• Born in Geneva, Switzerland 1712, died 1778
• Converted to Roman Catholicism in Turin and worked as a footman, music teacher, or tutor in many parts of Switzerland and France.
• In 1741 he set out for Paris and there met Diderot, a well-known intellectual.
• He fathered five children by Thérèse Levasseur, a servant girl, and sent each immediately to orphanages. (He eventually married Thérèse.)
• He fell out with Voltaire and Diderot and hated the intellectual society of Paris.
• He argued in essays that the growth of civilization was not progress. He thought that civilization corrupted natural goodness and increased inequality among people.
• He argued in his works Joulie, ou la nouvelle Héloise and Émile that personal ideals should never be crushed by the state or societal pressures.
• He wrote The Social Contract in 1762.
• After being driven from Switzerland because he wrote an attack on religion, he briefly fled to England to stay with David Hume, but left soon after being a very difficult guest.
• He spent much of the rest of the life experiencing political and religious intolerance, and did much moving around from city to city.
• At the end of his life he experienced severe mental illness, and had periods of delusion and paranoia.
• His work was said to be influential in the French Revolution. However, this is doubtful.

 

 

The Historical Context

• In 1500 the world population was about 425,000,000. In 1800 it had roughly doubled to about 900,000,000.
• Europe (including Russia) probably had about 80,000,000 people in 1500 and about 200,000,000 in 1800.
• In the 1700s, Amsterdam probably had about 200,000 inhabitants, Paris 500,000 and London 700,000 (from about 120,000 in 1500).
• But most towns were small, with populations less than 10,000.
• There were gradual advances in agriculture, especially in Britain and western Europe. Agriculture dominated the economies of Europe.
• In the eighteenth century paper currency and the check came into use. Banks and stock exchanges became more powerful. Business and money increasingly determined policy and law.
• By 1800 there was a global and oceanic economy and an international trading community.
• The first African slaves were sold in Lisbon in 1444. Slavery soon became a profitable business for Portugal, England, Holland and France.
• Most slaves worked in agriculture or as domestic servants, and slavery had a large effect on agriculture and associated industry.
• Technology and industry started to grow between 1500 and 1800, especially in the 18^th century.
• Until the end of the 18^th century, England had less than 200 hereditary Lords. By way of contrast, France had about 250,000 nobles with important rights.
• Most people thought that one’s position in society should be determined by one’s hereditary. But as business increasingly dominated social relations, it became possible in Britain for a great merchant to get as much esteem and respect as a nobleman.
• Science was on the rise, with the theories of Kepler, Galileo and Newton, and also important was the new information about the rest of the world discovered in 16^th century voyages of discovery. The world began to seem less mysterious and more capable of being conquered. By 1800 there was an international scientific community.
• The French playwright and novelist Voltaire (1694-1778) popularized many scientific and philosophical ideas in his Lettres philosophiques (1734). He admired English constitutionalism and freedom of thought, and he campained for freedom of religion and judicial reform. He was seen to embody the ideas of the Enlightenment, with his belief in rationalism and humanity.
• Denis Diderot (1713-84) became editor of the Encyclopédie in 1750. The aim was to provide useful information "while at the same time conveying ironic comparisons and examples which would lead the reader by deduction or implication towards a rejection of the reasonableness, obscurantism and brutality the age so much took for granted." He translated some of the work of John Locke into French.
• All over Europe writers advocated reform of government, punishments, economics and poverty.

 

 

Important Dates

• 1775 American War of Independence
• 1776 Declaration of Independence signed at Philadelphia
• 1778 France signs treaty of alliance with USA
• 1783 British recognition of American independence
• 1780s France in financial difficulties, in heavy debt. Millions of French lived in misery.  1789 Rural revolt in France, riots in Paris
• 1791 The National Assembly wrote a constitution. It gave the lands of the Catholic Church to the nation, abolished ‘the feudal system,’ ended censorship, created a system of centralized representative government, instituted equality before the law, and separated the executive power from the legislative power.
• 1792 A Paris insurrection overthrew the monarchy and an assembly, called "The Convention," wrote a republican constitution.
• 1793 The Convention votes for the execution of the king.

I The Subject of This First Book

People in modern society are not free. What justifies this? It cannot just be a matter of force: it must be founded on agreements; but what agreements?

III The Right of the Strongest

Might does not make right. We only have a moral obligation to obey legitimate powers.

IV Slavery

It does not make sense to say that a man could give himself into slavery, still less that he could give his family into slavery. We cannot renounce our freedom. The attempted defenses of slavery are invalid.

VI The Social Pact

In order to survive, people need to group together into a "republic" or "body politic.". The point of an association of people is to defend the safety and possessions of each person, while maintaining the freedom of each person. It is the surrender of each associate with all his rights to the community. People become ready to adopt the decisions of the community, "the general will." Each citizen has equal rights over each other.

VII The Sovereign

Each person can be considered both as part of the sovereign and as part of the state (both ruler and ruled). The sovereign itself can be considered only under one aspect, not two. The body politic draws its being only from the sanctity of the original contract. It follows that it can never be allowed to do anything contrary to the original contract, such as placing itself under the authority of another sovereign. An attack on one part of the sovereign is an attack on every part of it, so we have duties to defend each other.

There has to be a way of making people in society fulfill their obligations. The interests or desires of individuals can differ from the general interest. People may not want to sacrifice their personal interests for the sake of others. So people must be compelled to obey the general will. This is forcing people to be free.

VIII The Civil State

When leaving the state of nature, a man loses his natural freedom and his unlimited right to anything he wants and can get. But what he gains is civil freedom and the right of property of everything he possesses. Civil freedom is limited by the general will. To be driven by one’s appetites is slavery, while to obey a law that we have imposed on ourselves is freedom. [This conception of freedom is close to that of Immanuel Kant.]

Book II

III Whether the General Will Can Err

The general will is what people want for society. But people do not always know what it best. Furthermore, there is a major difference between the collected desires of everyone in society and the general will. The general will should only take into account what people is best for society, not what is best for their own personal lives.

There should be no partial society within the state, and each citizen should decide what is best according to just his own opinion. The forming of groups of citizens should be discouraged, because that distorts the understanding of what is best. The individual differences between people should cancel each other out when their opinions are taken together, and we should be left with the common core. But if there are intrigues and partial associations, this will influence people’s opinions, and the opinion that prevails will only be a general opinion. If this happens, then the opinion will not be what is best for the state.

According to legendary tradition, Lycurgus gave laws to Sparta, whose customs were much admired by Rousseau. Sparta was a city-state of ancient Greece, noted for its militariam. It reached the height of its power in the sixth century BC.

Solon was the historical legistlator of Athens (650-548 BC). He divided the city into four groups, according to wealth. Numa was the legendary second king of Rome (seventh century BC); he created numerous associations based on trade, to reduce larger-scale civil conflict. Servius Tullus, king of Rome in the sixth century BC, organized the centuriae. Rousseau describes this in more detail in Book IV, Chapter IV: The Roman Comitia.

IV Limits of the sovereign power.

The body politic has control over its parts just as a man has control over the parts of his body. But the power of control is limited to that which is important to the state. It is the sovereign who should be the sole judge of what counts as important. Whatever individuals do for the general will is also for themselves, and is for their own good.

V The Right of Life and Death

Every criminal is a rebel and traitor to his country. By violating the laws, he ceases to belong to it. Murderers must be ready to die for their crimes, if it is necessary for the protection of society.

But it is a bad sign if the death penalty is used too much. "There is nobody so wicked that he cannot be made useful in some respect." In a well-governed state, there should be few crimes. Pardons should be used very seldom, or the punishment will not be taken seriously.

Book IV

I The General Will Is Indestructible

The body politic is easy to run. Simple straightforward men are hard to deceive. The political problems of other states arose because decisions were not made by the common person. Decisions need to be made by public voting.

II Voting

The closer a society gets to unanimous opinion, the closer it gets to the general will. Long debates and controversy are signs that private interests are taking hold.

But it can happen that a society has unanimous opinions because its people fall into servitude. This should be avoided.

Only the social pact requires total unanimity. Those who disagree with the social pact are excluded from it, and become foreigners among citizens. If people continue to live in the state, it indicates that they acknowledge its authority over them.

For other votes, the decision of the majority is always binding on the minority. In voting, each man should give his opinion about what it best for society. If he turns out to be in the minority, it shows that he was wrong. For important decisions, the prevailing opinion must be close to unanimity. If there is not much time for debate, then we should not expect to get so close to a unanimous opinion: a simple majority will be enough.

Rousseau’s main argument (as summarized in TheIndividual and the Political Order Third Edition, by Norman Bowie and Robert Simon, Rowan and Littlefield, 1998, page 125).

 
 

1. A political association has authority only if it preserves the autonomy of the associates, that is, keeps them "as free as before."
2. It preserves the autonomy of any given associate only if it does not subordinate the pursuit of his or her interests to the pursuit of those of others, for he or she could not rationally consent to such a system.
3. Such subordination can be avoided only if the association is restricted to pursuing only the common interests of the associates.
4. Therefore, a political association has authority only if it restricts itself to pursuit of the common interests of its members.
5. The general will and only the general will discerns the common interest.
6. Therefore, a political association has authority only if it allows for expression of the general will, that is, for democratic voting in which each votes from the point of view of all.

Note that the general will is to be distinguished from particular wills, even when the particular wills of all citizens agree (Social Contract, Book 2, Chapter iii). Individuals express their particular will when they vote their own personal preferences and desires. The general will is expressed only when citizens assume an unselfish standpoint and vote for the common good.