Jean-Jacques Rousseau is a widely important philosopher of the mid to late 18th century. Born in Geneva, but making his name in France, Rousseau is associated with having given the intellectual foundation for the French Revolution, is remembered as the Prophet of the Romantics with regard to analysis and criticism of emerging (sterile) bourgeois materialistic life, and is a consequential ethicist insofar that he maintained that Christian morality could be sustained without the practice of Christian religion or knowledge of Christian doctrine. Two of his most widely known works are the Discourses on Inequality and the Social Contract, the latter of which is widely misunderstood because many people have not read it but make implications about its content because of its title in relation to two other famous social contract theorists – Hobbes and Locke – whom Rousseau generally viciously attacked, esoterically, in his work (Rousseau generally didn’t want to name Hobbes or Locke though he had read them and was responding to them in his work).
Background
The important thing to note about Rousseau’s Social Contract is twofold: First it is a criticism of the social contract as laid out by figures like Hugo Grotius (whom Rousseau mentions aplenty throughout the work), Thomas Hobbes, and John Locke. It is as much a critique of a particular theory of the social contract as it is an attempt to understand and promote the social contract. Which leads us to the second point, Rousseau’s Social Contract is also a new theory of the social contract, rooted in a secularized theologico-political covenantal tradition stemming from his internalized Calvinism wherein the culmination of Rousseau’s social contract is paradoxical: You will be forced to be free (much like how in Calvinism you are forced to be the Elect and you have no choice about this). The more modern French philosopher, Alain Badiou, explains Rousseau’s radicalism as the “passion of the real,” that he, unlike many other philosophers, embraced and laid out the absolute logic of his position (freedom and equality tied together) which necessitates, “if you say A – equality, human rights and freedoms – you should not shirk from its consequences and gather the courage to say B – the terror needed to really defend and assert the A.” This is what Alain Badiou calls the ‘tyranny of freedom.’ Contradiction? Depends on your understanding of human nature.
Before we examining the contents of the first nine chapters of Book I, we must be acquainted, briefly, with Rousseau’s other work: The Discourses on Inequality. In the Discourses Rousseau explores his state of nature contra Hobbes and Locke. Rousseau envisioned a state of nature of natural goodness – the “noble savage” – wherein all men were perfectly equal and free because they were independent of one another. Man has a social animus insofar that it leads him to be amiable when he encounters others, but man does not desire society or community as the classical philosophers had it. Therefore, man is not naturally or, physically, equal as Rousseau says. But there is no such thing as political inequality because man is not a political animal. Political inequality emerges, and widens, through the establishment of government and all of its systems wherein the physically or mentally stronger and cunning essentially take advantage of the social structures of society to benefit themselves, thereby widening any natural inequality which is the result of physical nature wherein we have growing political and moral inequality.
Advertisement
At the same time man is free and equal in the state of nature. As he writes in Chapter 8 of Book I of the Social Contract, “natural liberty” is man’s natural capacity of power and movement in the state of nature to achieve whatever he wills. Our natural equality is that we all possess this natural liberty. Hence humanity’s natural ontological state is one of freedom and equality. This is lost through the rise of a rigged social contract, in essence, wherein the powerful (physically or intellectually) take advantage of the weaker (physically and intellectually). However, Rousseau argues that the social contract doesn’t actually work to the benefit of the sovereign king, the elite, or the property-owning classes (as had Hobbes and Locke articulated). Rather, the social contract serves the “general will” of the people. The artificial inequalities and disparities created by the growth of civilization means that civilization, or social structures, is the root cause of all of man’s alienated woes, anxieties, and problems. What Rousseau is saying is this: Man, when left alone, is happy. Happy, he comes across others and is remains amiable with them because he is happy. Man, when subjugated by force of power, wherein artificial inequalities arise from within society, man is unhappy and miserable. He is alienated from his own being (his freedom and equality) because society is not equally free and not equally equal. Miserable and unhappy, he comes to hate his fellow man (especially those who have more than himself).
BOOK I: Forced to be Free and Equal (The Purpose of the Social Contract)
Chapter I: The Revolutionary Opening
Rousseau opens his famous work on political philosophy by stating that “Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains.” Again, this is because in the state of nature man is free and equal, but in society he is enslaved and not free and not equal. “How did this transformation come about?” he asks. “I do not know,” he replies. This is the greatest sleight of hand in philosophical history. Whereas, say, Aristotle saw “natural inequality” as explained it metaphysically: That nature itself is not equal, Rousseau sidesteps the question. Instead, he wishes to discuss how a society can be made to be legitimate. For illegitimate society is the society in which man, having been born free, remains in his chains. This also means, very importantly, that Rousseau begins his political treatise with the understanding that political society is illegitimate. He will be showing us how to make it legitimate.
The importance of this brief, but legendary, opening from Rousseau is this. He recognizes that man is in society, or civilization. But Rousseau thinks that this is oppressive to man. Rousseau is a radical individualist. He is a libertarian in the proper and traditional sense of that word which emerged in French leftwing thought in the 19th century. In the state of nature every individual is born with physical ability, or strength, to do as he or she pleases. There are no constraints yet upon the individual. The only constraint to the individual is the individual himself. However, that man is everywhere in chains represents that he is no longer free. He has constraints placed against him, whether these are societal laws, cultural customs, or artificial constructions from the property-owning classes, they all testifies to man’s current enslavement.
For Rousseau, his work on the social contract is a new defense of the social contract theory as well as a radical critique of the social contract theories of Grotius, Hobbes, Locke, and Spinoza. As Rousseau makes clear in the later chapters, the social contract is not about securing life or liberty from the invasion of other men in the state of nature. Rather, the social contract guarantees man’s freedom and equality which was pledged to be maintained as he left the state of nature. Since this is not what current societies are doing this is the problem. “How can it be made legitimate?” Rousseau asks us. His answer is detailed in the rest of his work. That is to say, legitimate politics is about restoring man’s own humanity: Which is his freedom and equality.
Chapter II: Self-Preservation Revisited
“The oldest society, and the only natural one, is that of the family.” That is how Rousseau opens Chapter II. In this manner he stands in agreement in a long tradition of philosophy which saw family as the first building block, or cornerstone, of society. But note how Rousseau also says that family is the only natural society. While family is a precursor to civil society, civil society is something unnatural. The reason why we enter civil society is for self-preservation. Here Rousseau stands in agreement with Hobbes and Locke but not for the reasons Hobbes and Locke maintain. For it is not a state of war which characterizes the state of nature in Rousseau. Rather, family is the only natural society because when a child is born they are weak and dependent upon their parents for their survival. Parents, seeing children as an extension of themselves (because of sexual intercourse), take care of their children because they see them as basically an extension of their own body.
This will eventually dissipate however. As a child grows stronger and more mature, he or she is no longer dependent upon their parents for their self-preservation. They can preserve themselves. Hence, even family is dissoluble because it only serves the end of self-preservation. As Rousseau blankly states, “Man’s first law is to watch over his own preservation; his first care he owes to himself; and as soon as he reaches the age of reason, he becomes the only judge of the best means to preserve himself; he becomes his own master.”
Part of the paradox of Rousseau’s anthropology, when tied to his political anthropology, is this: We are completely independent individuals in the state of nature (in the idealized portrait of the human). Yet, society, or civilization, or political society, entails a collective. But what is the purpose of this collective political society? The well-being of the individual, namely the individual’s freedom and equality. We will get to this in the later chapters. What is the best means to preserve himself? Freedom.
Chapters III & IV: Against the “Right” of the Strongest
Might does not make right. This is the simplest explanation of Chapter III. Rousseau argues that those who say might makes right, and that humans are obliged to submit to the strongest, do not make a logical argument. There is no duty, or obligation, to submit to the strongest. For individually one might be stronger than I (physically speaking), but I can unite with others to be stronger than the single strongman. As he says, “If forces compels obedience, there is no need to invoke a duty to obey, and if force ceases to compel obedience, there is no longer any obligation. Thus the word ‘right’ adds nothing to what is said by ‘force’; it is meaningless.”
Using his robber and robbed analogy, the reason why people submit to force (power) is not divine command, obedience, or duty. The reason why people submit to force is because that is the law of reason at work: Self-preservation. I submit to the stronger only because I don’t want to die. My submission is a calculated reasoning that the submission will preserve myself. No individual ever has “natural authority” over others. And that is what the problem of slavery is.
Slavery is not natural because slaver is not natural, period. Slavery entails the ownership of another person by another person. This is not natural Rousseau adamantly argues. No one willingly surrenders their freedom because this would be a denial, or alienation, of their natural ontological state of being: Freedom. As Rousseau famously said, “To renounce freedom is to renounce one’s humanity, one’s rights as a man and equally one’s duties.”
Slavery is not established by a covenant. Slavery is established by the use of physical force of individuals over others. This is something completely unnatural since it strips away one’s freedom and equality. And as Rousseau just explained in Chapter III, the politics of physical force requires no obedience or obligation to remain enchained (or submissive) to. There are no rights of conquerors. There is no right to slavery. Those who are “born slaves” are born into an unnatural social condition that is not reflective of humanity’s true nature (of freedom and equality) as found in the state of nature.
Maximillian Robespierre, that famous French revolutionary and presider over the Reign of Terror, was deeply influenced by Rousseau. This is why Robespierre, among his various barbaric deeds, nevertheless pushed to abolish slavery in all territories under French political and legal jurisdiction. He had read his beloved Rousseau.
I wish to draw our attention to an interesting aside remark that Rousseau goes on in the fourth chapter: His remarks on war. War, for Rousseau, de-humanizes the human being by turning them into artificial enemies because states themselves are artificial. When men lay down their arms and surrender they are seen as humans again and therefore treated with respect and no longer seen as an enemy. However, if they are in uniform and possess a firearm and follow orders to defend or invade, they are not seen as humans but as artificial cogs of an artificial state. War de-humanizes humans and is not natural among men. This is a subtle critique of both Hobbes and Locke.
There is no natural state of war and animosity between men. This all arises through artificial social constructions, namely the state. Man is benign and wholly good in his original condition. He is not barbaric, depraved, or evil. In many ways, those who know Rousseau’s debt to Calvinism will see how much of Rousseau’s philosophy is secularized Puritanism/Calvinism. Rousseau’s state of nature is like the Garden of Eden. His very language of covenants invokes Calvinist Covenant theology. All “sin,” so to speak, is “social sin.” Which is to say all evil that we see in the world is social evil brought about by social forces and social institutions.
Chapters 5-8: Toward Civil Societies or Political Societies
Chapters 5-8 constitute some of the most important words and sentences that Rousseau ever composed. Here Rousseau discusses the turn to civilization, the turn to the social compact, and what legitimate politics is about – which is his way of addressing what he started Book I by saying he would address, how to make (or understand) the social contract, that is political society, something legitimate.
“I assume that men reach a point where the obstacles to their preservation in a state of nature prove greater than the strength that each man has to preserve himself in that state. Beyond this point, the primitive condition cannot endure, for then the human race will perish if it does not change its mode of existence.” Here we see Rousseau’s waffling quasi liberalism paired with his already growing radicalism. He agrees with the prevailing basics of liberalism as having emerged in England and Holland over the past century: The law of nature is self-preservation, there was a state of nature wherein man was absolutely free and equal and shared this condition with other men, man has natural liberty which is his power to feed his will without restraints placed upon it, and the social contract is the manner by which political society is constituted. He disagrees with “classical liberalism” (as found in Hobbes and Locke) insofar that he rejects the idea of the state of nature being one of war, humans are uncorrupted in the state of nature and human nature is intrinsically good, property is the root of inequality, and the social contract as endorsed by Hobbes and Locke is a monstrous lie; it breeds artificial inequality leading to human misery. The social compact isn’t about preserving life, liberty, and property. Instead, Rousseau argues something far more radical, the true social contract is about preserving human equality and freedom beyond that point of obstacles in the state of nature that would otherwise bring about the extinction of the human race.
I cannot underscore how important this is in Rousseau’s thinking. The social contract, to be legitimate, is about upholding human freedom and equality since they go together. We are bound to be free and equal by what he calls “the general will.” The general will is what aims at the common good that unites all humans. And what unites all humans in the general will is their ontological state of freedom and equality which is not sublated in moving out of the state of nature. The general will is not the “will of the majority,” as commonly misinterpreted. The general will is fullest expression the moi commun (common self) that links people together, that link being their common freedom and equality.
The general will enforces freedom and equality in society since freedom and equality is our natural state of being. We cannot opt out of freedom and equality, in other words. Because we cannot opt out of our human nature! As Rousseau paradoxically states, “since man gives himself to all, he gives himself to no one.” What Rousseau means by this is that in giving myself to all and all giving themselves to me, we recognize each other’s equality. In recognizing each other’s equality, that recognition is the recognition of each other’s freedom. Because we are all free and equal, I have no claim over you just as you have no claim over me. This is who only in giving ourselves to all, we give ourselves to no one. To be free and equal as an individual requires the collective whole recognizing one another as being free and equal.
Now I know what people will immediately say: Doesn’t this violate the principle of forced obedience? No. We have entered the social contract now. For the social contract to have any meaning the agreements must be honored. Because Rousseau’s contract is a covenant, it cannot be broken. We are bound to the general will, like the will of God, to execute the agreements of the social contract. And what was that agreement? According to Rousseau it was to uphold human freedom and equality as we moved into the state of political society.
Therefore, sovereignty lies not in the state, or the king, or the Church, or other such “sovereign persons” or “sovereign institutions,” but in ourselves. And here is the crux of Rousseau’s argument which inspired the French Revolution, the Reign of Terror, and Alain Badiou’s statement that Rousseau’s radicalism was possessed by the passion of the real, that “terror needed to defend and assert A” (e.g. human freedom and equality):
Hence, in order that the social pact shall not be an empty formula, it is tacitly implied in that commitment – which alone can give force to all others – that whoever refuse to obey the general will shall be constrained to do so by the whole body, which means nothing other than that he shall be forced to be free; for this is the necessary condition which, by giving each citizen to the nation, secures him against all personal dependence, it is the condition which shapes both the design and the working of the political machine, and which alone bestows justice on civil contracts – without it, such contracts would be absurd, tyrannical and liable to the grossest abuse.
In other words the general will, will enforce freedom and equality upon all members of society. This is the only legitimate expression of political society.
Political societies that are entrenched in inequality, in disparity of power – having enslaved man – are illegitimate political societies. Hence, in time, the general will shall mobilize in its force to enforce the common good that is freedom and equality. For only in the forced freedom and equality in legitimate political society can man avoid the temptation and abuse of force and unnatural ownership from the hands of the physically more powerful. Here we see Rousseau’s general will acting as a counterbalance to excessive power and control wielded by an individual over others.
Yes, Rousseau was not only a deep influence on the French Revolutionaries (especially the more radical ones like Robespierre), he was also a deep influence on Karl Marx who transformed Rousseau’s general will into the consciousness of the proletariat. Rousseau is paradoxical and hard to define in political terms because he is part liberal, part radical. He informed the authentic leftist tradition that was born in France and spread outward to Germany and other nations inspired by his writings, and he also informed a newer strand of modern liberalism which embraced Rousseau’s individualism and anthropology of human goodness rather than the anthropologies of human sinfulness or Hobbes’s anthropology of uncontrollable desires leading to conflict (a secularized account of human sinfulness really).
As Rousseau continues to explain in Chapter 8, man enjoys two kinds of liberty: Natural Liberty and Civil Liberty. Natural liberty is the liberty that man enjoys in his natural constitutive state of being: His own self power to achieve what he wants and is only limited by the limitations of his own self power (he is not impeded or restricted by any external forces). Civil liberty is the liberty one has in a political society which is “limited by the general will.” Civil liberty enforces equality since it is limited by the general will. Furthermore, civil liberty is the set of ‘rights’ permitted to individuals in a society. Ideally, and this is the task of legitimate politics, natural liberty will be in harmony with civil liberty. Rousseau sees, however, that civil liberty and natural liberty are tied bound together in a harmony and this is problematic.
Chapter 9: Property vs. Possession
The final chapter of Book I is another one of Rousseau’s famous moments in the history of political thought. Whereas the classical liberals saw property as a means to self-preservation and a means to regulation all in one, Rousseau rejects this notion and sees property as a false concept. No one “owns” anything, or anyone. Man has a natural right to what he needs for self-preservation, as does any other man. The establishment of property wards off other men from what they need.
In political society everything is shared. Man possesses everything he needs which means he owns nothing because ownership would mean preventing someone else from having the right to what they need to survive. Property ownership is one of those artificial constructions that leads to inequality and unequal distributions of power which signifies an illegitimate political society. The general will, then, will rise up and force freedom and equality among the whole wherein property lapses into collective possession. As Rousseau states, “In whatever manner this acquisition is made, the right of any individual over his own estate is always subordinate to the right of the community over everything; for without this there would be neither strength in the social bond nor effective force in the exercise of sovereignty.”
Property is the basis of disparity in power and ability to utilize force which destroys equality. For as Rousseau explains in Book II, equality is not necessarily that all are physically, intellectually, or even in their “possessions,” equal, but “that power shall stop short of violence and never be exercised except by virtue of authority and law.” But property ownership (private property ownership) becomes one the foundational pillars of inequality which is really about power disparity and the ability to utilize this enhanced power for one’s self-end. Allan Bloom explained Rousseau’s philosophy this way, “Private property is not natural and is always a source of inequality. Private property is the root of power in civil society, and it cannot help influencing the establishment of laws.”
Conclusion
The first book of Rousseau’s Social Contract is truly radical and revolutionary. The contract – which is an unbreakable covenant – is about enforcing man’s natural state of freedom and equality in political society. This is through what Rousseau calls the general will. We are forced to be free and equal!
This is reached by Rousseau because of Rousseau’s anthropology. Rousseau understands humans as being free and equal in a metaphysical and ontological state. This is who we are. If there is a human nature, and if we are all humans, we would all share in this nature. This is basic syllogistic logic 101. This is basic human nature 101. For, as even Cicero said nearly two millennia earlier, “however man may be defined, such definition must fit all men, and therefore all men share with one another the same basic law.” For Rousseau, that nature is a human nature of egalitarian freedom.
Additionally, whereas human nature up to Rousseau had broken down into roughly two camps: Humans are not equal but share in the same telos and it is in that telos (e.g. happiness) that human nature is found; Humans are “sinful” and prone to violence and “evil” on their own accord, Rousseau rejects both camps. Humans are, in fact, equal. And Humans are not sinful or evil, rather, they are naturally good. Humans only become “evil” or “sinful” because of social pressure, social structures, and their de-humanization from external social forces.
At the same time one should never lose sight of the tradition of social contract theory that Hobbes is already critiquing in the first book: Grotius, Hobbes, and Locke, three of the fathers of liberal philosophy and liberal political theory. Yet, at the same time, we should also note where Rousseau finds himself in agreement with the liberal theorists and philosophers whom is also critiquing. And yet, the most enduring legacy of the first book is Rousseau’s comment that legitimate political society, governed by the general will of the people, will enforce freedom and equality. Only through the enforcement of freedom and equality is political society legitimate. One can now understand Alain Badiou’s statement better, “if you say A – equality, human rights and freedoms – you should not shirk from its consequences and gather the courage to say B – the terror needed to really defend and assert the A.” For Badiou, just like for Robespierre, Rousseau had the courage to state the logically necessary: If the social contract is about preserving man’s natural freedom and equality as he leaves the state of nature, then political society must be willing to enforce, through whatever means necessary, that natural freedom and equality. Failure to enforce this agreement is the very failure and breakdown of the social contract which makes it null and void. It is precisely this failure which Rousseau targets the liberal theorists generations prior to him for failing to embrace.
________________________________________________________________
Paul Krause is the editor-in-chief of VoegelinView. He is writer, classicist, and historian. He has written on the arts, culture, classics, literature, philosophy, religion, and history for numerous journals, magazines, and newspapers. He is the author of Finding Arcadia, The Odyssey of Love and the Politics of Plato, and a contributor to the College Lecture Today and Making Sense of Diseases and Disasters. He holds master’s degrees in philosophy and religious studies (biblical studies & theology) from the University of Buckingham and Yale, and a bachelor’s degree in economics, history, and philosophy from Baldwin Wallace University.
________________________________________________________________
Support Wisdom: https://paypal.me/PJKrause?locale.x=en_US
Venmo Support: https://www.venmo.com/u/Paul-Krause-48
My Book on Literature: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1725297396
My Book on Plato: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08BQLMVH2
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/paul_jkrause/ (@paul_jkrause)
Twitter: https://twitter.com/paul_jkrause (@paul_jkrause)
Discourses on Minerva 