Copyright 2001 by Tad Beckman, Harvey Mudd College
Jean-Jacques Rousseau was born on June 28, 1712, in Geneva; his mother, Suzanne Bernard, died on July 7th from complications
connected with the birth. His father, Isaac, was a violent tempered man who blamed Rousseau for the death of his mother, neglected
him wretchedly, and deserted him near the age of ten. Rousseau ultimately lived with an uncle from his mother's family and then with
Madame de Warens in Annecy. After a brief experience with formal education in Turin, Rousseau continued independently (1730).
He was an avid reader, having read Plutarch's Lives at an early age. He now addressed himself to nature, music, sciences, and
philosophy. His various apprenticeships failed.
At the age of 30, Rousseau seemed headed toward a career in music. He published a small essay on modern music, and he began work on an opera, "Les Muses galantes." This brought him to Paris, by his late 30s, and this seems to be the significant turning point in his life. In Paris, he became associated with Diderot, Grimm, D'Alembert, and Holbach. While his opera failed, his beginnings as a writer did not. In 1750, Rousseau entered and won an essay contest with his "Discours sur les sciences et les arts." Three years later, he published "Discours sur l'origine et les fondementsde l'inequalite parmi les hommes" (Discourse on the Origin and Foundation of Inequality). Rousseau's reputation as a critic of contemporary culture was well started.
Denis Diderot was the designer of the Dictionnaire raisonne des sciences, des arts, et des metiers, the so called Encyclopedia. It was to be a complete alphabetical treatment of the whole of human knowledge reflecting the Age of Enlightenment. The intelligencia of France were enlisted as contributors and the mainstays of the project came to be known as "philosophes." Rousseau was asked to write some essays on topics in music. The first volume was published in 1751 and the work went to 28 volumes. But the views of the encyclopedists were antagonistic to both church and nobility so enemies were numerous. Diderot himself was arrested and jailed. The great encyclopedia became a significant rallying point for the forces that eventually brought about the French Revolution.
Over the next decade (1755-1765), Rousseau returned to Geneva where he was welcomed as a now-famous "Citizen of Geneva." Nevertheless, his personal life continued along strange and disorderly lines and, by 1766, he fled to England and accepted the hospitality and asylum of the philosopher, David Hume. His paranoia grew to destructive proportions, however, and he was back in France by the following year. The remainder of his life seems to have been very unsettled, and Rousseau died in 1778.
On the Social Contract was written in 1762 during the one relatively peaceful and productive decade in his life. His other most famous work, Emile, was published during the same year. Both books were burned in Geneva and Rousseau was persecuted. To understand why requires us to look more deeply into French society and Europe as a whole. In France, the "First Estate," the very top of the power structure, was the Catholic Church. Below it was the "Second Estate," a somewhat larger group of people, the nobility, in whom all secular authority lay. On the bottom was the huge "Third Estate," a complex mixture of peasants, farmers, merchants, bourgeoisie, and intellectuals. Rousseau's writing, like so much of the Encyclopedia, was supportive of democratic rule and antagonistic toward church and nobility. Civilization, in the form of traditional French aristocratic society, was viewed as a corruption. Such criticism was not about to be ignored as tension between the Estates increased.
[For detailed information on Rousseau's life, be sure to visit some of the fine materials sited in the Web resources page.]
Rousseau's Social Contract is usually read in political philosophy in the context of Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan (1651) and John Locke's Two Treatises of Government (1690). All three works explore the concept of a civil society, or commonwealth, founded on the idea of a social contract, or popular commitment made by the people to each other. This concept of civil society is fundamental to the evolution of all modern democratic states and these works are all connected intimately with revolutionary political changes -- the English Civil War (1640s), the Glorious (English) Revolution of 1688, the American Revolution (1776), the French Revolution (1789), and the Constitution of the US (1789). [As we will see, the modern German state was formed in the 1800s.]
It is impossible to understand why Rousseau's books were burned if we fail to take our minds back in time to the framework of politics prior to these revolutions. We are all products of modern democratic states so there is a significant danger that Rousseau's arguments will seem far too obvious. When we begin a reading of the Social Contract, then, we must remember that France was still very much a monarchy under the rule of Louis XV and that it was still paying the substantial consequences of Louis XIV's excesses in both war and arts. It is hard for Americans to understand the deep integration of church and state involved in all European history prior to the age of political revolution. It is essential, therefore, to feel the intensity with which monarchs held complete personal power by divine right. In England, the church made sure that the king's power was assured by a continuous lineage direct from Adam; and Adam, of course, held paternal authority over all of God's creation. In Europe, the monarch was "the great father" who held the disposition of life or death over all his subjects; and on that disposition was based his right to demand anything short of death from any and all of his subjects, including land, wealth, and complete obedience. All media of communication were controlled by the church and monarchy so anything that spoke an unfriendly word about social issues was suppressed immediately. Dissent was simply not tolerated and dissidents were very likely to be jailed or executed.
The fundamental question in political philosophy, then, is on what basis does political authority rest. The flip side of this question is why should people accept any form of obligation to political authority. The traditional answers were simple enough. The king descends from Adam and carries the authority of God and all of creation in ruling over the land and all its people. The king's authority is paternal and we owe obedience to this authority because we are his children. In the primal family, the father literally wields the power of life or death over his children. The social-contract argument suggests new answers to these questions (though the answers have roots in classical philosophy) and sets the path toward liberation from abusive monarchial authority.
The core of the social-contract argument is that people create political authority by entering into a fundamental contract, or compact. But why would they do this? All political philosophers agreed that people cannot make it on their own. This situation, called a "state of nature," leaves people at the mercy of their appetites. It is not long before one person's appetite leads to an offence of that person against another, who holds whatever will satisfy the former's appetite. The so-called state of nature inevitably leads into a "state of war" precisely because people take what they want, no matter who possesses it, and everyone is put to the test defending whatever he/she has in possession. Hobbes characterized life in this state as being "nasty, brutish, mean, and short." The genius of the social contract is that people recognize that their collective power can stop all of this madness. Each person alienates his/her natural liberty to do anything whatsoever and commits to coming into a civil society, or commonwealth, with everyone else. In exchange for this commitment, each person gains the protection provided by the whole since the whole system of justice is "institutionalized." More positively, as Rousseau suggests, a finer kind of liberty is gained. One's natural liberty is exchanged for civil liberty and civil liberty places the individual inside of a moral context. Thus, in brief, political authority is created by an act of the people coming together out of their own self-interest; and political obligation is founded upon the real benefits brought to the people in a civil society as well as the very fact that it is their own creation. Since each individual is a co-author of the state, one's political obligation is really an obligation to self.
An important feature of modern political philosophy is the disposition of property and we can get a sense of this in Rousseau's Book I, Chapter IX, "On the Real Domain." In a state of nature, property exists because of labor. "I own this thing because I made it; or I own this land because I have improved it and worked it." If someone attempts to take my property, it is up to me to defend it. There is no such thing as "title." Property in the modern sense is "entitled;" that is, one of the most important acts of institutionalized commonwealth is to decide how property is held. Holding title to a property (no matter what kind -- patent, copy right, land, etc.) means that collective social institutions will protect your property for you. Property in this sense is a creation of the state, and title is gained by means that the state has carefully defined. One of the truly tangible realizations of this idea can be seen as you fly across the United States from east to west. Very early in the 19th Century, as western territories were acquired by the nation, surveyors were sent out to divide up the land in squares and quarters. These were the basic units of land property and they make a powerful impression when seen from the air.
Rousseau works extensively with two central concepts -- the sovereign and the general will. We often think of "sovereign" as the name for a monarch, but this is not Rousseau's meaning at all. The sovereign is what is created by the social contract; the sovereign, in other words, is the united people who have come together in the making of civil society. What the social contract expresses is nothing more, nor less, than the "general will" of the people. That which is generally willed is always only a portion of that which an individual person might will. What is generally willed reflects the common interests of all; whereas what an individual may will reflects personal aims and interests. Nevertheless, since the general will is a reflection of common interests, the general will is always consistent with certain individual interests of all the people. Rousseau notes that the general will cannot address particular objects or issues.
Once civil society is formed, the people (sovereign) must be able to take collective action. This is inherent in the contract since they would never will to unite into something that was merely impotent. Nevertheless, it is clear that unanimity ends within the contract itself. The determination of practical action will always have to be ruled by majority. Thus, legislation is a fundamental right of the sovereign even though it must be majoritarian by principle.
What is undecided in the social-contract argument is how authority and obligation will be institutionalized, that is, what kind of government is appropriate to the commonwealth. While Hobbes understood the origin of political power in the people, he still favored monarchy and conceived of the king as the "leviathan," a single being made up of the power of all. Locke, on the other hand, believed in representative government and a powerful parliament as well as separation of other powers. Rousseau sees the establishment of government as the initial legislative act of the sovereign, and the style of government must match the cultural maturity of the people. Cultural maturity, indeed, is not all. Rousseau discusses a large number of factors, including population density, quality of land, geography, weather, special resources, etc.
Of greatest importance in this system of political philosophy is the inherent belief that government, no matter how instituted by the sovereign, is always in a position of trust with respect to the sovereign. If government collapses, it is because a betrayal of trust has occurred. The sovereign always has the right to dissolve government. For Rousseau, then, the challenge is how to create and maintain a useful and productive government that achieves the ends of the general will and avoids the pitfalls of usurping authority to its own particular ends. Liberty and equality are high among those general ends; but how many governments successfully promote these in practical civil societies?
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