The Social Contract, 1763

Jean Jacques Rousseau Short biography : He first came to fame as author of a short essay called the Discourse on the Arts and Sciences , which he wrote in 1750 and submitted to the Academy of Dijon in an essay competition. The topic was a response to the question posed by the Academy as to whether the arts and sciences have a purifying effect upon morals. His work ended up winning first prize . He wrote about the idea that human progress is identified with scientific knowledge and the spread of civilized manners. His latter works included his classic political treatise called The social contract which explored the ways men and women might overcome or escape this disordered and degenerate social state through a radical reconstructing of the social and political order. In the social contract, he tries to resolve the problem posed by the conflict between the individual and the state, or self-interest and duty. Rousseau begins the Social Contract with the celebrated words: man was born free and everywhere he is in chains and afterwards he asks himself how did this change come to pass? What can make it legitimate? saying that he belives he can resolve the question. With this question he poses the political problem in its most radical form and at the same time suggests that almost all existing regimes are illegitimate. Civil society enchains man and makes him a slave to law or other men whereas he was born free having the right to behave as he pleases. Because of the unjust society of nowadays, Rousseaus political thought points away from the present in the two directions: to mans happy freedom of the past and to the establishment of a regime in the future which can appeal to the will of those in power. Modern politics, according to Rousseau are based on a partial understanding of man. Modern state based on self-preservation constitutes a way of life precisely contrary to which would make men happy. The life of the big nations characterized by commerce and, consequently, by the distinction between rich and poor. Money is the standard of human worth and virtue is forgotten. Because of the unsatisfied needs and desires of men in society, the rich are protected and the poor oppressed. Civil society is a state of mutual interdependence among men and so, the majority is forced to give up their own wills to work for the satisfaction of the few. The progess of the arts and sciences was believed to be the condition of a progress of civil society and of an increase in human happiness. Predjudice

would be vanquished by learning, manners softened by the arts, nature conqueder by science. Rousseau not only desires that progress in the arts and sciences improves morality, but asserts, on the contrary that such progress always leads to moral corruption. The science and the arts themselfs emerge from vices of the soul. Most often they come from the desire for unnecessary comforts which only weaken men and satisfy unnecessary wants. So the society is transformed to support the arts and the sciences and their productsand this very transformation creates a life full of vain self-regard and injustice. Rousseaus reflection leads to admiration of the past. The situation of modern man is new, but in the past, men were free and governed themselfs. In the quarrel between the ancients and the moderns, Rousseau restates the case of ancient city. That city was not founded on confort, self-preservation or science but on virtue the science of simple souls. Virtue in the classic sence meant good citizenship. Rousseau believes that men are naturally free and equal, and so he tries to give an ultimate solution to a free societ met by the Greek and Rome cities. Although they are not perfect, they were small so that everyne could know everyone else and hence have both common interests and trust. They were governed by the people so that the rulers and ruled were one and the same. If civil society is not natural, then one must go to a time prior to civil society to find man as he naturally is. To do this, the origins of the state must be determined. Here, Rousseau makes an attempt to describe man in the state of nature . Other modern thinkers believe that man has a prepolitical right in order to ground a political right in civil society, but according to Rousseau, they never succeeded in reaching the primitive state of nature. They could not reject entirely the naturalness of civil society. But if man is trully not a political and social being, then his nature must have been transformed in order for him to live in civil society. Because of the disproportion between the natural man and civil man, Rousseau investigates the primitive man. This investigation consists in introspection to uncover the first and simplest movements of the human soul. Since man is not primarilypolitical and social, all of his qualities that are connected with live in a community must be removed, if we are to undestand how he is by nature. First of these is reason. Reason depends on the speech and speech implies social live and so the definition of man can no longer be that he is a rational animal. Hobbes understood men as an animal that preserve his being but he is not histile to every other member of his species. Actually this first animal-man has only the simplest needs of the sort that are usually easily satisfied. He cannot think further into the future. He is not frightened of death because he cannot conceive it he only avoids pain. He has no need to fight his fellow creatures except when there is a basic need to fulfill. Only a being with foresight seeks walth. Lockes picture of natural man is also a construction drawn from already developed society.

Natrual man has 2 fundamental passions: the desire to preserve himself and a certain pitty r simpathy for the sufferings of others of his kind and this simpathy prevents him from being brutal when this does not conflict with his own preservation. He has no virtues because he needs none. In the state of nature one can not enslave another because men has no need of one another. What distinguishes man from other animals. Firstly, the freedom of the will. Man is not a being determined by his instincts; he can choose, accept and reject. He can defy nature. He is aware of his own power. The second and the least questionable caracteristic of man is his perfectibility . Man is the only being which can gradually improve its faculties and pass this improvement on the whole species. Furthermore man is able to practice vengeance. Because in the state of nature, there is no law, each man being judged in his own case. The natural pity which was the root of humanity in the state of nature it is weakened as a result of the conflict between self love and pitty. But not this battle cause men to form civil society; it is the foundation of private property. Only what a man has made what he added to his work can belong to him. With the foundation of private property, we have descovered the origin of inequality. For different man have different skills and talents which enables them to increase their possesions. The greatest change in his nature is that he formaly lived entirely for himself within himself. Now he lives for others, not only because he is phisically dependent on them, but because he has learned to compare himself with them. Furthermore, he seeks money and honour instead of reflecting on his real issues. Men has become vain. Vanity has taken the place of original self-love. He is now possessed by strong desires for possessions he can never use and a glory he despises as soon as it is gained. It is now that someone among thee rich aware of the constant danger to his property and the bad condition of the people suggests a contract for the estaplishment of civil society. The rich hive an appearance of legitimacy to their own control of their property and are able to enjoy peacefully to their own control of their property and are able to enjoy it peacefully. The inequality is recognized by the law and oppression of the poor is maintained by public force. Man is naturally free and civil society takes his freedom away from him; he is dependent on the law and the law is made in the favor of the rich. Man has developed passions which necessitate gouvernment, a just gouvernment is difficul because of the influence of the passions and through this passions, the citizens have every interest in altering the gouvernment for their sattisfaction. So I ask you: how can a civil society call a men to sacrifice itself for it if man by nature is selfish and independent?

The solution is that every man give himself entirely to the comunity with all of his rights and property. The deposit is made with the whole, with no individuals; in this way no one puts himself into the hands of another. The contrast is equal for which gives all. The social contract formes an artificial person which has a will like the natural person. What is necessary for a person is willded by it and what is willded by whole is the law. In this case, the law is the general will. Each individual participate in legislation and everyone respect them because it is what they willed. Thus, each remanes free as he was before, because he obeys nothing but his transformed will. As long as the society is organised so that the laws can be made impersonally, no one can make a clame against it on the basis of natural right, which is freedom. Rousseau belives that he has discovered the true principle of morality that other had only senced and had tryed to write about it. Mans freedom, which seems to be independent of, and apposed to moral rule, is the only source of morality. With this discovery, Rousseau completes the break with the political teaching of classical antiquity begun by Machiavelli and Hobbes. The movement from the natural state to the civil state produces a very great change in man. Formally he was an amiable beast; now he has become a moral being. In the state of nature man acted only from instinct; now he must consider his action in relation to principal so that the words: choice and freedom take on a moral sence. So if a man begins to act according to his private will, he is no higher than the level of animals The social contract is an agreement to form a civil society and establishes the instrument of authority, the souverign. Rousseau uses the term souvereign to indicate that the source of all legitimacy is in the people not in the monarch and arristocrats. There must be a gouvernment, but its right to rule comes from the people and exercised only so long as it pleases them. Thus every citizen has a double relation to the state: as a LAWGIVER-member of the souvereign and as a SUBJECT OF THE LAWindivitual who must obay Souvereign is the only source of legitimacy. This is inalienable, which means that no man or group of man could take the right to make the laws in the place of the citizen body at large, because they will be acting according to their individual wills. This means that the reprezentative gourvernment is a bad form of gouvernment. Others take the responsability from the citizens and they loose their citizen virtue as well as their freedom. But think about this: if a nation is so large that the citizens cannot be a common body, then reprezentation becomes an unfortunate necessity, a necessity which weakens the oppression of general will. So local representatives must be elected and they must be given complete instructions. They must have no independent judgement and for every new question they must return to those who elected them. The general will requires concentration. In cant be consulted only by vote so that the sistem suggested by Rousseau turnes out to be majoritarian. The souvereign is by nature is indivisible. The

notion of general will makes impossible the idea of separation of powers. The souvereign power is a unity which cannot be divided without destroying it.