rousseau i
The Social Contract: Its Problem
§1. Introduction
1. Rousseau, unfortunately, we have to read in translation.1 While a great deal is lost, something of Rousseau’s marvelous style is nevertheless preserved.2 Earlier I mentioned that Hobbes’s Leviathan is the greatest work of political philosophy in English, or so I think. Perhaps we can say also that On the Social Contract is the greatest work in French. I say “perhaps” since the Social Contract does not display the range of Rousseau’s thought as the Leviathan does of Hobbes’s. But if we combine the Social Contract with the
Second Discourse (Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality) and with Emile (on moral psychology and our education into society), the observation seems right. Montesquieu, Tocqueville, and Constant are of the first rank, and splendid writers; but in Rousseau the union of literary force and power of thought is unsurpassed.
I comment on this union of literary force and power of thought because it is so striking. One might wonder, however, whether the force and splendor of style is a good or a bad thing in a philosophical work. Does it add to or detract from the clarity of thought a writer hopes to convey? I
1.In the following lectures on Rousseau I shall refer to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The First and Second Discourses, ed. Roger D. Masters, trans. Roger D. and Judith R. Masters (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1964), and On the Social Contract, with Geneva Manuscript and Political Economy, ed. Roger D. Masters, trans. Judith R. Masters (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1978). Citations within the text will be abbreviated as SD for the Second Discourse, and SC for the Social Contract. In the former, page numbers will be used; in the latter, references will be to book, chapter, and paragraph.
2.On the hazards of translation, recall that (in 1987, I think) a Soviet announcer on Moscow TV translated John Denver’s “Rocky Mountain High” as “Drunk in the Mountains.” And in the early days of trying to write programs for computer translation into Russian and back, the sentence “The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak” came back as: “The wine is good but the meat stinks.”
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shan’t pursue this question except to say that style can be a danger, attracting attention to itself, as it does in Rousseau. We may be dazzled and distracted and so fail to note the intricacies of reasoning that call for our full concentration.3 I say this because I believe that Rousseau’s ideas are deep and consistent; there are shifts of mood and no doubt surface contradictions, but the whole structure of thought hangs together in one unified view.
Perhaps the best philosophical style is clear and lucid, aiming to present the thought itself, without side effects, yet with a certain grace and formal beauty of line. Frege and Wittgenstein often achieve this ideal. But the greatest German works in political philosophy—those of Kant, Hegel, and Marx—are not especially well written; indeed, they are often rather badly written. Nietzsche is a great stylist, but his works do not belong to political philosophy, though his views certainly bear on it.
2.We must now try to get a sense of the questions and problems that moved Rousseau in writing the Social Contract. His concerns are broader than those of Hobbes and Locke: Hobbes, we saw, was concerned with overcoming the problem of divisive civil war, while Locke’s concern was with the justification of resistance to the Crown within a mixed constitution. Rousseau, by contrast, is a critic of culture and civilization: he seeks to diagnose what he sees as the deep-rooted evils of contemporary society and depicts the vices and miseries it arouses in its members. He hopes to explain why these evils and vices come about, and to describe the basic framework of a political and social world in which they would not be present.
Rousseau, like Hume, is of another century than Hobbes and Locke. He represents the generation that rejected the old order, though it was still in power during his lifetime, and that prepared the way for the coming French Revolution. Established traditions were being questioned, and the sciences were developing rapidly.
Much is known of Rousseau’s life, because he wrote three autobiographical works. He was born in 1712 in Geneva, then a Protestant citystate. His mother, whose family was of the academic and social elite, and were therefore voting citizens, died soon after he was born, and for ten
3.His marvelous style is also liable to spoofs, as when de Maistre, on hearing Rous-
seau’s famous sentence that opens Book I, Chapter I of On The Social Contract, “Man was born free and he is everywhere in chains,” retorted: “You might as well say: ‘Sheep were born carnivorous and everywhere eat grass.’” Or a recent book review in the New York Times: “Monkeys were born free and are everywhere in zoos.”
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years he was brought up and educated by his father, a watchmaker. In 1722 his father had to leave Geneva after a fight, and Rousseau was left for two years with his mother’s brother, who put him in a pension with a Protestant minister. He then served as an apprentice in various trades. He left town on his own in 1728 at age sixteen, with no money, and made his way around Europe serving as a lackey of various sorts—a footman, a secretary, a tutor, a music teacher—sometimes working for, living with, and cultivating friendships with very influential people, all the while reading and educating himself, and taking financial help where he could find it. By 1742, when he settled in Paris, to stay there until 1762, he was a composer (he wrote two operas), poet, dramatist, essayist, philosopher, political scientist, novelist, chemist, botanist—a self-made man.
After 1749 Rousseau began to write the works for which he was later famous. On the Social Contract and Emile, published in 1762, were the cause of legal action against Rousseau in France and Geneva because it was felt they attacked revealed religion, and he was forced to leave Paris. Rousseau’s later years were spent in trying to justify his writing; and the Social Contract, which was later quoted by Robespierre to justify the Revolution, was actually not much read until after 1789, the year the Bastille was stormed.4
3. One way to convey the sweep of Rousseau’s thought is to note his various writings and to indicate how they fit together into a coherent body of thought. The Second Discourse, which concerns the whole of human history and the origin of inequality, political oppression, and the social vices, is dark and pessimistic; the Social Contract is sunnier and tries to set out the basis of a fully just and workable, yet at the same time stable and happy regime. In this sense, it is realistically utopian. Perhaps in view of its subject and aim, it is the least eloquent and impassioned of Rousseau’s major works.
We can divide Rousseau’s major writings into three groups as follows:
(a) First, three works of historical and cultural criticism in which he sets out what he sees as the evils of 18th-century French (European) civilization and offers a diagnosis of their cause and origin:
1750: Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts (The First Discourse)
1754: Discourse on the Origin of Inequality (The Second Discourse)
1758: Letter to M. d’Alembert on the Theater
4. Biographical material is taken, for the most part, from Roger Masters, ed., On the Social Contract, Introduction. See also Maurice Cranston, Jean-Jacques: The Early Life and Work of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 1712–1754 (London: Penguin Books, 1983).
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In these works Rousseau appears as a critic of the Enlightenment, of its ideas of progress and of the benefit to human happiness of advances in the arts and sciences, and of the possibilities of social improvement through more widespread education. There is a conservative tendency in Rousseau, and his contemporaries Diderot, Voltaire, and d’Alembert saw him as different from themselves.5
(b) Second, the three constructive works in which Rousseau describes his ideal of a just, workable, and happy political society and considers how it might be established and made stable:
1761: La Nouvelle Héloïse (which contains much of his alpine idyll of Geneva as a rural democracy)
1762: Du Contrat Social
1762: Emile
(c) Third, three autobiographical works, which have had an enormous influence in literature and on the sensibility of romanticism:
1766: Confessions: first part completed on return to France after his stay in England with Hume, the whole published in 1781
1772–76: Dialogues: Rousseau juge de Jean-Jacques 1776–78: Reveries of a Solitary Walker
Indeed, these works are important for the modern emphasis on such values as integrity and authenticity, and for the effort to understand oneself, to overcome alienation, to live for oneself and not in the opinion of others; and much else. This is a significant part of some justifications for liberty of thought and conscience, as we shall later see in Mill.
§2. The Stages of History before Political Society
1. As a way to indicate the background of the problem Rousseau is concerned with in the Social Contract, I discuss first the Second Discourse. Rousseau tells us in one of the four autobiographical letters that he wrote to
5. This conservative tendency is illustrated by the contrast between the story of Rousseau’s opera, Devin du Village, with that of Pergolesi’s La Serva Padrona. See Maurice Cranston, Jean-Jacques, p. 279.
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Malesherbes6 in 1762 (there is a briefer account in Confessions, Bk. 8, 1749, trans. J. M. Cohen, 327f ) that he had a sudden overwhelming illumination on the road to Vincennes (six miles from Paris) in 1749. He had set out to visit Diderot (there in prison), but it was a long walk and a hot day. He had brought along a copy of Le Mercure de France and therein he saw the question proposed by the Academy of Dijon—“Has the restoration of the sciences and the arts tended to purify morals?” Rousseau felt dizzy and overcome. Gasping for breath, he collapsed under a tree, weeping. He says:
If anything ever resembled a sudden inspiration, it was what that advertisement stimulated in me: all at once I felt my mind dazzled by a thousand lights, a crowd of splendid ideas presented themselves to me with such force and in such confusion, that I was thrown into a state of indescribable bewilderment. I felt my head seized by a dizziness that resembled intoxication . . . Unable to breathe and walk at the same time, I sank down under a tree . . . if ever I could have written the quarter of what I saw and felt under that tree, with what clarity would I have revealed all the contradictions of the social system, with what force would I have exposed all the abuses of our institutions, with what simplicity would I have demonstrated that man is naturally good and that it is through these institutions alone that men become bad.7
Rousseau said that this one fleeting moment of ecstatic reverie provided the aims of his writings as a whole.8
2. This quotation nicely states the well-known theme of Rousseau’s thought, namely: that man is naturally good and that it is through social institutions alone that men became bad. But the meaning of this theme is not obvious. Indeed, there is some difficulty knowing in what sense Rousseau can assert it, for it seems to conflict with much that he says in the Second
6.Malesherbes was the King’s Directeur de la librairie, by law an official charged with supervising the book trade in France. He was a friend of the philosophes and often helped them to outwit the legal labyrinth of the regime. Rousseau was on good terms with him, and before the Social Contract came out had written him four autobiographical letters. See James Miller, Rousseau: Dreamer of Democracy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984), p. 76f.
7.See Cranston: Jean-Jacques: 1712–1754, p. 228.
8.See Miller, Rousseau: Dreamer of Democracy, p. 5.
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Discourse. To explain this difficulty, and how it might be resolved, I look at the Discourse itself.
In two parts of about equal length, this work is an account of the history of mankind beginning with the earliest stage of the state of nature and ending with the beginning of political authority and civil society. It surveys the historical changes in culture and society and connects the hostilities and vices of civilization to increasing inequality in political power, in social position, and in wealth and property.
At the outset Rousseau distinguishes between natural inequality and moral or political inequality. The former is “established by nature and consists in the difference of ages, bodily strengths, and qualities of mind or soul.” The latter, which he sometimes calls contrived inequality, is founded on convention and “is established, or at least authorized, by . . . consent” (SD, 101). But he thinks it obvious that in civilization, as we now see it, there is no essential link between these two inequalities. To think otherwise would be like asking “. . . whether those who command are necessarily worth more than those who obey, and whether strength of body or mind, wisdom or virtue, are always found in the same individuals in proportion to power and wealth: a question perhaps good for slaves to discuss in the hearing of their masters, but not suitable for reasonable and free men who seek the truth” (SD, 101–102). Rather, Rousseau wants to show how it came about that there is no essential link, as he thinks there ought to be, and how it is that, as things now are, “. . . a child (can) command an old man, an imbecile lead a wise man, and a handful of men be glutted with superfluities while the starving multitude lacks necessities” (SD, 181).
3. Now the idea of the state of nature can be understood in at least three ways:
(1)The juristic sense, as the absence of political authority. This is Locke’s sense. Individuals are in a state of nature when they are not subject to any, or not to the same, political authority.
(2)The chronological sense, as the historically first condition of mankind, whatever its characteristics. In patristic thought (that of the early church fathers), the state of nature—that of Adam and Eve before the fall— was a state of moral perfection (so far as this is possible for human beings unaided by grace) and rationality. It was also a state of equality.
(3)The cultural sense, as a primitive state of culture, as a state in which the arts and sciences—civilization in its non-political elements—have barely begun.
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Plainly these different forms of society and culture need not all be realized in the same period of time. The period preceding established political authority may be a very long one, as it seems to have been for Locke, and is explicitly said to be by Rousseau. For Rousseau divides the juristic state of nature into four distinct stages of culture, all of them of long duration; and in his terminology (in the Second Discourse), the term “state of nature” means not the pre-political stage as a whole but only the first and earliest of the four cultural stages.
4. This first stage of primitive man is not regarded by Rousseau as an ideal stage at all. It is the third stage, by which time considerable cultural development has occurred, that he thinks of as ideal in the Second Discourse, and is the one he regrets did not endure. In his account Rousseau draws on several previous writers: his first stage draws on Pufendorf; his third is similar to the state of nature of Montaigne; and his fourth stage—which is one of great conflict and disorder and eventually leads to the establishment of political authority under the domination of those with property—draws on Hobbes, although Rousseau differs from him in important ways, as I mention later.
The relevance of all this for us is in the following: Rousseau wants to say that man is naturally good and that it is through social institutions that we become bad. Yet when we look at the details of his account of the development of culture and social organization and the role that our various faculties play in it—particularly our reason, imagination and self-conscious- ness—it may seem inevitable that the social evils and individual vices Rousseau deplores will come about.
In the first stage our faculties are not developed. We are then moved by amour de soi (natural love of ourselves) and by simple desires such as the desires for food, shelter, sleep, and sex. And while we feel compassion (SD, 130– 134) for others, which is the source of the social virtues (SD, 131f ), this stage is still one of a brute. That is, it is the stage of a lazy, unreflective, though happy and fairly harmless animal, one not prone to inflict pain on others.
Yet even as animals, human beings are distinguished from other animals in two very important respects:
First, they possess the capacity for free will, and so the potentiality to act in the light of valid reasons; they are not, like animals, guided by instincts alone (SD, 113f ).
Second, human beings are perfectible, that is, they have the potentiality
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for self-improvement through the development of their faculties and their expression in culture over time. An aspect of our perfectibility, which depends on language (SD, 124), is that we are historical beings. This means that perfectibility resides as much in the species as in the individual, and it is seen in the historical development of civilization. The particular realization of our nature depends on the culture of the society in which we live. By contrast, animals become all that they will be in a relatively few months, and are the same today as thousands of years ago (SD, 114–115).
5. When, however, we become distinguished from other animals through cultural development—by language and by simple forms of social organization (families and small groups)—we become concerned for two things: first, for our natural well-being and the means of sustaining life; and, second, for what others think of us and our relative standing in our social group. The first concerns are the object of amour de soi (the natural love of ourselves), which, as noted above, is the concern for one’s good as given by certain natural needs common to man and other animals. The second are the object of amour-propre, a distinct form of self-concern that arises only in society. It is the natural concern for a secure standing in relation to others and involves a need for equal acceptance with them.9
I stress that amour-propre has a natural form along with its proper object, as well as an unnatural form, which has its perverted, or unnatural object. In its natural, or proper, form (its form appropriate to human nature), amour-propre is a need which directs us to secure for ourselves equal standing along with others and a position among our associates in which we are accepted as having needs and aspirations which must be taken into account on the same basis as those of everyone else. This means that on the basis of our needs and wants we can make claims which are endorsed by others as imposing rightful limits on their conduct. Needing and asking for this acceptance from others involves giving the same to them in return. For, moved by this natural amour-propre, we are ready to grant the very same standing to others, and to recognize the rightful limits that their needs and
9. My account of amour-propre follows that of N. J. H. Dent, Rousseau (Oxford: Blackwell, 1988), and that of Frederick Neuhouser in his “Freedom, Dependence, and the General Will,” Philosophical Review, July 1993, pp. 376f. Dent gives a statement in his A Rousseau Dictionary (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), pp. 33–36. I am indebted to Neuhouser for this account of how amour-propre is related to the principle of reciprocity.
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rightful claims impose on us, provided—and this is essential—our equal status is accepted and made secure in social arrangements.
The question arises whether amour-propre, which expresses our social nature, contains within itself, as a natural disposition, a principle of reciprocity. I believe not. The principle of reciprocity is formulated and grasped by reason, imagination, and conscience, and not by amour-propre. So that principle is not known and followed by amour-propre alone. However, moved by amourpropre we are ready to accept and to act on a principle of reciprocity whenever our culture makes it available and intelligible to us, and society’s basic arrangements establish our secure and equal standing along with others.
By contrast, unnatural, or perverted, amour-propre (often translated simply as “vanity”) shows itself in such vices as vanity and arrogance, in the desire to be superior to and to dominate others, and to be admired by them. Its unnatural or perverted object is to be superior to others and to have them in positions beneath us.
I should mention, however, that the first interpretation I have given above of amour-propre is not widely accepted. Far more widely accepted is that amour-propre is simply what I have called unnatural or perverted amour-propre, and nothing more than that. Thus, whether it incorporates the principle of reciprocity never arises. I accept what we may call the wide view of amour-propre for two reasons (aside from the fact that the main idea is in N. J. H. Dent, whose book and dictionary are recommended).10
The first reason (and I must say it carries much weight with me) is that Kant endorses the wide view when he says in the Religion: Bk. I, Sec. 1, Ak: VI:27:
The predisposition to humanity can be brought under the general title of self-love which is physical and yet compares . . . that is to say, we judge ourselves happy or unhappy only by making comparisons with others. Out of this self-love springs the inclination to acquire worth in the opinion of others. This is originally a desire merely for equality, to allow no one superiority above oneself, bound up with a constant care lest others strive to obtain such superiority; but from this arises gradually the unjustifiable craving to win it for oneself over others. Upon this twin stem of jealousy and rivalry may be grafted the very great vices of secret and open animosity against all whom we look upon as not belonging to us—vices, however, which really do not sprout from
10. N. J. H. Dent, Rousseau, and A Rousseau Dictionary.
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nature as their root; rather they are inclinations aroused in us by the anxious endeavors of others to attain a hated superiority over us . . .
the vices which are grafted upon this inclination might be termed the vices of culture, the highest form of malignancy, as, for example, in envy, ingratitude, spitefulness, and the like . . . they can be called the diabolical vices.
It was not until I connected the Second Discourse with Kant’s remarks here that I felt I finally understood what either of them was saying. As so often, Kant is the best interpreter of Rousseau.11
The second reason for accepting the wide view of amour-propre is that it is required to make sense of Rousseau’s great works as a coherent and consistent view. For reasons I shall try to make clear, the solution of the human predicament Rousseau offers in the Social Contract only coheres with the Second Discourse when we adopt the wide view of amour-propre. Without it, Rousseau’s thought becomes all the more darkly pessimistic, and the kind of political society depicted in the Social Contract appears utterly utopian. The reason is that if amour-propre is not at first, as Kant says, a desire merely for equality, and if it is not ready, assured of that equality by society’s institutions, to grant in reciprocity the same equality to others, what psychological basis is there in human nature, as Rousseau conceives it, to make such a society possible? Reason and conscience alone? That is hardly sufficient. Rousseau’s overall scheme of thought becomes, indeed, unworkable. Lacking the wide view of amour-propre leads us to say foolish things about Rousseau, such as that he is a dazzling though confused and inconsistent writer. Don’t believe it.
6. Above I remarked that the social evils founded on inequality and unnatural amour-propre seem, offhand, inevitable. This is because they are connected with our reason, imagination, and self-consciousness. Reflection, reason, and imagination can become the enemies of compassion and block its tendencies leading us to identify with the sufferings of others (SD, 132f ). Rousseau says (SD, 132): “Reason engenders vanity and reflection fortifies it; reason turns man back upon himself, it separates him from all that bothers and afflicts him. Philosophy isolates him; because of it he says in secret, at the sight of a suffering man: Perish if you will, I am safe. No longer can anything except dangers to the entire society trouble the tranquil sleep of
11. See Ernst Cassirer, The Question of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, trans. Peter Gay (New York: Columbia University Press, 1954).
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the philosopher and tear him from his bed. . . . Savage man does not have this admirable talent, and for want of wisdom and reason he is always seen heedlessly yielding to the first sentiment of humanity.” And somewhat later (SD, 133): “. . . the human race would have perished long ago if its preservation had depended only on the reasonings of its members.”
Here Rousseau is commenting on the effect of the development of culture and reason on the sentiment of humanity that moves simpler people. But this is just an example of a general tendency as human beings evolved from the:
First stage, of the lazy, unreflective, but free and potentially perfectible and happy animal who lives alone and is moved only by amour de soi and compassion. Here there are no moral problems and the passions are few and calm (SD, 142),
to the:
Second stage, of nascent society, a period covering centuries in the course of which we learned to use the simpler tools and weapons, developed crude language, united in groups for mutual protection, and developed the permanent family with very limited institutions of property; individuals owned their own weapons, each family had its own shelter; a sense of self develops, and sentiments of preference lead to love, which in turn brings jealousy in its train (SD, 142–148).
to the:
Third stage, which is the patriarchal stage of human society where the only government is that of the family. People live in loose village groups and gain their subsistence by hunting, fishing, and gathering from the bounty of nature; and amusement is found in spontaneous gatherings of song and dance, and so on. Men begin to appreciate one another and duties of civility follow. Public esteem has a value (SD, 149).
If we ask why these transitions to the next stage occur, Rousseau suggests the reasons are economic. Under the pressure of increasing numbers it became more effective to join together and hunt in groups and to engage in various cooperative activities. But already in this simple pastoral world the setting of inflamed amour-propre is in place. Permanent proximity generates enduring ties; the sentiments of love and jealousy (unknown to simpler beings) are now aroused. Rousseau says: “The one who sang or danced the best, the handsomest, the most adroit, or the most eloquent became the most highly considered; and that was the first step toward inequality and, at the same time, toward vice” (SD, 149).
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