truly general, it must be general in its origin, in its object, in its form, and lastly, it can only exist if there is economic equality. The sovereign is only that general will which is general in its origin. This means that everyone must have a voice in the decision taken by the general will. Everyone, for instance, must have a vote by which he expresses his decision. This shows that Rousseau was critical of a representative democracy, where representatives vote in the place of the people. In such a case, it is not the general will which is sovereign, because representative democracy denies the principle that the general will must be general in its origin. Rousseau contemptuously claimed that the English people are free only for one day in five years: the day they vote, that is, the only day the general will is really general in its origin.

Next, Rousseau points out that the general will must be general in its object, that is, the people must be thinking about the common good when taking a decision (see Box 8.5). Even when the general will is general in its origin, that is, every adult member of the community has voted and expressed his decision, if these voters have voted in their own individual or private interest, or in the interest of some association less than the political community, then the collective decision cannot be said to be an expression of the general will. Such decisions can only be called the will of all, which, for Rousseau, is not the same as the general will. ‘There is often a great deal of difference between the will of all and the general will—the latter considers only the common interest, while the former takes private interest into account, and is no more than a sum of particular wills.’¹⁹

This idea, that the general will requires more than the consent of everybody, is already prefigured in the second discourse, in Rousseau’s rejection, of the original contract that the rich persuaded the poor to enter into. Mere consent or agreement is not enough to create the general will. In The Social Contract, Rousseau states that once a new political entity has been created in which the general will is sovereign, the question arises of the framing of laws, which will determine how individuals are to act. Rousseau presents this problem in the form of two contradictory propositions. He first states that ‘the people, being subject to the laws, ought to be their author: the conditions of the society ought to be regulated solely by those who come together to form it’,²⁰ but then goes on to ask, ‘How can a blind multitude, which often does not know what it wills, because it rarely knows what is good for it, carry out for itself so great and difficult an enterprise as a system of legislation?’²¹ Rousseau’s solution to bringing together ‘the idea of the will, and the idea that what is willed will be good and just’,²² is to introduce the person of the legislator as necessary for ‘public enlightenment’ leading to ‘the union of understanding and will in the social body’. However, despite this, Rousseau insists that ‘sovereignty cannot be attributed to the legislator and remains with the whole body of citizens’.²³ The source of the obligation to obey the law remains the will of the citizens. Political obligation is not derived from the goodness of the law. If the general will is to exist, it must then, be general both in its origin and in its object.

Another aspect of the general will is that it must also be general in its form. This means that the laws formulated by the general will must be in the form of general propositions without mentioning particular individuals. ‘But when the whole people decrees for the whole people, it is considering only itself; and if a relation is then formed, it is between two aspects of the entire object, without there being any division of the whole. In that case the matter about which the decree is made is, like the decreeing will, general. This act is what I call a law.’²⁴

Finally, the last condition is that of equality. It is important to remember that by equality Rousseau is referring to economic equality, without which, he states, social and political equality cannot exist. Remember also that for Rousseau the purpose of making the general will sovereign was to protect individual liberty and Rousseau writes explicitly that liberty cannot exist without equality. By equality, Rousseau says he does not mean that ‘riches are to be absolutely identical for everybody [but] 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’.²⁵ Where there are such economic disparities, people naturally feel that there is no common interest and when taking their decision, begin to focus only on their particular interests. The general will cannot be arrived at, in such a situation. Rousseau, in The Social Contract, accepts the existence of private property, even though he had berated the emergence of private property as the source of inequality and other ensuing evils in the second discourse. But allowing for private property, Rousseau is nevertheless careful to specify a kind of agrarian economy made up of independent farmers owning small plots of land more or less equal in size.

Only, given such a general will, general in its object, origin and form, and existing in conditions of equality, can be given the attributes of sovereignty–its indivisibility, its inalienability, its infallibility and its absolute nature. It is to such a general will that the people alienate their rights, including their rights to life, liberty and property. Unlike Hobbes, Rousseau does not even allow the individuals entering civil society to retain their right to life against the sovereign; when the general will commands one of its members to put his life at risk, he has to do so. In Rousseau’s words, when it is ‘expedient for the State that you should die, he ought to die, because it is only on that condition that he has been living in security up to the present, and because his life is no longer a mere bounty of nature, but a gift made conditionally by the State’.²⁶ Unlike in Locke, Rousseau’s sovereign is not limited, it is absolute and omnipotent. Rousseau seems to think that because it is the people in whom sovereignty is located, this absolute power vested in the sovereign, will not be detrimental to individual liberty. In fact, he is also famous for saying, that if an individual refuses to abide by the general will, he must be compelled to obey the general will, and in thus being forced, he is actually being forced to be free, because in following the general will, he is only following his own real will.

Like equality, another precondition for the existence of the general will, which Rousseau discusses elsewhere, is that the political community must overlap with a small culturally homogeneous society. In Considerations on the Government of Poland, written in 1772, Rousseau said that, a nation is ‘unified by customs and character, not by regulations and laws but by the same kind of life and food and the common influence of climate’.²⁷ We know that Rousseau was a staunch democrat. The only kind of democracy that was acceptable to him, as a defender of individual liberty, was a form of direct democracy. Here, he was pointing to the link between democracy and another phenomenon: the phenomenon of nationalism. We can see in Rousseau, how nationalism rides piggyback on a concept of strong democracy. The assumption is that it will be easier for the general will to exist if the people are already united in terms of cultural factors like religion and language. As we see in Box 8.6, taking up the case of religion, Rousseau emphasizes the necessity of a civil religion where one’s faith is more a matter of inculcating the sentiments that make one sociable and a good citizen.

ROUSSEAU’S PARADOXES

As we said at the beginning of this chapter, it was Rousseau’s purpose to show us how modern institutions had failed to live up to their own promise of democracy, liberty and equality. Rousseau has long been a favourite of democratic theorists who have argued, that while Hobbes and Locke were more interested in propagating liberal principles, it was only Rousseau who was a true believer in democracy. Rousseau showed up liberal democracy for the sham it was, and argued for its replacement by his model of democracy. Do the political institutions designed by Rousseau capture better our ideals of democracy, liberty and equality?

If you were reading Rousseau from a woman’s perspective, your answer would surely be negative. Rousseau argues against liberal democracy, saying that a person’s will cannot be represented by others, but in the case of women, he is all too willing to allow their interests to be represented by men. He argues for keeping women away from politics, because he is afraid that women will always put the interests of their families before that of the public’s. Actually, Rousseau’s ambivalence about nature also applies to his views about women, since he considered them to be closer to nature. We saw that Rousseau’s early condemnation of reason in comparison to nature, slowly gave way to an advocacy of reason that was based on rather than divorced from the sentiments. By analogy, we find Rousseau arguing that women’s role in the family is essential to the upbringing of young male citizens, because it is their mothers who teach them the sentiments of sympathy and love. For the same reason, however, Rousseau denies women entry into the public sphere. He believes that a woman’s love is always directed toward a particular (for example, a member of her family); it cannot transcend particulars for the general. For this reason, he is able to ignore the fact that none of his strictures for guaranteeing equality and liberty for all citizens apply to the position of women, and for this he has been castigated by many women, beginning with Mary Wollstonecraft, who had this to say about him: ‘The rights of humanity have thus been confined to the male line from Adam downwards. Rousseau would carry his male aristocracy still further [as he] proceeds to prove that woman ought to be weak and passive, because she has less bodily strength than man; and hence infers, that she was formed to please and to be subject to him; and that it is her duty to render herself agreeable to her master.’²⁸

Another problem, which is more general, arises from Rousseau’s insistence on the absolute sovereignty of the people. When the people act collectively as the sovereign, no individual member of this collectivity has any rights against them. Even if we keep all of Rousseau’s safeguards in mind—for instance, only that general will is absolute which is general both in its origin and its object—we are left with a sense of uneasiness. It is probably possible to ensure the first safeguard, although as we just pointed out, Rousseau himself forgot his principle of the generality of origin in the case of women. How do we ensure, however, that every member of the general will keeps the general interest in mind when taking a decision on any particular issue? Even if we could visualize societies which were much more egalitarian than the ones we are familiar with today, our experience of deep divisions within most societies makes it difficult to accept Rousseau’s faith in an identifiable common interest. In that case, we might need to come up with some other democratic mechanism rather than vesting absolute sovereignty in the people. It is because of this, that in spite of his reputation as a democrat, there are critics of Rousseau who accuse his theory of the general will of having totalitarian consequences. Actually, this notion, that in a democracy, while the government may be limited, the people’s sovereignty cannot be bound, is still very much alive today, and is widely debated by the constitutionalists and the democrats.

For Rousseau, freedom was an inalienable right, but we could be forced to be free; reason was unnatural and artificial but without reason we could not be moral; cosmopolitanism was a virtue but democracy required nationalism. Rousseau’s writings seemingly contain a plethora of paradoxes. Do these paradoxes result from Rousseau’s rejection of many features of modernity while at the same time holding on to the modern ideas of equality and liberty? Is it these paradoxes that are responsible for the fascination of Rousseau’s writings, while at the same time opening up these writings to wildly divergent interpretations?

THE SOCIAL CONTRACT TRADITION

‘The 17th and 18th centuries are commonly and accurately represented as the great age of social contract theory: the still popular doctrine that political legitimacy, political authority, and political obligation are derived from the consent of those who create a government.’²⁹ For all the differences between them, Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau belong to the same contractarian tradition, because each of them saw the origin of political authority as lying in a contract. For each of them, the basis of political authority was the consent of those over whom this political authority was exercised. This was the only way that political authority could be made compatible with the natural equality and freedom of individuals. Through these propositions, the contractarians strengthened a new way of thinking about the ends and basis of political authority.

Of course, each social contract thinker had, as we have already seen, his own theory of the interaction between naturally free and equal individuals. For Hobbes, this interaction between human beings as bundles of appetites and aversions represented a ‘state of war’. Hobbes believed that there could never emerge a voluntary consensus on good and bad or right and wrong in the state of nature. For Locke, equal and free individuals lived peacefully in a state of nature where the laws of nature were not only followed for the most part, but their infringement could also be punished. Locke’s state of nature is ‘a divinely created order expressing the purposes of its Creator; the laws of nature articulate these purposes to human beings as rationally intelligible authoritative commands’.³⁰ Rousseau, on the other hand, traced the evolution of isolated, almost animal-like human beings, characterized by self-love, pity and perfectibility, into first societies. Beginning from different conceptions of how equal and free individuals originally lived with each other, the social contract thinkers have presented us with three different forms of the social contract and of the consequences of that social contract.

For Hobbes, the social contract transforms a multitude into one person, which he calls the State. At the same time, the contract also establishes the individual or the body of men who represent the persona of the State. For Locke, the contract creates a new political community which then entrusts the legislature and the government with the representation of its interests. Rousseau also differentiates between the establishment of the political community and the setting up of the government. Hobbes and Rousseau, however, present a picture of an absolute and indivisible sovereignty while Locke limits the power of the sovereign legislative in many different ways.

Political authority, having originated in the consent of naturally free and equal individuals, is meant to safeguard this freedom and equality of individuals. Why would these individuals consent to the establishment of a government, with the attendant loss of equality and freedom (government, by definition, has more power than any individual, and can curtail individual liberty through its laws and officials), unless they expect that in spite of this loss, government will somehow be beneficial for individuals. Defining freedom as the absence of external impediments, Hobbes expects the sovereign established by the social contract to set up a minimal state with just a few essential laws, thereby not interfering with the freedom of individuals in the economic, educational and other private spheres. For Locke, liberty is not license and therefore, liberty does not exist only in the absence of the law. There are, according to Locke, some things which individuals are not free to do, and therefore, liberty has to exist within the bounds of the law. For Rousseau, the idea of freedom has a strong moral component and he contrasts the moral and civil liberty of civil society to natural liberty which is devoid of morality. This moral and civil liberty exists when one follows the laws formed by the general will.

The purpose of the state being to safeguard the life and liberty of its members, that state which goes against this purpose becomes illegitimate, and can, according to Locke, be resisted. Locke not only places limits on the supreme legislative power of the state, but gives the people a collective right to resistance if these limits are crossed. Hobbes, on the other hand, while allowing each individual to protect his life, even against the commands of the sovereign, expressly forbids anyone to help protect an individual from the sovereign. In effect, then, he leaves each individual helpless against the might of the sovereign. For Rousseau, the sovereign being the general will of the people, the people as separate individuals have no right to resist this general will.

The social contract tradition of political thought was a way of understanding and supporting the new political practices of the 17th and 18th centuries. The modern state would continue to be the main object of analysis, with the relationship between individual freedom and the modern state being analysed in still different ways.

NOTES

1. James Miller, Rousseau: Dreamer of Democracy, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984, p. 18.
2. For biographical details about Rousseau, see Robert Wokler, Rousseau: A Very Short Introduction Oxford, Oxford University Press, First Indian edition, 2006.
3. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract and Discourses, translated by G. D. H. Cole, London: J. M. Dent and Sons, 1973, p. 4.
4. Ibid., p. 7, 24.
5. Ibid., p. 14.
6. Ibid., pp. 4–5.
7. Ibid., p. 72.
8. Robert Wokler, Rousseau: A Very Short Introduction, pp. 55–56.
9. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract and Discourses, p. 83.
10. See Part III in Lucio Colletti, From Rousseau to Lenin: Studies in Ideology and Society, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1978.
11. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile: General Principles of Education, p. 158.
12. Ibid., p. 162.
13. Jack H. Broome, Rousseau: A Study of His Thought, London: E. Arnold, 1963, p. 95.
14. Ibid., p. 104.
15. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract and Discourses, p. 178.
16. Ibid., p. 174.
17. Ibid., p. 175.
18. Ibid.
19. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract and Discourses, p. 185.
20. Ibid., p. 193.
21. Ibid.
22. See Patrick Riley, Chapter 4 in Will and Political Legitimacy, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982.
23. Roger D. Masters, The Political Philosophy of Rousseau, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968, p. 355.
24. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract and Discourses, p. 192.
25. Ibid., p. 204.
26. Ibid., p. 189.
27. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Considerations on the Government of Poland and on Its Proposed Reformation, April 1772.
28. Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication for the Rights of Woman, New York: Dover Publications, 1996, pp. 89, 79.
29. Patrick Riley, Will and Political Legitimacy, p. 1.
30. John Dunn, Rethinking Modern Political Theory, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985, p. 49.

READING LIST

Broome, Jack H., Rousseau: A Study of His Thought, London: E. Arnold, 1963.

Colletti, Lucio, From Rousseau to Lenin: Studies in Ideology and Society, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1978.

Masters, Roger D., The Political Philosophy of Rousseau, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968.

Miller, James, Rousseau: Dreamer of Democracy, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984.

Riley, Patrick, Will and Political Legitimacy, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982.

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, The Social Contract and Discourses, translated by G. D. H. Cole, London: J. M. Dent and Sons, 1973.

Wollstonecraft, Mary, A Vindication for the Rights of Woman, New York: Dover Publications, 1996.

CENTRAL THEMES

1. Nature as ‘pure’ and society as ‘corrupt’: Rousseau’s early writings put the blame for man’s corrupt nature—his selfishness, his self-aggrandizement, his pleasure at the suffering of others—on society’s door. In the state of nature, man’s nature did not have the above attributes. Anything that needs society for its development—the arts and sciences, for example, even reason, is criticized by Rousseau in his early work as antithetical to human well being. What do you think of this conception of the downfall of the ‘noble savage’ in Rousseau’s early work?
2. Equality and liberty: Rousseau justifies the transition to the democratic political community in the name of freedom, with natural freedom being replaced by moral and political freedom. This liberty cannot exist in the absence of social, economic and political equality. What is Rousseau’s conception of equality and how does he relate it to liberty?
3. The general will and the will of all: Rousseau makes much of the difference between the general will and the will of all, and sets down stringent conditions for the existence of the general will. What do you think of the role played by the concept of the general will in Rousseau’s theory of direct democracy?
4. Women and nature: We could say that a novel feature of modern thought is its emphasis on the break between the natural world and the human world. The human world is constructed through a withdrawal, in some sense, from nature. Rousseau is one thinker who stresses this break from nature as well as harps on taking nature as our guide. How does Rousseau use the relationship he constructs between women and nature to define women’s relationship to politics?