Instead, he favors some form of elective aristocracy: in other words, he supports the idea that the day-to-day administration should be in the hands of a subset of the population, elected by them according to merit. The first of these concerns his political pessimism, even in the case of the best-designed and most perfect republic.
Just as any group has a collective will as opposed to the individual private will of its members, so does the government. As the state becomes larger and more diffuse, and as citizens become more distant from one another both spatially and emotionally, so the effective government of the republic will need a proportionally smaller and more cohesive group of magistrates.
The second issue concerns how democratic Rousseau envisaged his republic to be. He sometimes suggests a picture in which the people would be subject to elite domination by the government, since the magistrates would reserve the business of agenda-setting for the assembly to themselves.
In other cases, he endorses a conception of a more fully democratic republic. For competing views of this question see Fralin and Cohen He rejects the idea that individuals associated together in a political community retain some natural rights over themselves and their property. Rather, such rights as individuals have over themselves, land, and external objects, are a matter of sovereign competence and decision.
Contemporary readers were scandalized by it, and particularly by its claim that true original or early Christianity is useless in fostering the spirit of patriotism and social solidarity necessary for a flourishing state. In many ways the chapter represents a striking departure from the main themes of the book. First, it is the only occasion where Rousseau prescribes the content of a law that a just republic must have. Second, it amounts to his acceptance of the inevitability of pluralism in matters of religion, and thus of religious toleration; this is in some tension with his encouragement elsewhere of cultural homogeneity as a propitious environment for the emergence of a general will.
Third, it represents a very concrete example of the limits of sovereign power: following Locke, Rousseau insists upon the inability of the sovereign to examine the private beliefs of citizens. In addition, the civil religion requires the provision that all those willing to tolerate others should themselves be tolerated, but those who insist that there is no salvation outside their particular church cannot be citizens of the state.
The structure of religious beliefs within the just state is that of an overlapping consensus: the dogmas of the civil religion are such that they can be affirmed by adherents of a number of different faiths, both Christian and non-Christian. Rousseau argues that those who cannot accept the dogmas can be banished from the state. This is because he believes that atheists, having no fear of divine punishment, cannot be trusted by their fellow citizens to obey the law. He goes even further, to suggest the death penalty for those who affirm the dogmas but later act as if they do not believe them.
In the Essay , Rousseau tells us that human beings want to communicate as soon as they recognize that there are other beings like themselves. But he also raises the question of why language, specifically, rather than gesture is needed for this purpose. The answer, strangely enough, is that language permits the communication of the passions in a way that gesture does not, and that the tone and stress of linguistic communication are crucial, rather than its content.
This point enables Rousseau to make a close connection between the purposes of speech and melody. Such vocabulary as there originally was, according to Rousseau, was merely figurative and words only acquire a literal meaning much later.
Theories that locate the origin of language in the need to reason together about matters of fact are, according to Rousseau, deeply mistaken.
While the cry of the other awakens our natural compassion and causes us to imagine the inner life of others, our purely physical needs have an anti-social tendency because they scatter human beings more widely across the earth in search of subsistence. Although language and song have a common origin in the need to communicate emotion, over time the two become separated, a process that becomes accelerated as a result of the invention of writing.
In the south, language stays closer to its natural origins and southern languages retain their melodic and emotional quality a fact that suits them for song and opera.
Northern languages, by contrast, become oriented to more practical tasks and are better for practical and theoretical reasoning. Rousseau proposes need as the cause of the development of language, but since language depends on convention to assign arbitrary signs to objects, he puzzles about how it could ever get started and how primitive people could accomplish the feat of giving names to universals. This is in contrast to a model of education where the teacher is a figure of authority who conveys knowledge and skills according to a pre-determined curriculum.
Up to adolescence at least, the educational program comprises a sequence of manipulations of the environment by the tutor. The child is not told what to do or think but is led to draw its own conclusions as a result of its own explorations, the context for which has been carefully arranged. Though the young child must be protected from physical harm, Rousseau is keen that it gets used to the exercise of its bodily powers and he therefore advises that the child be left as free as possible rather than being confined or constrained.
From the age of about twelve or so, the program moves on to the acquisition of abstract skills and concepts. This is not done with the use of books or formal lessons, but rather through practical experience. The third phase of education coincides with puberty and early adulthood. The period of isolation comes to an end and the child starts to take an interest in others particularly the opposite sex , and in how he or she is regarded.
At this stage the great danger is that excessive amour propre will extend to exacting recognition from others, disregarding their worth, and demanding subordination. The young and autonomous adult finds a spouse who can be another source of secure and non-competitive recognition. In modern political philosophy, for example, it is possible to detect Rousseau as a source of inspiration for liberal theories, communitarian ideas, civic republicanism, and in theories of deliberative and participatory democracy.
Hostile writers have portrayed Rousseau as a source of inspiration for the more authoritarian aspects of the French revolution and thence for aspects of fascism and communism. The cases of Hegel and Marx are more complex. In the Philosophy of Right , while praising Rousseau for the idea that will is the basis of the state, he misrepresents the idea of the general will as being merely the idea of the overlap between the contingent wills of private individuals.
In contemporary political philosophy, it is clear that the thinking of John Rawls, especially in A Theory of Justice reflects the influence of Rousseau. The individual works below are included in each of these editions. The editors would like to thank Gintautas Miliauskas Vilnius University for notifying us about several typographical errors in this entry. Life 2. Conjectural history and moral psychology 2. Political Philosophy 3.
Language 5. Education 6. Conjectural history and moral psychology Rousseau repeatedly claims that a single idea is at the centre of his world view, namely, that human beings are good by nature but are rendered corrupt by society. This volume includes the English translation of the reconstruction by Bernadi et al of Principles of the Right of War.
Works about Rousseau Berman, M. Bertram, C. Gay, Bloomington: Indiana. Charvet, J. Cohen, J. It is through this evolutionary process that human consciousness becomes individuated, and that the sphere of human desire moves beyond what is given to him to desire. And while it is only at this stage that it becomes proper to speak of human being in the sense more important in Rousseau's day even than our own of a morally free being, it is also at precisely this same stage than man becomes depraved, identifying his own interests against and above those of his community, and perceiving desires for things he only needs for increasing his power over others.
The statement that man is born free, and is everywhere in chains, is therefore only partly about politics. On a deeper level it is a statement of a dichotomy fundamental to the idea of mankind as distinct from the animals : that man's enslavement is the flipside of the coin on which is stamped his basic freedom.
Man is free, in other words, precisely because he becomes susceptible to enslavement. And for Rousseau, the one thing that maintains the relationship between the two sides, and prevents enslavement from taking over completely though he might well argue that it is now too late , is a leftover from our natural state: the supreme human institution of compassion or pity.
The basic idea of The Social Contract is to construct political institutions that allow the rule of compassion to provide the basis for legislation. Although disastrous in practical politics, it is a beautiful idea to which we should pay more than lip service. The idea that we should privilege forms of interaction which develop our compassion — such as, above all for Rousseau, music — remains spot on.
If nothing else, his prescience about Darwin's theory of evolution deserves respect. Another more obvious difference is that the Social Contract was not nearly as well-received; it was immediately banned by Paris authorities.
And although the first two Discourses were, at the time of their publication, very popular, they are not philosophically systematic. The Social Contract , by contrast, is quite systematic and outlines how a government could exist in such a way that it protects the equality and character of its citizens. For the earlier works discuss the problems in civil society as well as the historical progression that has led to them. The Discourse on the Sciences and Arts claims that society has become such that no emphasis is put on the importance of virtue and morality.
The Discourse on the Origin of Inequality traces the history of human beings from the pure state of nature through the institution of a specious social contract that results in present day civil society. The Social Contract does not deny any of these criticisms.
IV, p. But unlike the first two Discourses , the Social Contract looks forward, and explores the potential for moving from the specious social contract to a legitimate one. The concept of the general will, first introduced in the Discourse on Political Economy , is further developed in the Social Contract although it remains ambiguous and difficult to interpret. The most pressing difficulty that arises is in the tension that seems to exist between liberalism and communitarianism.
On one hand, Rousseau argues that following the general will allows for individual diversity and freedom. But at the same time, the general will also encourages the well-being of the whole, and therefore can conflict with the particular interests of individuals. Despite these difficulties, however, there are some aspects of the general will that Rousseau clearly articulates.
First, the general will is directly tied to Sovereignty: but not Sovereignty merely in the sense of whomever holds power. Simply having power, for Rousseau, is not sufficient for that power to be morally legitimate. True Sovereignty is directed always at the public good, and the general will, therefore, speaks always infallibly to the benefit of the people. Second, the object of the general will is always abstract, or for lack of a better term, general.
It can set up rules, social classes, or even a monarchial government, but it can never specify the particular individuals who are subject to the rules, members of the classes, or the rulers in the government. This is in keeping with the idea that the general will speaks to the good of the society as a whole. It is not to be confused with the collection of individual wills which would put their own needs, or the needs of particular factions, above those of the general public. This leads to a related point.
The latter looks only to the common interest; the former considers private interest and is only a sum of private wills. But take away from these same wills the pluses and minuses that cancel each other out, and the remaining sum of the differences is the general will.
This point can be understood in an almost Rawlsian sense, namely that if the citizens were ignorant of the groups to which they would belong, they would inevitably make decisions that would be to the advantage of the society as a whole, and thus be in accordance with the general will. But if the state is to protect individual freedom, how can this be reconciled with the notion of the general will, which looks always to the welfare of the whole and not to the will of the individual? This criticism, although not unfounded, is also not devastating.
To answer it, one must return to the concepts of Sovereignty and the general will. True Sovereignty, again, is not simply the will of those in power, but rather the general will. Sovereignty does have the proper authority override the particular will of an individual or even the collective will of a particular group of individuals.
However, as the general will is infallible, it can only do so when intervening will be to the benefit of the society. Proper intervention on the part of the Sovereign is therefore best understood as that which secures the freedom and equality of citizens rather than that which limits them. Ultimately, the delicate balance between the supreme authority of the state and the rights of individual citizens is based on a social contract that protects society against factions and gross differences in wealth and privilege among its members.
It was originally published just several months after the Social Contract. Like the Social Contract , the Emile was immediately banned by Paris authorities, which prompted Rousseau to flee France. The major point of controversy in the Emile was not in his philosophy of education per se, however. Rather, it was the claims in one part of the book, the Profession of Faith of the Savoyard Vicar in which Rousseau argues against traditional views of religion that led to the banning of the book.
The Emile is unique in one sense because it is written as part novel and part philosophical treatise. Rousseau would use this same form in some of his later works as well. The book is written in first person, with the narrator as the tutor, and describes his education of a pupil, Emile, from birth to adulthood. The basic philosophy of education that Rousseau advocates in the Emile , much like his thought in the first two Discourses , is rooted in the notion that human beings are good by nature.
Rousseau is very clear that a return the state of nature once human beings have become civilized is not possible. Therefore, we should not seek to be noble savages in the literal sense, with no language, no social ties, and an underdeveloped faculty of reason. Rather, Rousseau says, someone who has been properly educated will be engaged in society, but relate to his or her fellow citizens in a natural way.
At first glance, this may seem paradoxical: If human beings are not social by nature, how can one properly speak of more or less natural ways of socializing with others? The best answer to this question requires an explanation of what Rousseau calls the two forms of self-love: amour-propre and amour de soi.
Amour de soi is a natural form of self-love in that it does not depend on others. Rousseau claims that by our nature, each of us has this natural feeling of love toward ourselves. We naturally look after our own preservation and interests. By contrast, amour-propre is an unnatural self-love that is essentially relational. That is, it comes about in the ways in which human beings view themselves in comparison to other human beings.
Without amour-propre , human beings would scarcely be able to move beyond the pure state of nature Rousseau describes in the Discourse on Inequality. Thus, amour-propre can contribute positively to human freedom and even virtue. Nevertheless, amour-propre is also extremely dangerous because it is so easily corruptible.
In its corrupted form, amour-propre is the source of vice and misery, and results in human beings basing their own self worth on their feeling of superiority over others.
While not developed in the pure state of nature, amour-propre is still a fundamental part of human nature. This will allow the pupil to be virtuous even in the unnatural and imperfect society in which he lives.
The character of Emile begins learning important moral lessons from his infancy, thorough childhood, and into early adulthood. The tutor must even manipulate the environment in order to teach sometimes difficult moral lessons about humility, chastity, and honesty.
They depend on women only because they desire them. By contrast, women both need and desire men. Sophie is educated in such a way that she will fill what Rousseau takes to be her natural role as a wife. She is to be submissive to Emile. And although Rousseau advocates these very specific gender roles, it would be a mistake to take the view that Rousseau regards men as simply superior to women. Women have particular talents that men do not; Rousseau says that women are cleverer than men, and that they excel more in matters of practical reason.
These views are continually discussed among both feminist and Rousseau scholars. In his discussion of how to properly educate a pupil about religious matters, the tutor recounts a tale of an Italian who thirty years before was exiled from his town. Disillusioned, the young man was aided by a priest who explained his own views of religion, nature, and science.
The priest begins by explaining how, after a scandal in which he broke his vow of celibacy, he was arrested, suspended, and then dismissed.
In his woeful state, the priest began to question all of his previously held ideas. Doubting everything, the priest attempts a Cartesian search for truth by doubting all things that he does not know with absolute certainty.
But unlike Descartes, the Vicar is unable to come to any kind of clear and distinct ideas that could not be doubted. Among these truths, the Vicar finds that he exists as a free being with a free will which is distinct from his body that is not subject to physical, mechanical laws of motion. The will is known to me in its action, not in its nature. The Profession of Faith also includes the controversial discussion of natural religion, which was in large part the reason why Emile was banned.
The controversy of this doctrine is the fact that it is categorically opposed to orthodox Christian views, specifically the claim that Christianity is the one true religion. And so, any organized religion that correctly identifies God as the creator and preaches virtue and morality, is true in this sense. Apart from there being an apparent paradox in Rousseau advocating a social contract in the first place, there are several problems that arise when reading the Social Contract Noone, f.
First of all, he does not specify what the general will is by giving examples Noone, At the same time, the rule of the general will almost seems to be an absolute regime in itself, something that Rousseau so thoroughly rejected in Hobbes, as it must always be obeyed.
In addition, though Rousseau defines political obligation as following laws and the general will, there is no specification of individual obligations Noone, In conclusion, Rousseau is in fact both a critic and an advocate of social contract theory.
At the same time, in order to create his own rather different Social Contract which he sees as the only solution to escape corruption , he uses the ideas of the social contract tradition that the people should give up sovereignty to an authority to preserve their freedom; sovereignty lies within the whole, in this case with the general will.
Simply by naming his work le contrat social, Rousseau implies that he wants to be understood in the context of contractarianism. The system Rousseau sees as the solution to overcome corrupt society is at the same time vague and unalterable. This is problematic, as Rousseau fails to give us practical examples of how to apply his Social Contract and it is therefore unclear how it could function in practice.
Furthermore, it seems strange that it cannot be changed, considering that he seems to acknowledge that mankind can evolve.
Bertram, C. Zalta ed. Brown, C. Charvet, J. Cole, G. Green, F. Grimsley, R. Knutsen, T. Lloyd, S. MacAdam, J. Noone, J.
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