Principle and Prudence: Rousseau on Private Property and Inequality

The American Political Science Review, 1980

Cambridge Companion to Rousseau's Social Contract

Property has a vexed status in Rousseau’s Social Contract. On one hand, Rousseau seems committed to the conventionalist view that property is a creation of law and state. Yet Rousseau also recognizes pre-political dimensions of property, such as a right of first occupancy and a natural entitlement to land through “labor and cultivation.” In this chapter, I contend that Rousseau’s seemingly divergent views on property become less paradoxical once one distinguishes between the rights of others and the more self-regarding aspects of morality. Focusing on the dense section of the Social Contract titled “Of Real Property,” I argue that while Rousseau acknowledges moral obligations governing the use of things, he ultimately holds that persons only have full-fledged property rights within the state. I suggest, moreover, that Rousseau’s attention to both the political and pre-political dimensions of property continues to resonate in contemporary debate.

History of European Ideas, 1994

Rousseau's Contrat Social' is a book about "the principles of political right". Its object "is to consider if, in any political society, there can be any legitimate and sure principle of government, taking men as they are and laws as they might be" (CS, I, Introduction). In determining principles of political right and legitimacy, Rousseau develops a republican model of the state in which the power of government is circumscribed and the general will, instituted as law, is paramount. These two elements: government and law, are the cornerstones of Rousseau's republicanism which has for its ends the liberty and equality of each individual united, in the body politic, under the collective force of all. This theory is modern since the principles of political right and legitimacy grounded in the language of natural law, are transformed under Rousseau's pen. Rousseau redefines central notions such as government, state and sovereignty developing a modern political language and juridical terminology which, according to Robert DerathC, "are still used today having preserved the meaning Rousseau gave them".* Government is one of the most interesting terms Rousseau clarified and upon which he left his impression. The third and longest book of the Contrat Social treats almost exclusively the question ofgovernment.' It opens with the assertion that he will "try to fix the precise meaning of this word [government] which has not hitherto been very well explained" (CS, III, Preface). Government is executive power, conceptualised as separate from sovereignty and legislative power. Only in republics and democracies is government "nothing but executive power, and it is absolutely distinct from sovereignty"4 (my emphasis). This distinction indicates that Rousseau is working within the modern republican paradigm' originating in the thought of Cicero and Machiavelli as mixed government and culminating in Montesquieu's De I'Esprit de Lois as the separation and balance of powers. According to Rousseau, political society is an artificial construct uniting individual interests in order to guarantee man's security and freedom since "men cannot create new forces, but merely combine and control those which already exist'* (CS, I, 6). The union of all particular wills directed to the preservation and good of all, described by Rousseau as the social bond is the undergirding principle of his political theory. It is given expression in three places: the social contract, the union which creates civil society; the general will, the force which directs society; and law, the general will enforced and institutionalised as legislation. These three elements influence the way in which institutions of the state and government are constructed.

This paper aims at confronting the two different accounts given by Rousseau and Kant on the origin of private property. Firstly, I shall present briefly the context in which Rousseau tells his story of this event and regrets its consequences (I). Secondly, I shall present summarily the way in which Kant tells the same episode (II), in order to make two kinds of remarks: the first one refers to the legal subject emerging from the Doctrine of Right (III), while the second one refers to the wrong interpretation according to which Kant would justify the existence of the State with the necessity of guaranteeing private property. Against this interpretation, I shall try to show that, actually, in Kant the exeundum e statu naturali has a different theoretical and motivational basis (IV).

Rousseau’s thought is premised upon the radical critique of the modern civilisation emerging in his day. Rousseau is shown to castigate the modern society emerging in his day not as an ascent from darkness to light, but as artificial and corrupt, its intellectual achievement being bought at the price of moral decadence. Rousseau identified the clear weakness of an Enlightenment which was founded upon opinion and prejudice rather than on moral and rational principles. Thus, Rousseau is shown to criticise the way that the laws protected and promoted the interests of the strong and the rich against the poor and the weak; the way that religious institutions engendered intolerance and discord; the way that the artificial or distorted beings produced by the educational system fell far short of authentic human beings; the way that bourgeois society fed the ego in separation from and opposition to others rather than nurturing the whole person in relation to others. Rousseau is shown to be in search of fundamental principles, premising his philosophy upon an examination of human nature and the place of human beings in the ‘order of things’. As ‘the portrayer of nature’ and ‘the historian of the human heart’, Rousseau is shown to affirm the existence of a universal human nature, a definite human essence which has definite political and social implications.

For a long period, society had gone through different eras and experiences. Every state has been under a law that protects and secures every individuals' rights. Society has entered an agreement, a Social Contract that gives everyone equal rights and restrictions to conserve their freedom. Philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau is one of the people who tackled the topic of the contract between humans. Unlike others' take on the topic, he believed in a society where people rule the government. This paper will justify the importance of the Social Contract, focusing on Rousseau's political theory. I will attempt to prove the importance of the social contract theory in preserving the happiness of individuals, creating a harmonious society, while also exposing how the other political theories cannot create a peaceful society.

This paper shows that Rousseau did not dismiss all economic activity as being morally wrong but that he developed an original approach to virtuous economics, inspired by the Epicurean philosophy, advocating an art of living based on simple pleasures. In a world where political virtue, or citizenship, has become impossible to reach, economic virtue may be the only solution to withstand moral corruption and its aftermath, moral servitude.

Intellectual History Review, 2020

The present essay is an attempt to offer an insight on Rousseau’s ideas of moral freedom while looking at how they were expressed by the author in the Social Contract and in The Emile. Furthermore I want to defend the French thinker from Talmon’s allegation of advocating in the Social Contract an oppressive form of government. This reading of Rousseau, it will be argued, originates above all from a failure to frame his political ideas within the coherent whole to which they belong.