On Making Sense of Rousseauvian Freedom

University of Cambridge, Robinson College, http:// …, 2008

This paper deals with Rousseau's idea of freedom in terms of rationality and deliberation. It gives support to Berlin's interpretation of the general will as a rational and objective will but dismisses the idea that Rousseau's theory necessarily leads to authoritarianism. The general will, publicly expressed by the law, may be defined as the rational and self-regarding will agents would have if put in an independent and objective state, i.e. the state of nature. The general and the particular will, henceforth considered from an individual point of view, theoretically constitute two alternative choices for an agent. A special focus will then be placed on the function of the law in the process of individual deliberation. By signalling the general will, the law urges individuals to deliberate and to question the autonomy of their preferences. I shall argue that citizenship denotes for Rousseau the tendency of individuals to favour the general will and to master their natural weakness of will. The achievement of citizenship, however, strongly relies upon man's identification with the community, i.e. patriotism, and upon the emotions stirred by the potential death of the body politic.

In Rousseau's Social Contract, political laws are rationally binding because they satisfy the interests that motivate individuals to obey such laws. The later books of Emile justify morality by showing that it is continuous with the natural dispositions of a well-broughtup subject and is thus conducive to genuine happiness. In both the moral and political cases, Rousseau argues for an internal connection between the rational ground of an obligation and the broader aspects of human psychology that are satisfied and expressed by acting from that obligation. Yet, inspired by Kantian philosophy, the recent and influential Social Autonomy interpretation has disjoined rationality and psychology. Criticising this interpretation, I argue that for Rousseau, obligations are justified because they satisfy the demands made by our moral psychology, most notably amour-propre, i.e. the desire to have one's worth recognised by others.

Against standard interpretations of Rousseau according to which he holds the view that humans are naturally self-sufficient, asocial beings, necessarily corrupted by societies, I argue that Rousseau holds the view that human beings are naturally social. This paper shows that "The Second Discourse" contains an argument that we can only account for basic human characteristics – such as language and reason – if we understand humans in this way, as inevitably social beings. It is true that Rousseau criticizes societies for being corrupt. But that should not be taken as a criticism of all societies. Only some societies are corrupt: those in which humans’ nature as free persons cannot develop. The asocial human being of Rousseau’s natural state is a theoretical device in a reductio argument that Rousseau aims at the Hobbesian view. A society’s corruption is not a function of its artificiality, of its departure from an asocial state of nature, but of its departure from a natural, uncorrupted society. This is a society that provides conditions in which humans’ nature as free persons can develop, such as the legitimate society of The Social Contract. This has the implication that Rousseau’s theory of freedom has an Aristotelian rather than a Kantian foundation.

Recent interpretations of Rousseau suggest that autonomy is the master concept by which to understand his justification of the state. The Rousseauian state is legitimate insofar as it enables individuals to obey only their own wills and thus to be free. Autonomy-based interpretations cannot adequately account for Rousseau's remarks on the role of the state in securing a collective form of happiness through political community. These interpretations incorrectly construe collective happiness as pertaining only to how civic-minded citizens might be psychologically motivated to obey the state's dictates, rather than to what makes the state legitimate. By contrast, I offer a new interpretation according to which the Rousseauian state is justified because it enables a mutually constitutive relationship between the autonomy of individuals and the happiness that stems from participation in political community.

2025

This paper explores the enduring tensions in Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s political philosophy, specifically the paradox between his individualist and collectivist leanings and the libertarian and totalitarian implications of his thought. Through a critical engagement with Rousseau’s major works—The Social Contract, Discourse on Inequality, and Emile—this study examines whether a unifying principle underlies these seemingly contradictory positions. Drawing upon the interpretative frameworks of thinkers such as Ernst Cassirer, E.H. Wright, and Isaiah Berlin, the paper investigates the philosophical core of Rousseau’s concept of the general will and its implications for freedom, law, and democracy. It also contextualizes Rousseau’s relevance to contemporary challenges—ranging from public health mandates to the rise of populism—highlighting how his vision of liberty and collective obligation remains salient in navigating the tensions between individual rights and public good in modern democratic societies.

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.

2007

HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci-entific research documents, whether they are pub-lished or not. The documents may come from teaching and research institutions in France or abroad, or from public or private research centers. L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est destinée au dépôt et a ̀ la diffusion de documents scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires publics ou privés. GREQAM Groupement de Recherche en Economie

2023

Today it is unquestionable that power legitimately belongs to the people. No one doubts popular “sovereignty,” even if the expression seems ambiguous if not vague. The other claims to legitimacy–divine authority, the rule of the best or the sovereignty of princes (such as the ancient and medieval appeals to Divine Providence, wisdom of the rulers or the nature of man) – have long since been abandoned. Indeed, this abandonment goes back at least to the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment or “Illustration” was a scientific, literary and artistic movement that dominated the European world of ideas during the 18th century and that was the result of an informal association of “men of letters” known as the French philosophes (among whom names like those of Voltaire, d’Alembert, Diderot and Montesquieu stand out). This association is publicly manifested in the project to gather a summary of all knowledge in the Encyclopedia, published between 1751 and 1772 in thirty-five thick volumes, with the collaboration of more than one hundred and fifty scientists and philosophers. However, the movement spread far beyond France, also flourishing in Scotland (with Francis Hutcheson, Adam Smith, David Hume and Thomas Reid), and in Germany (the Aufklärung that includes names as Christian Wolff, Moses Mendelssohn, G. E. Lessing and, in its descending phase, Immanuel Kant). The “Century of Enlightenment” or “of philosophy” is a period of euphoria and confidence in reason, progress and science, which roughly runs from 1715 until it dies at the turn of the century. Despite the enormous diversity of ideas and tendencies, loosely grouped around ideas such as Liberty or Progress, the Enlightenment is more profoundly defined by a fundamental conviction that is widely cherished, even today: the progress of knowledge and science will gradually lead to the moral progress of humanity, through a process of gradual diffusion that will eventually end all prejudices under the “magisterium” of philosophers, that is, thinkers, artists and scientists in general, and not merely philosophers in the current sense. All the people, duly educated, will be able to understand science and philosophy as well as possible, and it will suffice to apply this knowledge to social and political life. Rhetoric – a persuasion technique that mediated the relationship between philosophers and opinion among the ancients and was part of the medieval curriculum – becomes unnecessary and even a little suspicious (it is still devalued today as “merely rhetorical”). To ensure that the inevitable path of progress is cleared, it is enough to uproot the deep-rooted prejudices of obscurantism (and, in some versions, religion). Consequently, although provisionally new “enlightened” policies can be entrusted to a benevolent tyrant (the Enlightened despot), in the long run it is simply inconceivable that sovereignty does not belong to the people. Monarchical and aristocratic Europe, which was already on its knees at the end of the 18th century, disappears and there are great revolutions on both sides of the Atlantic. The “Century of Philosophy” is therefore that of the victory of philosophy over the throne and the altar. This new era is populated by free and equal individuals, endowed with inalienable rights, who no longer recognize any authority other than their own reason. But if today we unhesitatingly subscribe to the idea of “popular sovereignty,” we do not fail to notice that any forms of government is not natural and involve a certain coercion or a more subtle use of power and violence that we deem suspicious. Government is something artificial and does not belong to the natural state of “man.” Due to asphyxiating conventions and the bourgeois ethos, man is not naturally free in any society. As Rousseau states, many before him (especially Hobbes and Locke) looked for man in his natural state, without actually finding him. But when Rousseau strips man of everything man acquires with effort, he discovers a being that is not only solitary, but non-rational, lacking language (which is only born with the first associations) and not even fully human. It appears to be a sub-human or pre-human being that seems to possess unlimited perfectibility or malleability. There is for us an obvious opposition between nature and government (or the “civil state”), but this opposition is closely linked to another, equally evident opposition, between nature and culture (or “the arts”). Nature, as portrayed by Rousseau and as we think of it today, can no longer serve as a standard for social and political behavior. How does this rupture occur?

A Study of Rousseau's Concept of the General Will

Women in Philosophy, Second Annual Journal of Papers 2002-2003, 2003

It is very difficult to reduce to obedience someone who does not seek to command, and the cleverest Politician would never succeed in subjugating men whose only wish was to be Free. Rousseau, Second Discourse. Whatever may be the case regarding these origins, it is at least clear from how little care Nature has taken to bring Men together though mutual needs and to facilitate their useof speech, how little it prepared their Sociability, and how little of its own it has contributed to all that men have done to establish its bonds. Rousseau, Second Discourse.