Barry Stocker Barry.Stocker@itu.edu.tr https://barrystockerac.wordpress.com Department of Humanities and Social Science Faculty of Science and Letters POLITICAL THEORY. ITB 227E NOTES WEEK THREE JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU (1712-1778) OF THE SOCIAL CONTRACT [1761] FOREWORD AND BOOK I ROUSSEAU Rousseau was born in Geneva, to clockmaker, in what is now Switzerland, but was then an independent city state neighbouring the Swiss Confederation. Rousseau spent his early childhood there. He did not go to school, but his father educated him in the classics. After his father had to leave Geneva, Jean-Jacques was brought up by his uncle, an engraver who trained him in his craft. Rousseau was not happy with uncle and left home for France at the age of 16. From this time he made a living from the patronage of the aristocracy, work in the French embassy in Venice, his work as a composer (abandoned after he wrote a successful opera) and a musical copyist (prepares musical scores for musicians). He was a difficult person who appears to have had a paranoid personality, so he got into many personal conflicts. Nevertheless he knew famous and influential people including the editors of the Encyclopaedia. This was the first encyclopaedia, prepared in Paris by two leading thinkers of the time, Denis Diderot and Étienne Bonnot de Condillac, as part of the Enlightenment movement towards the use of reason and science, criticising tradition and authority. He wrote some articles for the Encyclopaedia, but he became well known first from his essay Discourse on the Arts and Sciences. The longer Discourse on Inequality increased his fame and also made him a dangerous radical for some due to his suggestion that social inequality was not rooted in natural inequality. His interests and political and social thought also led to the Discourse on Political Economy as well as Of the Social Contract itself. Other political writings include Principles of the Rights of War and constitutional proposals for Poland and Corsica (at the time Corsica was an independent island state in between control by Genoa and the French monarchy). Other notable works include: two novels (Émile and The New Eloise), Essay on the Origin of Languages, various essays on music, Profession of Faith of a Savoyard Vicar, Reveries of a Solitary Walker, two autobiographical works (Confessions, Rousseau, Judge of Jean- Jacques).
2 Political Theory Spring 2017 Notes 3 OF THE SOCIAL CONTRACT In this book Rousseau builds on a tradition of talking about contracts as the basis of the legitimate state. The English philosopher, Thomas Hobbes contributed to this school in Leviathan (1651). A slightly later English philosopher, John Locke, made a contribution distinct from Hobbes way of thinking in Essay Concerning Civil Government (1689, also known as the Second Treatise on Government). The school can be traced back to the political, legal and religious thinker Hugo Grotius as found in The Rights of War and Peace (1625). The German political and legal thinker, as well as historian, Samuel Pufendorf also made a notable contribution, as in On the Duty of Man and Citizen (1673). The distinctive aspect of contract theory is that it supposes a situation in which humans agree to give up natural liberty without legal and state institutions in exchange for a civil liberty under laws and government, which preserves a significant part of natural liberty. The agreement is understood on the model of a legal contract in which all parties to the contract voluntarily agree to be bound by the contract. This is opposed to ideas that the authority of the state comes from the will of god, conquest, pure force, tradition or the natural capacity and right of some part of the population to command the rest of the population. It continues to be a major school of political and legal thought, often referred to as contractualism. Foreword The foreword is preceded by a quotation from the Roman poet Virgil (Publius Vergilius Maro, 70-19 BCE). foedis aequas, Dicamus leges. This means we will make laws in a fair treaty. We can take the treaty (foedis) as the contract which founds a state and on which basis laws can be created. The poem is the epic (long poem, the length of a novel with stories of heroic deeds of great heroes) Aeneid. It is the story of the origins of the Roman state as a continuation of the Trojan city state as portrayed in Homer s Greek epic the Iliad. Homer refers to the destruction of the city and Virgil builds on the character of the Trojan hero Aeneas in the Iliad (Aeneid is the story of Aeneas), so that he escapes from the city, has adventures sailing round the Mediterranean and founds a community in Italy from which the first Romans will come.
3 Political Theory Spring 2017 Notes 3 Rousseau s use of Virgil shows his interest in antique states, including Rome as well as his interest in literary style and form. The foreword simply states that Rousseau extracted this work from a longer work he drafted but no longer has. Book I Rousseau states that his goal is to combine laws as they ought to be humans as they are. that is to combine right and interest, justice and utility. So laws, right and justice are all related ideas placed on the side of the ideal, while humans, interest and utility are placed on the side of non-ideal reality. Rousseau s gaol then is to find the best combination of both sides. He associated investigation of these principles with the rights and duties of a citizen of a free state, who is a member of its sovereign (law making body, the whole citizen body) and has the right to vote on state business. he is referring to the city republic of Geneva. He is suggesting that the duties and rights of a citizen of a republic include thinking about basic principles of a republic and that is the reason for writing Of the Social Contract. Chapter 1 Rousseau begins with his most famous phrase man is born free but everywhere is in chains. He also says that those who consider themselves masters of others find themselves to be more slaves than those they think should under them as master. Rousseau seems to bring two thoughts together here. The first is that all humans are constrained by laws and so cannot a complete liberty, or the liberty we might if living in nature without laws and institutions. What is also suggested is that current societies impose unjust laws even on those who have people under them (presumably as an employer or landowner). Rousseau suggests the social order is sacred and should come from convention (agreed rules) not force. This could be taken to mean that social orders based on force are not sacred and should be overthrown to gain liberty. Rousseau does suggest the need for an unfree people to thrown off its yoke (constraints) in this passage. Rousseau ends by saying he will have to establish what he has just said and that appears to be the task of Book I.
4 Political Theory Spring 2017 Notes 3 Chapter 2 The only natural society is that within the family in which children are obliged to obey their father. It is only a natural society as long as the children are able to look after themselves, at which point if the family continues it becomes voluntary association based on convention. Humans have a liberty based on human nature. The first law of that nature is that the individual looks after that individual s survival. Once the individual is old enough to use reason, he becomes his own master able to judge the best means for survival. The family is the model for the state. The father is the ruler. The children are the people who should only give up liberty where it is useful to them. However, the father cares through love and the ruler commands for the pleasure of commanding. Rousseau criticises Aristotle (Greek philosopher, 384-322 BCE), Grotius and Hobbes for their belief that some humans are suited to rule and be master and some humans are suited to obey and to be servants or slaves. Rousseau says that if we look at societies based on such divisions, it can seem that humans are divided in this way, but only because slaves become used to being slaves and don t have the desire to be free. Rousseau illustrates that argument with an episode from Homer s epic, the Odyssey, alluding to a passage where the companions of King Odysseus in his long journey home from the Trojan War are turned into animals by the semi-divine witch Circe, lacking all thought of becoming humans again. He also illustrates the arguments of Aristotle, Grotius and Hobbes with the attitude of the Roman Emperor Caligula (12-41 CE, known as a notoriously cruel and crazed tyrant) who believed that the people below the ruler are only animals. Rousseau mocks the claims of kings to rule by hereditary note by pointing out that we are all descended from Adam, who was undoubtedly ruler of the world, on the basis that he was the only human. He compares Adam with Robinson Crusoe, the hero of Daniel Defoe s English novel The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, who lived (mostly) alone castaway on an island for 25 years.
5 Political Theory Spring 2017 Notes 3 Chapter 3 Rousseau rejects the idea that any right to rule comes from force. If someone is stronger than me, it does not give the right to that person to command me. Maybe it makes it prudent to obey that person as long as has physical force on his side. We cannot argue that the power (its capacity to force us) of the state comes from God and that we should obey the state as part of obeying God. We do not think the force of criminals gives us a religious duty to obey criminals, we resist them. If the power of the state is a sign of God s will then any forceful change in who controls the state changes who we should rightly obey, undermining any stable basis of obligation to obey authority. Chapter 4 Rousseau argues against slavery here, referring both to the ownership of humans and a ruler who has unlimited command of his people. His main target with regard to thinkers is Grotius. Arguments justifying slavery claim that it comes from the right of any individual to alienate himself. Rousseau argues that self-alienation can only refer to selling yourself as an employee, not your own person for the whole of your life which goes against the whole idea of a person with free will and responsibilities. Even if was possible for an individual to sell himself into slavery, how would that bind the children of slaves who clearly did not choose to be slaves. Similar considerations apply to giving rulers absolute power. If their power is so absolute they are not ruling over other people because the people have become part of themselves. The idea of absolute command destroys the reality of the people commanded, since they can never act against any command. Even if the people of a state could give away their rights in this way, they could not bind their children. In that case the ruler would have to reestablish absolute command through agreement with the children when they become adult, so that the power rest on voluntary agreement and is no longer absolute. These considerations apply to people made slaves in war and others specific to war. A human cannot give up liberty for the whole of life and the whole of the life of his children, even in exchange for life in war. War is an event between public entities not private
6 Political Theory Spring 2017 Notes 3 individuals. When a state invades the land of another state, it can only take from the public wealth of that state not from its private individuals and does not acquire any kind of ownership of those individuals. Rousseau refers to private wars as an unreal category, applied to conflict between individual aristocrats in the Middle Ages, where he mentions King Louis IX of France and the Peace of God. He makes a coupe of literary allusions. He refers to the people who live under a king with absolute power as like the Greeks trapped by Cyclops. This is a reference to Homer s Odyssey, with regard to an episode where a monster called Cyclops traps Odysseus and his companions in his cave and starts to eat them. Rousseau mocks the peace supposedly guaranteed by a monarch as like the peace of those men in Homer until the Cyclops eats them. He also says that any peace provided by an absolute monarch is undermined by the tendency of monarchs to go to war. He also refers to François Rabelais (1483-1553) a French writer known for his very long novel Gargantua and Pantagruel. What Rousseau refers to is a line referring to kings wanting more, which Rousseau uses to illustrate the danger of obedience to kings. Chapter 5 Rousseau says that even if he gave up all of the arguments he has so far offered, he would be able to rejects those who argue for the absolute authority of kings by pointing out that such mastery cannot constitute an association of public good or a body politics. It would just be an aggregate of individuals with purely private interests who cannot make public collective decisions including those to obey. Grotius argues for absolute monarchy but presumes a a people can give itself to the authority of a king, which means he refers to a people which decided to form itself into a people with a freely chosen association. How can there be any agreement to obey a king without an existing set of conventions (agreed laws and customs) in order to arrive at that decision. The decision itself rests on rules about voting and what constitutes a majority which are then ignored by a monarchy whose initial authority rests on that majority decision. Chapter 6 The only legitimate government authority can come from a pact or contract between all the members of a society. This may happen when the power of the natural liberty of individuals is not enough to defend themselves and their goods against danger (not specified but
7 Political Theory Spring 2017 Notes 3 could be the aggression of a neighbouring people). In this case everyone may come together in a single body to agree on common principles binding on all which replace natural liberty. This is the General Will. This forms what the ancients called a city, and which is also known as a body politic or republic. It is also expressed as the state, when passive and a sovereign when active. The members are subjects when they obey laws and are citizens when they are participants in the authority of the sovereign. Chapter 7 We must distinguish between the individual as part of the public sovereign and as a separate individual who continues to have an individual life and individual rights. The sovereign body cannot have an obligation to itself so there can be no fundamental law which restricts the social contract. The social contract is whatever the general will decides at any moment and there is no content to the social contract beyond that. The sovereign body creates a unity in which any harm to any part is a harm to all. Because of that the sovereign cannot harm its members directly or cause harm less directly through giving up its sovereignty, or any part of it to anything else (presumably a foreign state or someone who seeks governmental power). The sovereign acts as one person against external powers, that is foreign states. The freedom guaranteed by the social contract must rest on laws enforced on all members of the sovereign body. Where someone breaks the law the sovereign body constrains that individual (including court punishment) meaning that we are forced to be feee. Freedom only has reality where force is used to punish those who break the laws that come from the sovereign. Chapter 8 The move from nature to civil state creates a moral transformation of humans. It is a transition from physical impulses and appetite as the basis of action to duty and law. Every action becomes morally charged. Natural liberty to get whatever we can by force to ownership based on legally defined possession. Individuals do not just gain a morally supported set of laws, but an expansion of faculties, ideas and feelings in this new situation free from force and raw appetite. Obedience to laws you played a part in developing is moral liberty, superior to the natural liberty of force and basic appetite.
8 Political Theory Spring 2017 Notes 3 Chapter 9 The establishment of the social contract gives us a stronger claim to real estate (property) but by also giving up property to the sovereign. The sovereign has power over all property in that state, but this is power expressed through law that guarantees property rights that are in accordance with everyone s rights. It is right to recognise that the first person to occupy some empty land has a property claim to that land, but not to an indefinite quantity of land focused on the spot where that person is. It was an absurdity for the King of Spain to claim the Americas as his own because a representative landed there, and even more so because he ignored the people already living there. The sovereign should constrain the property rights of any one individual so that other individuals can have some property. The same should apply in relations between states.