Jean-Jacques RousseauJean-Jacques RousseauThe Social Contract

(1762)

To understand TSC we need to understand Hobbes’ Leviathan (1651).

Thomas Hobbes 1588-1679

“Life is nasty, brutish, and short.” “War of all against all.”

So that in the nature of man, we find three principal causes of quarrel. First, competition; secondly, diffidence; thirdly, glory.

The first maketh men invade for gain; the second, for safety; and the third, for reputation. The first use violence, to make themselves masters of other men's persons, wives, children, and cattle; the second, to defend them; the third, for trifles, as a word, a smile, a different opinion, and any other sign of undervalue, either direct in their persons or by reflection in their kindred, their friends, their nation, their profession, or their name.Hereby it is manifest that during the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called war; and such a war as is of every man against every man. For war consisteth not in battle only, or the act of fighting, but in a tract of time, wherein the will to contend by battle is sufficiently known: and therefore the notion of time is to be considered in the nature of war, as it is in the nature of weather. For as the nature of foul weather lieth not in a shower or two of rain, but in an inclination thereto of many days together: so the nature of war consisteth not in actual fighting, but in the known disposition thereto during all the time there is no assurance to the contrary. All other time is peace.

Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of war, where every man is enemy to every man, the same consequent to the time wherein men live without other security than what their own strength and their own invention shall furnish them withal. In such condition there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building; no instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.

(Leviathan, XIII)

BOOK I:Chapter I: Subject of the First Book LET’S (RE-)READ THE WHOLE FIRST CHAPTER TOGETHER

“Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains.” (p. 10)

This forms the basis of his argument and sets the agenda. For Rousseau man is, in his natural state, free, but lives now “in chains” and this requires some explanation.

If (like Hobbes) he only took force into account he would have to say (contra Hobbes) that man would be better off if he could shake off the force that shackles him.

But he won’t go there because “the social order is a sacred right which is the basis of all rights.” But this right does NOT come from nature, but from CONVENTIONS.

Chapter II: The First SocietiesThe most ancient and only natural society is the family, but this society maintains its rule over the children only until they can take care of themselves, and then achieve liberty, or relinquish that liberty voluntarily.

(SEE p. 11). Man’s “first law” is for his own preservation and to care for himself.

People are born free and equal, and alienate their liberty only for their own advantage.

He also overturns Aristotle’s conception of “natural slavery” because Aristotle “took the effect for the cause.” (p. 11)

Chapter III: The Right of the Strongest“The strongest is never strong enough to be always the master unless he transforms strength into right, and obedience into duty.” (p. 13)

Force is just physical power. It has no moral effect.

To order us to yield to “the powers that be” is a superfluous command because we have to yield to force anyway.

It doesn’t help to say that God ordained the powers; God ordained sickness, too, but we still call the doctor to combat it.Rousseau’s conclusion: “Let us admit that force does not create right.”

(This seems to be a deliberate reworking of Hobbes.)

Chapter IV: Slavery“Since no man has a natural authority over his fellow, and force creates no right, we must conclude that conventions form the basis of all legitimate authority among men.” (p. 180)

Unlike the slave, who in Rousseau’s understanding, sells himself in return for subsistence, the king takes his subsistence from this subjects, and, in some way gets ownership from them. (This is, again, a direct argument against Hobbes.)

Theoretically the subjects should get “tranquility” in exchange for their subjugation, but in practice, they get the king’s wars.

Besides, even if each man wanted to alienate his own liberty (to a king), he has no right to alienate the liberty of his children and “to renounce liberty is to renounce being a man” since “such a renunciation is incompatible with man’s nature; to remove all liberty from his will is to remove all morality from his acts.” (pp. 14-15)

He makes the bold claim that men cannot be “natural enemies” because in the state of nature they have no stable relations (and ultimately relations to property) that would warrant such conflict. By Rousseau’s definition war is “constituted by a relation between things, and not between persons.”

So for Rousseau war “is a relation, not between man and man, but between State and State, and individuals are enemies only accidentally, not as men, nor even as citizens, but as soldiers; not as members of their country, but as its defenders.” (p. 15)

Chapter VI: The Social CompactHe begins by asserting that human power to confront/alter their natural condition can only change via aggregation. This is what brings them together. SEE pp. 18-19

The problem is to find a means of association that will defend and protect with the whole COMMON force the (INDIVIDUAL) PERSON and goods of each associate.

It should allow the individual, while uniting with others, to still obey himself alone, and “remain as free as before.”

The social contract, Rousseau asserts, provides the solution to this problem.

This is made possible by the “total alienation of each associate, together with all his rights, to the whole community.” This is right, Rousseau thinks, because the conditions are the same for all (i.e., equal), and since everyone must submit to them, nobody would make the conditions burdensome.

Put succinctly: 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.”

Chapter VII: The SovereignThis compact makes each individual both sovereign and state. He is equally members of both.

But what about the person who finds his “particular will” running contrary to the general will? READ p.20. He should be made “free,” i.e., he no longer belongs with this state. He can’t be part of the state.

Chapter VIII: The Civil StateRousseau asserts that this transition from “the state of nature to the civil state” has the effect of giving his actions “the morality they had formerly lacked.” (p. 22) But this transition also transforms other key aspects of his existence:

He loses natural liberty, but gains civil liberty.Natural liberty is bounded by the strength of the individual.Civil liberty is limited by the general will.

Possession is the effect of force, or the right of the first occupier.Property can be founded only on a positive title.

 Impulse of appetite (which is slavery) vs. the obedience to law, which we prescribe to ourselves (which is liberty).

Chapter IX: Real PropertyHe suggests that property rights are protected by the social contract, within society, and don’t accrue in a state of nature, because in that state they only depend on strength.

He imagines the barest, and least real form is that control of property which comes by force.

More real is the right of the first occupier, but this right can only be real when the right of property has already been established. (In this right we are not so much respecting “what belongs to another as what does not belong to ourselves.”) (p. 23)

•On p. 23 he suggests what is necessary to establish the right of the first occupier over a plot of ground:•The land must not yet be inhabited.•The man must occupy only that amount he needs for subsistence.•Possession must be taken, not by an empty ceremony, but by work and cultivation.

He points out that actions, like that of Nunez Balboa who took possession of all of South America, are ludicrous.

The point is that he knows that inequality in strength and intelligence will exist in the world, and the aim of society is not to destroy those “natural inequalities” but to recognize that the “fundamental compact substitutes” an equality that is moral and legitimate by providing equal rights.

Book IIChapter I: That Sovereignty is InalienableSEE p. 25.

This summarizes the principles from Book I: namely, that the “general will” alone can direct the state, and it must direct itself for the “common good.”  While the clashing of particular interests makes the social compact necessary, it is common interests which make that compact possible. (My wording, not Rousseau’s, but mine is more elegant.)

This does not bind the individual to the Sovereign perpetually, because it cannot know what the Sovereign will will in the future. Similarly, the people do not promise to obey, because that is not an expression of the general will.

Chapter III: Whether the General Will is Fallible.The point here is that for the general will to function, each individual must be free to express his own will and there can be no “partial society” within the whole, or if there are partial societies they have to be so numerous as to facilitate an expression of the general will.(p. 28)

Chapter IV: The Limits of the Sovereign Power(pp. 29-31)

He seems to try to draw a distinction between the “public person” composing the sovereign state and the “private person” who is part of the state (and subject to the sovereign).

The social compact only requires each man to alienate those powers, goods, liberties, etc. that are important for the community to control, but the Sovereign is the sole judge of what is important.

But we have to remember that the will of the body can be understood for the common good when each member thinks of it as applying to himself.“ . . . what makes the will general is less the number of voters than the common interest uniting them; for under this system, each necessarily submits to the conditions he imposes on others: and this admirable agreement between interest and justice gives to the common deliberations an equitable character which at once vanishes when any particular question is discussed., in the absence of a common interests to unite and identify the ruling of the judge with that of the party.” The point is, again, that the social contract requires the relinquishment of natural liberty, and demands the individual defend it, but the individual is protected by this state.

Chapter XI: The Various Systems of LegislationIf we ask what should be considered the “greatest good of all” and thus the “end of every system of legislation,” we will find it comes down to . . .

LIBERTY and EQUALITY.

Liberty because “ all particular dependence means so much force taken from the body of the State”

Equality because “liberty cannot exist without it.”

(He has already defined civil liberty.)By equality we should understand that degrees of power and riches will not be identical, but that power should never be great enough as to give way to violence (but in according with RANK[?!?] and law). Inequalities in wealth should never be so great that one man can buy another, or that another has to sell himself.

SEE NOTE BOTTOM OF P. 35. He says the common good will be threatened if there are either beggars or exceptionally rich people. The beggars become friends of tyrants, the rich tyrants themselves.

He then (p. 45) makes a pretty strange argument. Since the natural bent of things will be towards greater inequality, legislation should act to prevent that from happening. He seems to think the solution to this is found in developing modes of production congruous with local geography.

Book IIIChapter VIII: That All Forms of Government Do Not Suit All Countries“Liberty, not being a fruit of all climates, is not with the reach of all peoples.” (pp. 65-66) (Talk about materialistic determinism—wow!)

The argument goes like this:All governments are composed of persons who are “superfluous”—i.e., they consume without producing.

The government’s needs are supplied by the people, and in the State as Rousseau describes it, the only state in which people can afford such a government is in those states which produce a surplus.

A second principle enters the discussion: it is not so much the amount of surplus that is extracted as it is the distance the surplus must follow. If the distance great, the extraction will seem burdensome.

He summarizes the effects:Despotism is suited to hot climates.Barbarism is suited to cold climates.Good polity is suited to temperate regions.

Book III. Chapter IIGeneral Will and the Magistrates

The point is that we can distinguish three essentially different wills:

1.The private will of the individual2.The common will of the magistrates3.The will of the people

“In a perfect act of legislation, the individual or particular will should be at zero; the corporate will belonging to the government should occupy a very subordinate position: and, consequently, the general or sovereign will should always predominate and should be the sole guide of all the rest.”

Book IVChapter II: VotingHe begins with an obvious claim: the more unanimity in the assemblies, the greater is the dominance of the general will. “On the other hand, long debates, dissensions, and tumult proclaim the ascendancy of particular interests and the decline of the State.” (pp. 85-86)

This unanimity is achieve either when the people are united behind a “single will” or when “fear and flattery change votes into acclamation.” (p. 85-86)

But unanimity is only necessary with the social contract itself. Those who refuse to enter into it are not citizens. The man who does enter into it “gives his consent to all the laws, including those which are passed in spite of his opposition, and even those which punish him when he dares to break any of them.” (pp. 85-86)

Chapter VIII: Civil ReligionHe does suggest that the man who only pretends to enter the social contract deserves to die. As far as religion goes . . . intolerance is all the state should concern itself with. SEE p. 105 He argues here that religious intolerance, even just believing that “outside the church is no salvation,” should not be tolerated.