Perspectives in Social Contract Theory, 2018

The primary focus of this paper is the issue of the formation of the citizen in the Rousseau’s social contract theory. To begin with I examine the anthropological basis of Rousseau’s political ideas. These are based on the conception of the natural human being. In the state of nature, human beings are simple, free and solitary. Their spiritual faculties are not yet developed. With the concept of perfectibility, Rousseau states that human beings are not fixed to a single model of development, but that they can adapt to different forms. Following I provide an analysis of the intentions of Rousseau’s social contract, i.e. the construction of a free and equal society. According to Rousseau, the social contract gives rise to a political body whose general will must be expressed through laws directed towards the common good. Here the civil freedom of the individual finds its accomplishment. But the distance between one’s own will and the general will still remain an open issue, with the risk of invalidating the project of the social contract. Thirdly, I discuss the civil education of the citizen, which is an instrument for overcoming the worry of the distance between one’s own will and the general will. The purpose of this kind of education is to create a particular will that adjusts itself to the general one without dissonance. In conclusion I look at the set of problems posited by this kind of education with regard to the extent of freedom in the Rousseau’s social contract theory. ISBN 9781565183315 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018001948

Rousseau’s thought is premised upon the radical critique of the modern civilisation emerging in his day. Rousseau is shown to castigate the modern society emerging in his day not as an ascent from darkness to light, but as artificial and corrupt, its intellectual achievement being bought at the price of moral decadence. Rousseau identified the clear weakness of an Enlightenment which was founded upon opinion and prejudice rather than on moral and rational principles. Thus, Rousseau is shown to criticise the way that the laws protected and promoted the interests of the strong and the rich against the poor and the weak; the way that religious institutions engendered intolerance and discord; the way that the artificial or distorted beings produced by the educational system fell far short of authentic human beings; the way that bourgeois society fed the ego in separation from and opposition to others rather than nurturing the whole person in relation to others. Rousseau is shown to be in search of fundamental principles, premising his philosophy upon an examination of human nature and the place of human beings in the ‘order of things’. As ‘the portrayer of nature’ and ‘the historian of the human heart’, Rousseau is shown to affirm the existence of a universal human nature, a definite human essence which has definite political and social implications.

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.

2014

If the greatness of a philosophical work can be measured by the volume and vehemence of the public response, there is little question that Rousseau's Social Contract stands out as a masterpiece. Within a week of its publication in 1762 it was banished from France. Soon thereafter, Rousseau fled to Geneva, where he saw the book burned in public. At the same time, many of his contemporaries, such as Kant, considered Rousseau to be “the Newton of the moral world,” as he was the first philosopher to draw attention to the basic dignity of human nature. The Social Contract has never ceased to be read in the 250 years since it was written. Rousseau's “Social Contract”: An Introduction offers a thorough and systematic tour of this notoriously paradoxical and challenging text. David Lay Williams offers readers a chapter-by-chapter reading of the Social Contract, squarely confronting these interpretive obstacles, leaving no stones unturned. The conclusion connects Rousseau's text both to his important influences and those who took inspiration and sometimes exception to his arguments. The book also features a special extended appendix dedicated to outlining his famous conception of the general will, which has been the object of controversy since the Social Contract's publication.

2017

It was widely believed after WW2 that totalitarianism could be traced back to Rousseau’s rationalistic utopia. This idea conveyed, in particular, by Berlin’s Two Concepts of Liberty and Hayek’s Road to Serfdom, is still popular in some political circles. This article intends, however, to demonstrate that rather than originating from Kantian readings of the Social Contract, the totalitarian interpretations of Rousseau’s work essentially arose from his literary and autobiographical writings. It is Romanticism, and its alleged political and moral deviances, that is indeed targeted through Rousseau. Ironically, this prompted some intellectuals—including Cassirer—to revisit and to reappraise his political thought.

2016

This dissertation investigates Rousseau's normative defence of democracy, beginning with his thoughts on the best kind of political practice. Despite recent attempts to highlight parts of his thought that are sympathetic to cherished liberal principles, current readers still struggle to defang what appear to be Rousseau's populist excesses: his acceptance of majority-rule and his admiration for oppressive societies like ancient Sparta, Rome, or puritan Geneva. Rousseau Abbreviations vi Corresponding Editions vi INTRODUCTION 1

For a long period, society had gone through different eras and experiences. Every state has been under a law that protects and secures every individuals' rights. Society has entered an agreement, a Social Contract that gives everyone equal rights and restrictions to conserve their freedom. Philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau is one of the people who tackled the topic of the contract between humans. Unlike others' take on the topic, he believed in a society where people rule the government. This paper will justify the importance of the Social Contract, focusing on Rousseau's political theory. I will attempt to prove the importance of the social contract theory in preserving the happiness of individuals, creating a harmonious society, while also exposing how the other political theories cannot create a peaceful society.

Political Science Reviewer

Of the two leading philosophical paradigms interpreting Rousseau’s corpus as a whole, only one defends him as a moralistic and constructive author. We offer the first comprehensive and critical introduction to this paradigm, which was first articulated by Ernst Cassirer, but extends far beyond Kantians. We question its firm distinction between a lofty normative philosophy and claims amounting to merely personal deviations. First, we find Rousseau’s theory of natural goodness to be in some ways subversive of his theories of virtue and community, especially regarding foresight, the status of politics, and the commitment to domestic virtue. Second, the autobiographies develop the idea of natural goodness in philosophically substantive ways, and in depicting Jean-Jacques as preeminent in goodness, this two-tiered system of judgment grounds a broad range of self-exculpation. Despite this paradigm’s illumination of what is most elevating in Rousseau, it has not done full justice to his philosophy as a whole.

2020

That Rousseau equates humanhood in to the possibility and valuing of freedom, despite negating that humans ordinarily find themselves in the condition of being free, makes it sensible to ask whether and in what sense Rousseau's project implies such possibility. Scholarly and historical reception presents though two pressing issues. First, there is disagreement on the precise type of freedom Rousseau has in mind when claiming humans are everywhere unfree and its relation to natural freedom: some interpret this as the active membership and dependence of non-dominated communities; others, as Rousseau seems to suggest more 2 directly but more contentiously, that humans can be individually free because somehow obeying themselves. 3 Second, there are difficulties with the standard Rousseauvian equation between obeying the general will and obeying oneself-such as in the ambiguous case of 'being forced to be free.' Responding to such 4 considerations, I will argue that a) Arguments on whether and I what way Rousseauvian humans can be free, if we are to avoid squaring the circle, cannot be reduced to the refection on 'restructured dependence' of the type proposed by theorists of republicanism or liberal indictments of 'authoritarianism'-at least if we are to avoid a category error. Rather that arguments must define with care and confront, or eschew at their own peril, the significant and much needed problem of finding a philosophically and textually plausible synthetic Rousseau, 2019a: 47

Rousseau’s attempt to combine authority and autonomy has led to him being described as both the theorist of the totalitarian state and as the exponent of the anarchist society. The complexities of Rousseau’s conception of self-legislation and self-government suggest both but, on closer analysis, involve neither. Rousseau is shown to develop an actively democratic principle of authority based on the principle of self-assumed obligation. This allows Rousseau to incorporate certain anarchist themes into a conception of government as the realisation of human freedom - the concern that freedom requires a more natural form of living, a simplicity of life and politics that suggests the small scale communities; so too does the justification of the small property of independent producers.