March 9 2015 Western Civilization: Kant recap + Rousseau

[Kant recap]
I thought Id start today by recapping some of the points from Kant. It seems there was a
substantial amount of confusion especially over: one, the distinction between public and
private uses of reason; and two, between civil freedom and intellectual freedom in other
words, the realm of obedience, and the realm of unconstrained use of reason.
Okay, so this is how Kants essay is pretty short. Its a very a coherent, systematic piece,
and you can see that these two distinctions that he laid out these two essential distinctions
map perfectly onto one another. So the private use of reason corresponds to the realm of civil
freedom, and Kant is defining this in a pretty idiosyncratic way. I think this is what may be
confusing for a lot of people. We tend to think of intellectual freedom as a civil liberty, as a
form of civil liberty. So we think of free speech, free press, right? Kant is precisely trying to
undo that association. The reason he makes a split between civil and intellectual freedom
(civil freedom and freedom of spirit as he calls it) is hes trying to secure a realm of freedom
within an otherwise authoritarian political system (absolute monarchy). So hes trying to
write delicately, negotiate a realm of insubordination to authority within a larger compact of
complete subordination. So, as we see, in the private use of reason, this is a realm of freedom;
I put unfreedom in brackets thats really what he is referring to. The private of reason is your
ability to use reason to do your job (to follow orders). Its a realm of obedience (a realm of
subordination to authority). The subject position that corresponds to the private use of reason
is the employee. We talk a little bit about contractual relationship. One is bound in a
relationship to another private party in order to fulfill a function (to carry out an official
duty). So that is the realm of private reason or civil freedom.
Now, on the other side, the public use of reason, or intellectual freedom is the realm of
insubordination (the realm of free thought and inquiry). The subject position that corresponds
to the public use of reason is, thus, the scholar. Right? The employee versus the scholar. And
of course, one person can embody both and Kant says we should. The first thing he uses,
public reason, is acting in accordance with a kind of moral courage (pursuing free inquiry).
And in terms of the relationship, the person using reason in a public sense, is in relationship
to quote on quote public sphere, public readers and participants in discussion.
-- Sample MCQ in class
ans: (C)
description: So this is the strange conclusion from the argument of Kants essay. And we can
see him getting pressured into this by practicalities of the political regime he was writing in.
Hes saying the progress of enlightenment is furthered by accepting some degree of pressure
by the government. So, in a second, were going to come back to what that entails or how
hes able to make that argument.
-- Game: public or private
1. Student writes Facebook post about how she should not have to read Kant: public
- b/c youre addressing a public of readers (Facebook)
- b/c youre thinking for yourself (i.e. what is valuable usage of time)

2. Student finds Kant difficult but keeps trying to make sense of it: private
- youre using reason to do your job
- youre obeying orders that requires some intelligence
3. Student debates merits of reading Kant in a study group: public
- addressing a reading public
4. Student explains Kant to other classmates in a study group: private but also public
- This is where Kants distinction starts to break down. It depends on how we define the
student. Is the student in a contractive role, vis--vis the group? Or is this the free discussion
of ideas outside of official space?
5. Student stands up in lecture and complains about having to read Kant:
- For Kant, complaining and arguing are the same when youre doing your job. As students,
you have particular job to do. This is a situation Kant is trying to avoid. Within his system, he
cannot process this data. Its a public use of reason in the wrong context (the private context).
6. Question: Why does Kant make this distinction between public and private reason in the
first place?
- As a practical compromise. We might say hes doing it to avoid a crackdown on the public
sphere by the absolute monarch (hes trying to avoid censorship, persecution of intellectuals,
etc) by making the argument that enlightenment can come without bad political repercussions
for the political status quo. Hes trying to ensure political stability. Another way of putting
this is that hes trying to dissociate critique and free inquiry on the one hand from a political
revolution, because the violence and upheaval of revolution will make the conditions
unfavorable for intellectual exploration. This is the argument that he makes from early on in
the article. So we can think about this in terms of this class too. In this class, Im encouraging
you to engage in all kinds of radical ideas that will hopefully make you more critical and
empower you against sources of authority in general; but, if Im honest, I dont really want
you to revolt against my authority. For the same reason, Kant in a good way, I think that
would impede the development of quote on quote freedom of spirit (of your ability to think
and learn, and continue to be critical. So in this class, too, we are an enlightened monarchy in
the sense that you can argue but you still have to obey. Although Rousseau might strike us as
much more radical than Kant (in many ways he is), he will also ultimately support a version
of argue but obey though power has a very different source in Kant and therefore
obedience has a different meaning. So now lets move onto Rousseau.

[Rousseau]
Rousseau is now seen as one of the principal architects of the enlightenment in Europe. The
Social Contract is considered the cornerstone of his political writings. Now if we just look at
the title page, youll notice that, under his name, hes put Citizen of Geneva. And Geneva is
raised a tad once in a while in the text. Geneva was a very uncommon political system in
Europe. It was a city-state (at that time, it wasnt a part of Switzerland it was its own state),
and it was run by legislative counsels composed of citizens when most of European countries
were run by absolute monarchies. And so you might also have noted that section at the end
of Chapter 6 where he talks about how citizens can only exist in a republic. Hes bloating
about the fact that he, for example, unlike Kant, lives or comes from a republic (he was very

proud of that). But we also have to take Citizen of Geneva with a pinch of salt he left
Geneva. He had a hard life; his mom died a few days after he was born. When he was ten his
father also abandoned him. He was taken care of by his uncle. He was apprenticed in various
ways as they came from a modest household and was ultimately apprenticed to a really
abusive engraver whod beat him. So at the age of sixteen, one night, he found himself locked
out of the city. He found himself at the wrong side of the city and didnt get back before they
shut things up. So he just decided to leave and he went wandering through France and he had
a very weird love affair with an older woman who was aristocratic. He had quite a strange
life. He was also incredibly talented in many ways. He was a musician (first and foremost a
composer) and he wrote an opera that the king really loved that made him famous. In this
encyclopedia that I mentioned on the first day, many of Rousseaus articles are on music. He
also wrote one of the most popular novels of the era (novel title in French) and came to
philosophy relatively late compared to his other accomplishments. In the same year he wrote
the Social Contract he wrote Emile, which is a philosophical novel that is a treaties on
education these are among his most famous works but also in his lifetime a kind of
undoing. Now, he describes Geneva to be very free as a republic but both Emile and the
Social Contract were burned publicly in Geneva very shortly after that publication. The
Social Contract was seen to be so incendiary to insight people to revolt in a particular way.
Rousseau ended up being exiled from Geneva and persecuted in France.
I assigned you excerpts from the book. The book is actually organized into four books. You
have sections from the first and second book. Just a summary of the rest of the book: in Book
1, Rousseau starts out by clearing space from his own intervention. He rebuts what he takes
to be false theories of the legitimate authority of the state (Ill say more about this in a
second). By the end of the first book, the part you read, this leads to a statement of his own
theory of political association. His formulation of the problem to which the theory of political
right must provide an answer namely, how to combine individual freedom with political
authority why do I say this? Because he and Kant are kind of chewing on the same bone.
Book 2, Rousseau concentrates on the nature of people as sovereign (both sections that you
read), outlines the concepts of the general will, and the law that floats from it (thats where
our selection stops). In Book 3, he focuses on the mechanism for applying and enforcing the
general will in particular cases, which for him is the government. If you remember the part of
the section we read, the general will as such cannot weigh in particular matters. So Rousseau
here outlines the relationship between sovereign and the government (the government that
handles particular matters), and the ways in which this relationship can go wrong and lead to
the end of the body politic. In the 4 th and final Book, he continues with the theme of the
relationship between the sovereign and the government, mostly focused on the survey of
Roman political institution, and concludes with a very important chapter on what he calls
civil religion. This is the religion (that I mentioned on the first day of class) called deism.
Its a religion thats not Christian but it served the goal of religion according to the
etymological root of religion. In Latin its religio, which means to bind together, so if you
think of other words we get from that like ligament (a tissue that bonds two together),
ligature (a term in typography when you have two letters come together), hes returning to
this idea in civil religion, that religion is something that celebrates and cements social unity.
And if you notice the reference to the Supreme Being in the Declaration of the Rights of
Man, that comes from Rousseaus civil religion. It has a huge influence on the French
Revolution.
So what is the question Rousseau is trying to answer in the Social Contract? The earlier bit is
on how to find individual freedom with political authority what more, specifically? At a
very fundamental level, how is freedom possible in society? What would a free society look

like? So when we read Rousseau, first of all I think we need to put aside Kants distinction of
intellectual and civil freedom. Rousseau, at least initially, finds freedom quite intuitively;
freedom to do whatever we want this is what Rousseau calls unnatural freedom. And this is
the kind of freedom thats at stake in the very famous first sentence of the Social Contract.
Im going to walk through very slowly the readings, so have your books out. This is the first
line: Man was born free, and everywhere he is in chains. First of all, what would you call
this form? Its a form of paradox, a riddle. We are born free, and yet we all end up unfree. So
the first part what does Rousseau mean by born free? In what way can we be said to be
born free? After all, arent the most unfree humans babies (babies are completely dependent
on people around him). So what does Rousseau mean? Hes referring to the idea about, in
state of nature (this is kind of a mythic construction) that is before developing social
relationships with other humans, before entering into society, humans are free in a sense that
they can do whatever they want. There are no laws to obey, no prohibitions, no restrictions on
them. So, I guess, if you wanted to imagine yourself in the state of nature, you would imagine
yourself as a sort of wild person, maybe in the forest; you dont have any concept of private
property, and you have no concept of other peoples rights. So your liberty is not constrained
at all by laws by other people. The translation man was born free is ambiguous in French,
and sometimes its translated as man is born free. The reason Im bringing this up is that I
dont want you think that that was is merely historical; for Rousseau, every infant begins
life in freedom. So, even infants born to slaves or into tyrannical regimes are free until they
are individually subjugated. In other words, freedom is something that cannot be given up in
advance; it cannot be given up without some degree of your participation or your acceptance.
If we were to voice this as a principal, we say no person has, by nature, the right to command
any other. No person has, by nature, the duty to submit to the other. So there is no natural
right to command any other, and no natural duty to submit to another. Now, the second part of
the sentence: everywhere he is in chains. What Rousseau is saying here is that, when we
enter into society, we lose some of our natural freedom. Suddenly we cant do what we want
to do. We cant just take whatever we want but have to share resources with other people.
What we are permitted to do are found by the claims of others. So what we set up here is
man is naturally free; in society he is unfree.
Second sentence: Many a one believes himself the master of others, and yet he is a greater
slave than they. Whats at stake of the sentence is a qualification of what Rousseau means by
three (?). So he says, essentially, dear reader, you might be tempted to associate freedom
with power. Who in any given society can do whatever they want and take whatever they
want? Who could best approximate the sort of freedom that they might have in the state of
nature? And the answer might be: those who have power. Those who have, might, and
influence, those who command the most people, and are answerable to the least people; so,
when the most free person in a society might be an absolute monarch. Now Rousseau is
responding directly to that assumption. He says no!; to the contrary, appears another
paradox. The one who is master of others is in fact less free than those under his command.
So freedom is not just a question of being able to do whatever one wants (we see in what way
its a qualification of the first sentence); the nature of freedom changes when we enter into
relationships with others. Nature of freedom changes when we leave the state of nature and
enter society. Already in this sentence, we see the kernel of Rousseaus idea of community
that ones freedom is intimately tied to the freedom of others; nobody can be free in a society
where others are unfree; where some are oppressed. So if you look at the rest of the said
paragraph, what is Rousseau doing there? He is setting out the parameters of his inquiry. He
returns to his first sentence can I explain this paradox in terms of how he came about? He
says, well, no, I dont know that. I cannot explain how men become unfree, no. But I can

explain what makes it legitimate (what makes unfreedom acceptable). This may need to go
little beyond what Rousseau says explicitly so far. But later we understand that this sentence
(what can make it legitimate) introduces the fundamental question of the book (what makes it
legitimate). While all societies put limitations on our natural freedom, not all societies make
us unfree to the same extent (they are not equally oppressive). So, the question that Rousseau
is going to answer is what forms of society will allow us the most freedom (not just freedom
thats about recuperating necessarily our natural freedom)? So youll notice in the
introductory note on the other page that he talks about establishing quote on quote some just
and reliable rule of administration in civil affairs. In other words, his objective is practical,
so that justice and utility may not be at variance. In this way, hes quite similar to Kant in that
he doesnt want to articulate an inaccessible ideal. He wants to create a theory of government
that can fairly be put into practice. So lets look at the second paragraph of Chapter 1. He
talks about force. So natural freedom is one thing, but the social order that limits this freedom
is also a sacred and fundamental right. Society is redefined here as no longer just a negative
constraint on freedom, but a source of its own kind of freedom. These sentences on force that
begin the paragraph introduce the idea that a society based on hierarchy and coercion
obscures the idea of society as a sacred right. So in the final sentences of the chapter, he
elaborates on this idea of society as a right by its own kind of freedom. So social relationships
are a sacred right, but he says that does not come from nature. In other words, hes saying our
natural state is not entirely perfect; it can be improved by social conventions. Then he poses
his another one of these guiding questions of the book the question is to know what these
conventions are (what he is referring to): what is the social order based on?
After the first chapter I cut out the four chapters where Rousseaus explaining different
models of society before returning to the question thats posed at the end (what are the social
conventions that make the social order a sacred right? And what makes society necessarily
beneficial?). So in these four chapters that I skipped, Rousseau gives three models of society
that he will dismiss before presenting his own theory. These three models are theories of
legitimate state authority. In other words, they claim that states have the right to issue binding
commands for their subjects (they command the subjects that subjects have a duty to obey).
So their theories, legitimate state authority, mean that states have a right to issue binding
commands and that subjects have a duty to obey those commands. Now, when subjects
accept, the state has authority over them. As these theories suggest, they accept that
commands in the form of laws or other directives must create their own deliberations about
what they should do (they must do what the state says, independently of their own views on
the subject; we get a sense of this from Kant, of course). So, the first of these models is the
family as a model of society Rousseau is arguing against the conventional belief that goes
back to Plato and Aristotle that there are natural leaders and natural followers (there are those
who govern and those who need to be governed, who give themselves to be exploited for the
good of those who govern). The second model is the right of the strong to rule over others.
But Rousseau will say that this is not really a system of rights and duties but just a brute fact
that depends on circumstances. The third model considers the possibility that authority might
be justified by some agreement so were in the land of the Social Contract theory. Rousseau
argues that authority cannot be lawful, because to alienate oneself from ones liberty is to
give up ones humanity for which there can be no proper compensation. For a contract to be
valid, you must be able to argue that all parties profit equally from its terms. Rousseau says
that any system, any contract, that ask people to surrender their freedom is highly lopsided
(its unfair and therefore illegitimate; one cannot make a contract to obey indefinitely and
have that be legitimate). So Rousseaus idea of Social Contract is not as other social contract
theories were (a pact between rulers and the ruled; the powerful and the weak; the master and

the slaves). On the contrary (this is Rousseaus big innovation) the only party is to the
contract are the people themselves who consent only to rules over themselves (it is a contract
with oneself). So in Chapter 5, he talks about how the foundation of society is not a rule but
its people. Politics becomes, first and foremost, a question not passed from government to a
people, but what constitutes a people (how individuals become a collective; how individuals
discover the commonality). So, in short, these are the most famous social contract theories
prior to Rousseau that he is responding to. We have Thomas Hobbss Leviathan, which
argues that men are motivated in general to enter society primarily by the desire for power
and by the fear of other people (basically, people are nasty and will take whatever they can;
they are very competitive). So they need an all-powerful sovereign to rule over them. Hobbs
characterized the lives of those without a ruler as in his famous phrase the solitary, nasty,
poor, brutish, and short (that is his version of life without a ruler, a life in the state of nature).
So in order to escape a life of fear, subjects had to surrender all their power to the sovereign,
who would then protect his subjects from one another through force (by dominating all, he
would stop them from oppressing one another). Then we have John Locke, whos very
different from Hobbes, just a generation later. He developed a notion of the basic nature of
mankind as innately good (completely different from the evil mankind of Hobbs). In his two
treats of the government, Locke outlined the theory of politics based on peoples natural
rights (life, liberty, ownership, and property). To Locke, the task of the state was to protect
these rights. Government was a contract between a ruler and subjects; subjects delegated
power to the ruler, and state secured the welfare of the subjects according to those rights.
Now both Hobbs and Locke, despite their differences, think that sovereignty can be
surrendered in a contract between ruler and subjects. This is the main way Rousseau departs
from them. Rousseau says that no one can legitimately surrender his freedom to his state
power; a contract in which one surrenders freedom is an unfair one and therefore illegitimate.
Because he believes that an individual sovereign freedom (individual sovereign power)
cannot be handed over (alienated); there cannot be a hard division between subjects and the
state. So previously we might have said that the state is the sight where --- cut off b/c stu
question
-- student question: similarity between John Locke and Thomas Hobbs?
Prof response: both of them think that sovereignty can be surrendered (alienated) in a contract
between ruler and subjects. In other words, the subjects say, I hand over to you, ruler, my
power, my sovereign freedom. I will just obey you from now on, so that you can look after
me. But Rousseau says its not possible to alienate ones sovereignty.