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grown up under them, have for accepting them. Could society advance otherwise?

It is clear from the way Rousseau introduces the law-giver that he never supposes that people’s entering into an agreement of any kind could be the transition from a pre-political stage to a society whose basic institutions conformed to the requisite terms of the social compact. It could not be in that way that a people of the early stage of history of the Second Discourse, the free, equal, and just society of the state of nature, could be transformed into citizens with a general will. The institutions that fashion a general will are designed by the law-giver who persuades the people that his authority is of a higher order and so they accept the laws he proposes. In due course later generations come to have and to perpetuate a general will. Once society is set up and running, it is in stable equilibrium: its institutions generate in those who live under them the general will needed to maintain it in subsequent generations as they come on the stage. Rousseau’s reference to Montesquieu (quoted above) states this point perfectly.

Rousseau’s legislator/law-giver should be seen, then, as in effect a fictional figure—a deus ex machina—introduced to take up the second pair of questions: that of moral learning and stability, and the other of historical origins. This device causes no problems for the unity and coherence of Rousseau’s view, as is sometimes alleged. We see this once we distinguish the four questions and recognize that there are different ways in which the society of the social compact might come about.

§5. Freedom and the Social Compact

1. We have still to discuss the second part of the problem of the social compact. Recall Rousseau’s statement of that problem as finding a form of association such that while uniting ourselves with others, we obey only ourselves and remain as free as before (SC, 1:6.4). How it is possible to remain as free as before seems highly puzzling when Rousseau emphasizes that we give ourselves with all our powers to the community, under the supreme direction of the general will, and we claim no rights in reserve against it. Some have found an implicit totalitarianism in his doctrine and have found particularly ominous his remark about our being forced to be free.

Let’s consider this remark and see if there is a way to read it consistent

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with our obeying only ourselves and with our now being as free as before the social compact. The relevant passage is: “. . . in order for the social compact not to be an ineffectual formula, it tacitly includes the following engagement, which alone can give force to the others [the other commitments]: that whosoever refuses to obey the general will shall be constrained to do so by the entire body; which means only that he shall be forced to be free” (SC, 1:7.8).

We get a start on Rousseau’s meaning here by looking at the next chapter on civil society. This chapter illustrates his change of view and mood from the Second Discourse. Here the transition from the state of nature is favorably described, although with an important proviso regarding our not suffering too greatly from the abuse of political authority. He says: “This passage from the state of nature to the civil state produces a remarkable change in man, by substituting justice for instinct in his behavior and giving his actions the morality they previously lacked. . . . Although in this state he deprives himself of several advantages given him by nature, he gains such great ones, his faculties are exercised and developed, his ideas broadened, his feelings ennobled, and his whole soul elevated to such a point that if the abuses of this new condition did not often degrade him beneath the condition he left, he ought ceaselessly to bless the happy moment that tore him away from it forever, and that changed him from a stupid, limited animal into an intelligent being and a man” (SC, 1:8.1).

From this it is clear that our human nature, with our fundamental interest in developing and exercising our two potentialities under conditions of personal independence, is only realized in political society, or rather, only in the political society of the social compact. In the next paragraph Rousseau distinguishes the natural liberty, which we lose on joining civil society, from the civil liberty and the legal right of property, which we gain. He goes on to say that man also acquires with civil society: “moral freedom, which alone makes man truly the master of himself. For the impulse of appetite alone is slavery, and obedience to the law one has prescribed for oneself is freedom” (SC, 1:8.3).

Now Rousseau’s thought here is surely not that obedience to just any law we might prescribe to ourselves is freedom: in a fit of absent-minded- ness I might prescribe to myself some crazy law! No. He clearly has in mind the laws we prescribe to ourselves as subjects when we vote on fundamental laws as citizens, from the point of view of our general will, and give our opinion, which we think all citizens could endorse (given our beliefs

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and information), on the question of which laws are best framed to advance the common good.

But as we have seen, when we do this we are moved by our fundamental interests in our freedom and in maintaining our personal independence, and so on. These fundamental interests have priority over our other interests: as fundamental, they aim at the essential conditions of our freedom and equality, which realize the conditions of our capacity for free will and for our perfectibility without personal dependence. In obeying fundamental laws properly enacted in accordance with the general will—a form of deliberative reason—we realize our moral freedom. With this capacity of reason fully developed, we have free will: we are in a position to understand and to be guided by the most appropriate reasons.

2. After this background, let’s return to the remark about being forced to be free. The language is provocative, granted; but we look for the thought behind it. In the immediately preceding paragraph (SC, 1:7.7) he contrasts the private will we have as a separate individual (our “naturally independent existence”) with the general will we have as a citizen. He says: “His [the citizen’s] private interest can speak to him quite differently from the common interest. His absolute and naturally independent existence can bring him to view what he owes the common cause as a free contribution, the loss of which will harm others less than its payment burdens him . . . he might wish to enjoy the rights of the citizen without wanting to fulfill the duties of a subject” (SC, 1:7.7).

It is clear that Rousseau has in mind a case of what today we call freeriding on collectively advantageous schemes of cooperation. (Rousseau speaks to this problem in SC, 2:6.2, where he says that “there must be conventions and laws to combine rights with duties.”)

As a familiar kind of example, consider the installation of pollutioncontrol devices on cars. Suppose that from each device, everyone gains $7 worth of benefit from clean air ($7 of benefit to each citizen), yet a device costs each person $10. In a society of 1,000 citizens, each device contributes $7,000 worth of benefit; if all install the device, each citizen’s net gain is $7n−10 (n = number of citizens); this is large for n > 1. Nevertheless, each citizen taking the actions of the others as given, can gain by defecting.5

Rousseau assumes, I think, that the individual in question voted in the

5. Example from Peter C. Ordeshook, Game Theory and Political Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), p. 201f.

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assembly to require the devices and to ensure their installation by inspection (defraying the cost of inspection from taxes or fees). In being forced by fines to comply with the law we gave ourselves, and voted for with the best of reasons, we are subjected to rules we ourselves endorse from the point of view of our general will. Now, that point of view is that of our moral freedom, and being able to act from laws so enacted raises us from the level of instinct and makes us truly a master of ourselves. Moreover, no one supposes that in being required to pay the fine we could still reasonably complain. On Rousseau’s view, our fundamental interests are our regulative interests; in the social compact we agree to advance our private interests within the bounds of fundamental political laws endorsed by the general will, a will guided by the fundamental interests we share with others.

But of course Rousseau misspeaks in saying we remain as free as before. Actually, we are no longer naturally free at all. We are morally free, but not as free as before. We are free in a better and far different way.

§6. Rousseau’s Ideas on Equality: In What Way Distinctive?

1. In §2.3 of this lecture, we saw that Rousseau said that freedom and equality are the “greatest good of all, which ought to be the end of every system of legislation,” and that freedom cannot last without equality. In the first Rousseau lecture we discussed what he had to say about the types and sources of inequality, and about its destructive consequences. We should now consider what is distinctive about Rousseau’s ideas on equality. Let’s review several of the reasons we might have for wanting to regulate inequalities so as to keep them from getting out of line.

(a) One reason is the alleviation of suffering. In the absence of special circumstances, it is wrong that some, or much of society, should be amply provided for, while a few, or even many, are deprived and suffer hardships, not to mention treatable illnesses and starvation. More generally, one can view such situations as cases of misallocation of resources. For example, from a utilitarian standpoint (as stated by Pigou in his Economics of Welfare), when the distribution of income is unequal, the social product is being used inefficiently. That is, more urgent needs and wants go unfulfilled, while the less urgent ones of the wealthy, and even their idle pleasures and whims, are indulged. On this view, leaving aside effects on future production, in-

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come should be distributed so that the most urgent wants and needs that go unfulfilled are equally urgent among all persons. (This assumes people have similar utility functions as well as some way of making interpersonal comparisons.)

Note that in this case it is not inequality that bothers us. Nor are we even troubled by the effects of inequality, except insofar as these effects cause suffering, or deprivation, or else involve what we view as inefficient and wasteful allocation of goods.

(b)A second reason for controlling political and economic inequalities is to prevent a part of society from dominating the rest. When those two kinds of inequalities are large, they tend to go hand in hand. As Mill said, the bases of political power are (educated) intelligence, property, and the power of combination, by which he meant the ability to cooperate in pursuing one’s political interests. This power allows the few, in virtue of their control over the political process, to enact a system of law and property ensuring their dominant position, not only in politics, but throughout the economy. This enables them to decide what gets produced, to control working conditions and the terms of employment offered, as well as to shape both the direction and volume of real saving (investment) and the pace of innovation, all of which in good part determines what society becomes over time.

If we view being dominated by others as a bad thing, and as making our life not as good, or as happy, as it might be, we must be concerned with the effects of political and economic inequality. Our employment opportunities are less good; we would prefer more control over the workplace and the general direction of the economy. So far, though, it’s not clear that inequality in itself is either unjust or bad.

(c)A third reason seems to bring us closer to what might be wrong with inequality in itself. I refer to the fact that significant political and economic inequalities are often associated with inequalities of social status that may lead those of lower status to being viewed, by themselves and by others, as inferior. This may foster widespread attitudes of deference and servility on one side and arrogance and contempt on the other. For how people view themselves depends on how they are viewed by others—their sense of self-respect, their self-esteem, their confidence in themselves rests on other people’s judgments and assessments.

With these effects of political and economic inequalities, and with the

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possible evils of status, we are much closer to Rousseau’s concerns. Certainly these evils are serious, and the attitudes status rankings may generate can be great vices. But have we arrived yet at the conclusion that inequality is wrong or unjust in itself, rather than its having wrong or unjust effects on those who suffer from it?

It is closer to being wrong or unjust in itself in this sense: in a system of statuses not everyone can have the highest status. It is a positional good, as sometimes said, as high status depends on there being other positions beneath it; so if we value high status as such, we are also valuing something that necessarily involves others having lesser status. This may be wrong or unjust when the status positions are of great social importance, and certainly when status is attributed to us by birth, or by natural features of gender or race, and is not in an appropriate way earned or achieved. So a system of statuses is unjust when its ranks are endowed with more importance than their social role in service of the general good can justify.

(d) This suggests Rousseau’s solution: namely that in political society everyone should be an equal citizen. But before elaborating this, I mention briefly that inequality can be wrong or unjust in itself whenever the basic structure of society makes important use of fair procedures.

Two examples of fair procedures are: fair, that is, open and workably competitive markets in the economy; and fair political elections. In these cases a certain equality, or a well-moderated inequality, is an essential condition of political justice. Here monopoly and its kindred are to be avoided, not simply for their bad effects, among them inefficiency, but also because without a special justification, they lead to markets that are unfair. The same kind of observation holds for unfair elections resulting from the dominance of a wealthy few in politics.6

2. For Rousseau the idea of equality is most significant at the highest level: that is, at the level of how political society itself is to be understood. And the social compact, its terms and conditions, tells us about this. From it we know that everyone is to have the same basic status of an equal citizen; that the general will is to will the common good (as the conditions which secure that each can advance their fundamental interests when personally

6.In the preceding paragraphs (a)–(d) I’ve drawn in part on “Notes on Equality” by T. M. Scanlon, dated November 1988. [See also T. M. Scanlon, “The Diversity of Objections to Inequality,” in Scanlon, The Difficulty of Tolerance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). —Ed.]

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independent of others, and within the limits of civil freedom). Moreover, economic and social inequalities are to be moderated so that the conditions of this independence are assured. In a note to SC, 2:11.1, Rousseau says, “Do you then want to give stability to the State? Bring the extremes as close together as possible: tolerate neither opulent people nor beggars.” And as we observed earlier, in SC, 2:11.2, he goes on to say, “Equality . . . must not be understood to mean that degrees of power and wealth should be exactly the same, but rather that with regard to power, it should be incapable of all violence and never exerted except by virtue of status and the laws; and with regard to wealth, no citizen should be so opulent that he can buy another, and none so poor that he is constrained to sell himself.”

All this enables us to say that in the society of the social compact, citi- zens—as persons—are equal at the highest level and in the most fundamental respects. Thus they all have the same fundamental interests in their freedom and in pursuing their ends within the limits of civil freedom. They all have a similar capacity for moral freedom—that is, the capacity to act in accordance with general laws they give to themselves as well as others for the sake of the common good. These laws each sees as founded on the appropriate form of deliberative reason for political society, this reason being the general will each citizen has as a member of that society.

But how, more exactly, is equality itself present at the highest level? Perhaps in this way: the social compact articulates, and when realized, achieves, a political relation between citizens as equals. They have capacities and interests that make them equal members in all fundamental matters. They recognize and view one another as being related as equal citizens; and their being what they are—citizens—includes their being related as equals. So being related as equals is part of what they are, of what they are recognized to be by others, and there is a public political commitment to preserve the conditions this equal relation between persons requires.

Now as we know from the Second Discourse, Rousseau is keenly aware of the significance of feelings of self-respect and self-worth, and the vices and miseries of self-love are aroused by political and economic inequalities that exceed the limits required for personal independence. Rousseau believes, I think, that all of us must, for our happiness, respect ourselves and maintain a lively sense of our self-worth. So for our feelings to be compatible with others’ feelings we must respect ourselves and others as equals, and at the highest level; and this includes the level of how society is con-

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ceived and the level at which fundamental political laws are enacted. Thus, as equal citizens we can all, by way of the respect of others, bring into harmony our need for self-respect. Given our needs as persons and our natural indignation at being subject to the arbitrary power of others (a power that makes us do what they want, and not what we both can will as equals) the clear answer to the problem of inequality is equality at the highest level, as formulated in the social compact.

From the point of view of this equality, citizens can moderate lowerlevel inequalities by general laws in order to preserve conditions of personal independence so that no one is subject to arbitrary power, and no one experiences the wounds and indignities that arouse self-love.

3. Is this view of equality distinctive of Rousseau? Was he the first to see it? I am not sure of the answer to this question. Ideas of equality have been around from the beginning of political philosophy. But I suspect that the family of ideas that combine to give his idea of equality—the idea of equality at the highest level in how society is conceived, of citizens as equals at this highest level in virtue of their fundamental interests and their capacities for both moral and civil freedom, of self-love and its connection with the inequalities connected with arbitrary power—are, as a family, distinctive. That is, it is in combining this family of ideas in this particular and powerful way that the originality of Rousseau’s idea of equality may lie.

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mill

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