PHIL 305/POLS 370 Notes #9 Page 1
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-78)
1. Rousseau was a political philosopher from Geneva who lived in France for most of his adult life
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his best-known works are:
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Discourse on the Arts and Sciences (1750, a.k.a. “the first discourse”), on civilization as the cause
of selfishness and loss of freedom

Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality (1755, a.k.a. “the second discourse”), on
civilization as the cause of inequality

Discourse on Political Economy (1755), first published as an encyclopedia article, about the basic
principles of good government

Émile (1762), a treatise on the education of a young boy

The Social Contract (1762), his major political work, about the “general will” as the foundation of
good government
2. Rousseau was a friend of French Enlightenment thinkers called the philosophes, such as Denis Diderot
and Jean d'Alembert

Diderot and d'Alembert were the editors of the Encyclopédie, which sought to compile all the
discoveries of the Enlightenment about science and social improvement

Rousseau contributed several articles including the Discourse on Political Economy in which the idea
of the general will, which is the will of the whole of society, is introduced

according to Rousseau, good government should be based on the general will of society
3. Rousseau increasingly became a critic of the Enlightenment and is remembered today as the
predecessor of the movement now called “Romanticism”

Romanticism was a movement that arose in the late 18th c. in reaction to the scientific naturalism of
the Enlightenment, which the romantics thought had emptied life of its vitality and meaning

the Romantics sought a new source of energy and meaning in various forms, such as art, nature,
spirituality, history, nationalism or natural feelings

Rousseau came to feel alienated from the rules and mores of Enlightenment civilization

his early form of Romanticism was based on the idealization of life in the “state of nature” prior to
civilization
4. according to Rousseau, life in the state of nature was peaceful, free and good

life became competitive, corrupt and unfree only when we entered into civilization

the belief in the natural goodness of primitive life is sometimes described as the idea of the "noble
savage"

Rousseau never used the phrase “noble savage,” but it is a good description of his idea of the state of
nature

this idea led many Europeans to romanticize Aboriginal peoples as more noble because they were
seen as more primitive

today, the romanticization of Aboriginal peoples is often recognized to be a form of colonialist thinking

however, our society is not entirely free of this kind of romanticism
PHIL 305/POLS 370 Notes #9 Page 2
5. Rousseau’s “first discourse,” On the Arts and Sciences, was his winning entry in an essay contest on
whether progress in the arts and sciences had led to moral improvement

Rousseau argued that it had not and that it had only created false comforts that mask people’s
oppression:
Whilst the government and laws provide for the safety and well-being of a people … the sciences,
letters, and arts … strew garlands of flowers on their iron fetters, smother those sentiments of original
liberty, with which they would seem to have been born, make them in love with their slavery, and so
form, what we call, a polished nation. (On the Arts and Sciences)
6. the traditions and rules of modern civilization are not true advancements; rather, they are unnatural
constraints that destroy our natural freedoms

in the second discourse, On the Origins of Inequality, Rousseau said that social institutions like
private property make people selfish and competitive

if the institution of private property had never arisen, many problems would have been avoided:
The first man who, having fenced off a plot of land, thought of saying "This is mine" and found people
simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society. How many crimes, wars, murder,
how many miseries and horrors might the human race have been spared by the one who, upon
pulling up the stakes or filling in the ditch, had shouted to his fellow men, “Beware of listening to this
imposter; you are lost if you forget the fruits of the earth belong to all." (On the Origins of Inequality)

like Hume, Rousseau thought that social institutions, such as property laws, evolve over time and that
they shape us through enculturation (which Hume called “habit”)
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for Hume, the institutions of civil society make us civilized
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but for Rousseau, they make us selfish and unfree
7. Rousseau disagreed with those (e.g. Hobbes and Locke) who saw freedom in terms of physical forces
and natural passions
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Rousseau did not deny that we are born with natural inclinations, but he said that we also have a
freedom over the mechanisms of our nature:
Nature commands every animal, and beasts obey. Man feels the same impetus, but he knows he is
freed to go along or to resist; and it is above all in the awareness of this freedom that the spirituality
of his soul is made manifest. For physics explains in some way the mechanism of the senses and
the formation of ideas; but in the power of willing … we find only spiritual acts, about which the laws
of mechanics explain nothing. (On the Origins of Inequality)

this quote shows that Rousseau understands the Hobbesian theory of perception (”physics
explains in some way the mechanism of the senses…”)

it also shows that he understands the Lockean theory of the association of simple ideas into
complex one (“… and the formation of ideas”)
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however, he argues that humans have a power higher than mere physicality, because free will
involves “spiritual acts, about which the laws of mechanics explain nothing”
PHIL 305/POLS 370 Notes #9 Page 3
8. Rousseau’s most famous book is the Social Contract (1762), in which he argued for a new kind of
political society

the title is his attempt to re-appropriate the liberal (or individualistic) idea of a social contract and to
turn it into a more social (or communitarian) ideal

in liberal individualism, society is nothing more than an aggregate of individuals who join freely
together; hence social contract theory is often seen as a form of liberalism

Rousseau instead sought a more holistic form of society based on what he called the “general will”

he wrote that the general will is not an “aggregate” of individual wills; rather it is a true “association”
that transforms the many individual wills into one common will

he wanted us to give up our individual wills by allowing ourselves to be absorbed into the general will

he said we should give up our individual liberty in order to gain the united liberty of our social power
9. Rousseau defined moral liberty as self-rule:
Impulsion to appetite alone is slavery and obedience to the law that one has prescribed for oneself is
liberty. (Social Contract)

today, this kind of liberty is called autonomy (in Greek, auto means “self” and nomos means “law”)

autonomy or self-rule is a key idea in the moral and political philosophy of Kant, as we will see

but unlike Kant’s theory, Rousseau's theory of autonomy was communal rather than individualistic

he thought that when we come together to make the laws that rule over us, we are increasing our
liberty rather than losing it
10. Rousseau did not think his ideal political society could be instituted by the free consent of the people

he thought that the people must first be made ready for self-rule; this would require the work of a
founder who would have to be capable of changing human nature:
He who dares to undertake the making of a people's institutions ought to feel himself capable, so to
speak, of changing human nature, of transforming each individual, who is by himself a complete and
solitary whole, into part of a greater whole. (Social Contract)

the idea of “changing human nature, of transforming each individual” is a key Rousseauian idea
11. Rousseau is famous for writing that the people may be “forced to be free”
In order then that the social compact may not be an empty formula, it tacitly includes the undertaking,
which alone can give force to the rest, that whoever refuses to obey the general will shall be compelled
to do so by the whole body. This means nothing less than that he will be forced to be free; for this is the
condition which, by giving each citizen to his country, secures him against all personal dependence. In
this lies the key to the working of the political machine; this alone legitimizes civil undertakings, which,
without it, would be absurd, tyrannical, and liable to the most frightful abuses. (Rousseau, Social
Contract)

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critics have argued that Rousseau’s political theory is authoritarian and disallows legitimate dissent

for example, Rousseau ended the Social Contract by discussing the role of a “civil religion,” a set
of compulsory values and beliefs

the penalties for dissenting from the civil religion included forced re-education, exile or execution
however, Rousseau’s defenders say his theory provides something that missing from liberal
individualism, which is a communal form of freedom and true social unity
PHIL 305/POLS 370 Notes #9 Page 4
12. after Rousseau’s time, the idea of the general will came to be seen by many as the most fundamental
basis of political legitimacy

however, this idea sometimes took authoritarian forms

for example, during the most violent period of the French Revolution, the Jacobin party under
Robespierre used the slogan, “the General Will is our will,” to justify its authority

nonetheless, for many modern social democrats and socialists today, the idea of transformative
political unity remains inspiring
13. in one of his last works, Rousseau described his feelings of alienation and oppression as a physical
being trapped in a physical world, and his desire for a higher spiritual freedom:
Everything is in constant flux on this earth…. But there is a state where the soul can find a resting-place
secure enough to establish itself and concentrate its entire being there…where time is nothing to it,
where the present runs on indefinitely…and no other feeling of deprivation or enjoyment, pleasure or
pain, desire or fear than the simple feeling of existence…. What is the source of our happiness in such a
state? Nothing external to us, nothing apart from ourselves and our own existence; as long as this state
lasts we are self-sufficient like God. (Reveries of a Solitary Walker)

for Rousseau, spiritual freedom is an existential power

to be truly free, one must become existentially “self-sufficient like God”
14. a number of Rousseau’s ideas remain influential today:

humans are perfectible and good by nature; those who are bad are made bad by social conditions

our social institutions make us what we are, so by changing social institutions, we can remake human
nature

capitalism is unnatural and makes people unnaturally selfish and competitive

social unity is closely associated with political unity

socio-political unity is not just a means to an end but is an end in itself

economic inequalities are bad because they lead to social divisions, so economic equality is a
requisite condition for social unity