Thus, three stages described by Rousseau, are investigated: a the state of nature, where man is free and independent, b society, in which man is oppressed and dependent on others, and c the state under the Social Contract , in which, ironically, man becomes free through obligation; he is only independent through dependence on law.
A social contract implies an agreement by the people on the rules and laws by which they are governed. The state of nature is the starting point for most social contract theories. It is an abstract idea considering what human life would look like without a government or a form of organized society Lloyd, Sreedhar, Rather than emphasizing the historical aspect of the state of nature, Rousseau uses this concept as mind-play picturing an ideal Cole, Man has not yet discovered reason, knowing no rights and acting upon his instincts ibid: He does not know the feeling of love and so beauty has no importance to him; nor does wit or cunning Rousseau, Therefore, he hardly knows what inequality is except for physical inequality ibid.
Man finds out that in certain cases which are of mutual interest, he can cooperate with others and rely on them Rousseau, 1 : Loose associations are formed, but the absolute turning point is when man begins to live in huts with his family; he starts living in a small society ibid: Everything now begins to change its aspect. Men, who have up to now been roving in the woods, by taking to a more settled manner of life, come gradually together, form separate bodies, and at length in every country arises a distinct nation… ibid: By living with his wife and family, man discovers love and thus develops the ideas of beauty and merit, giving rise to competition, as well as vanity, contempt, shame and envy ibid.
Man enters an artificial society, thus hoping to be able to produce more through cooperation Knutsen, Only from then onwards does he have the ability to act morally and rationally, choosing his own opinions and no longer merely following his instincts, exercising will, reason and conscience Grimsley, Once man enters society, he enters dependence.
The creation of private property and the division of labour generate differences in wealth, power and status Knutsen, From how many crimes, wars and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not anyone have saved mankind … Rousseau, 1 : Thus, Rousseau reasons, inequality is created through the corrupt interdependence that constitutes society.
Though man originally thought that society would increase his freedom, he has lost it. He criticizes the form of society and social contract tradition of his day, which he regards as wretched, as well as the theories of previous important and influential social contract thinkers. He also frequently criticizes Grotius for supporting the notion of slavery 2 : 29f.
Society has degenerated man, making him both physically and morally weak and dependent on others, and adding to all this pessimism, Rousseau sees no way back to the state of nature; primitive independence is lost Levin, The new-born state of society thus gave rise to a horrible state of war; men thus harassed and depraved were no longer capable of retracing their steps or renouncing the fatal acquisitions they had made … brought themselves to the brink of ruin.
Rousseau, 1 : He argues that the rich have become dependent on the poor, as they no longer know how to provide for themselves, while peasants are used to manual labour and could be to some extent self-reliant; a point that differentiates his philosophy from that of Marx Levin, In addition to new forms of education, Rousseau sets out to create a better political system; and acknowledges the possibility of moving on from corruption Charvet, Confusingly, though he has so far criticized the social contract tradition, he names his solution le contrat social or the Social Contract.
By contrast, subjects of the sovereign are doubly bound: as individuals they are bound to the sovereign, and as members of the sovereign they are bound to other individuals. Though the sovereign is not bound by the social contract, it cannot do anything that would violate the social contract since it owes its existence to that contract.
Further, in hurting its subjects it would be hurting itself, so the sovereign will act in the best interests of its subjects without any binding commitment to do so. Individuals, on the other hand, need the incentive of law to remain loyal to the sovereign. Self-interested individuals might try to enjoy all the benefits of citizenship without obeying any of the duties of a subject. Thus, Rousseau suggests that unwilling subjects will be forced to obey the general will: they will be "forced to be free.
In contrast to the Discourse on Inequality, Rousseau here draws a distinction between nature and civil society that heavily favors the latter.
While we lose the physical liberty of being able to follow our instincts freely and do whatever we please, we gain the civil liberty that places the limits of reason and the general will on our behavior, thereby rendering us moral.
In civil society, we take responsibility for our actions, and become nobler as a result. He sometimes suggests a picture in which the people would be subject to elite domination by the government, since the magistrates would reserve the business of agenda-setting for the assembly to themselves. In other cases, he endorses a conception of a more fully democratic republic.
For competing views of this question see Fralin and Cohen He rejects the idea that individuals associated together in a political community retain some natural rights over themselves and their property. Rather, such rights as individuals have over themselves, land, and external objects, are a matter of sovereign competence and decision.
Contemporary readers were scandalized by it, and particularly by its claim that true original or early Christianity is useless in fostering the spirit of patriotism and social solidarity necessary for a flourishing state. In many ways the chapter represents a striking departure from the main themes of the book. First, it is the only occasion where Rousseau prescribes the content of a law that a just republic must have. Second, it amounts to his acceptance of the inevitability of pluralism in matters of religion, and thus of religious toleration; this is in some tension with his encouragement elsewhere of cultural homogeneity as a propitious environment for the emergence of a general will.
Third, it represents a very concrete example of the limits of sovereign power: following Locke, Rousseau insists upon the inability of the sovereign to examine the private beliefs of citizens. In addition, the civil religion requires the provision that all those willing to tolerate others should themselves be tolerated, but those who insist that there is no salvation outside their particular church cannot be citizens of the state.
The structure of religious beliefs within the just state is that of an overlapping consensus: the dogmas of the civil religion are such that they can be affirmed by adherents of a number of different faiths, both Christian and non-Christian.
Rousseau argues that those who cannot accept the dogmas can be banished from the state. This is because he believes that atheists, having no fear of divine punishment, cannot be trusted by their fellow citizens to obey the law.
He goes even further, to suggest the death penalty for those who affirm the dogmas but later act as if they do not believe them. In the Essay , Rousseau tells us that human beings want to communicate as soon as they recognize that there are other beings like themselves. But he also raises the question of why language, specifically, rather than gesture is needed for this purpose. The answer, strangely enough, is that language permits the communication of the passions in a way that gesture does not, and that the tone and stress of linguistic communication are crucial, rather than its content.
This point enables Rousseau to make a close connection between the purposes of speech and melody. Such vocabulary as there originally was, according to Rousseau, was merely figurative and words only acquire a literal meaning much later. Theories that locate the origin of language in the need to reason together about matters of fact are, according to Rousseau, deeply mistaken.
While the cry of the other awakens our natural compassion and causes us to imagine the inner life of others, our purely physical needs have an anti-social tendency because they scatter human beings more widely across the earth in search of subsistence. Although language and song have a common origin in the need to communicate emotion, over time the two become separated, a process that becomes accelerated as a result of the invention of writing.
In the south, language stays closer to its natural origins and southern languages retain their melodic and emotional quality a fact that suits them for song and opera. Northern languages, by contrast, become oriented to more practical tasks and are better for practical and theoretical reasoning. Rousseau proposes need as the cause of the development of language, but since language depends on convention to assign arbitrary signs to objects, he puzzles about how it could ever get started and how primitive people could accomplish the feat of giving names to universals.
This is in contrast to a model of education where the teacher is a figure of authority who conveys knowledge and skills according to a pre-determined curriculum.
Up to adolescence at least, the educational program comprises a sequence of manipulations of the environment by the tutor. The child is not told what to do or think but is led to draw its own conclusions as a result of its own explorations, the context for which has been carefully arranged. Though the young child must be protected from physical harm, Rousseau is keen that it gets used to the exercise of its bodily powers and he therefore advises that the child be left as free as possible rather than being confined or constrained.
From the age of about twelve or so, the program moves on to the acquisition of abstract skills and concepts. This is not done with the use of books or formal lessons, but rather through practical experience. The third phase of education coincides with puberty and early adulthood.
The period of isolation comes to an end and the child starts to take an interest in others particularly the opposite sex , and in how he or she is regarded.
At this stage the great danger is that excessive amour propre will extend to exacting recognition from others, disregarding their worth, and demanding subordination. The young and autonomous adult finds a spouse who can be another source of secure and non-competitive recognition. In modern political philosophy, for example, it is possible to detect Rousseau as a source of inspiration for liberal theories, communitarian ideas, civic republicanism, and in theories of deliberative and participatory democracy.
Hostile writers have portrayed Rousseau as a source of inspiration for the more authoritarian aspects of the French revolution and thence for aspects of fascism and communism. The cases of Hegel and Marx are more complex. In the Philosophy of Right , while praising Rousseau for the idea that will is the basis of the state, he misrepresents the idea of the general will as being merely the idea of the overlap between the contingent wills of private individuals.
In contemporary political philosophy, it is clear that the thinking of John Rawls, especially in A Theory of Justice reflects the influence of Rousseau. The individual works below are included in each of these editions. The editors would like to thank Gintautas Miliauskas Vilnius University for notifying us about several typographical errors in this entry.
Life 2. Conjectural history and moral psychology 2. Political Philosophy 3. Language 5. Education 6. Conjectural history and moral psychology Rousseau repeatedly claims that a single idea is at the centre of his world view, namely, that human beings are good by nature but are rendered corrupt by society. This volume includes the English translation of the reconstruction by Bernadi et al of Principles of the Right of War.
Works about Rousseau Berman, M. Bertram, C. Gay, Bloomington: Indiana. Charvet, J. Cohen, J. Dent, N. Fralin, R. Gauthier, D. Grofman, B. Masters, R. Neidleman, J. Neuhouser, F. Roosevelt, G. Sreenivasan, G. Starobinski, J. Goldhammer, Chicago: Chicago University Press. Williams, D. Wokler, R. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Biographies of Rousseau Cranston, M. Lester G. Damrosch, L. Academic Tools How to cite this entry. Enhanced bibliography for this entry at PhilPapers , with links to its database.
Other Internet Resources Rousseau Association. Related Entries civic education democracy education, philosophy of emotion: 17th and 18th century theories of Hobbes, Thomas: moral and political philosophy Kant, Immanuel: social and political philosophy legitimacy, political Rawls, John toleration. Acknowledgments The editors would like to thank Gintautas Miliauskas Vilnius University for notifying us about several typographical errors in this entry.
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