Political Philosophy: Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Social Contract Theory - Term Paper Example

The so-called “social contract” refers to a swath of primarily Enlightenment theories aiming to describe the means by which communities form governments, states, and stable social orders. Like Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, French Enlightenment thinker Jean-Jacques Rousseau offers a concept of the social contract: one that is most recognizable in the title of his 1762 work Du Contrat Social1. In addition, like other social contract theories, Rousseau’s theory proposes that the people forfeit some rights to a governing body in order to receive the psychologically important feeling of stability in the form of a social order through the rule of law. Parties agreeing to the social contract, like with other forms of contract, assent to the set of conditions and rules by which they are government. Nevertheless, as it turns out, the voluntary nature of the social contract is a theoretically unresolved question: one that needs a dose of empiricism and applied reason to answer. The problem with Rousseau’s Social Contract, and with his consent theory in particular, is that it seems to prescribe the complete opposite of what Rousseau’s assumptions about human nature, and the state of instinct, would necessitate. On one hand, Rousseau declares the state of nature to be one of absolute individualism, for which he substitutes absolute collectivism in the civil state. Instead of entrusting individuals to free and voluntary choices, Rousseau demands humankind give up too much of his human nature in order to promote the infallible general will. Rousseau’s purpose for writing Du Contrat Social is to reconcile, like many Enlightenment thinkers attempted to do, the existence of a government with the individual freedoms of the people living underneath that government. However, the word “freedom” is itself problematic, whether one is talking about freedom in the political, civil, metaphysical, or physical sense. In Rousseau’s state of nature, one enjoys the benefits of being without physical restrictions on one’s behavior. In the civil state, however, one gives up some physical freedom in exchange for civil freedom: namely, the ability to think rationally and as part of a community of rational beings. Beginning as animals, man becomes man: a creature that respects thought and morality. Only in the civil society, as conditioned by the social contract, are morality and rationality possible2. In fact, only is the civil society itself achievable when the members of said society agree to the terms and conditions of the social contract. Hence, man owes all of his civil freedoms, and the mutual protection that state provides, to the civil society. In addition, contra John Locke, Rousseau proposes we owe our capabilities for rationality and morality to the civil society as well, insofar as they are not possible in the state of nature. This last point about Rousseau’s work demonstrates the heavily collectivistic stance he takes toward the place of the individual in society. Individually, according to Rousseau, man is an animal incapable of reason or morality. In the state, the collective will both enable and enhance man’s ability to reason and act civilly. If human beings can only be humans under the social contract, then the contract is essential to the human life of individuals agreeing to it, and the group is primary to the individuals. Perhaps a serious contradiction in this whole theory is that prior to the social contract, human beings are not rational, but if they are not rational, they cannot agree to the terms of a contract in a rational manner. Rousseau, like Hobbes, continues to speak of the lawful authority (the sovereign), even though it is the collective will, as having its own distinct will, more important than individuals’ particular wills. In the context of our modern way of thinking, these suggestions of an all-important collective will may seem offensive. Moreover, in many ways, the idea of a collective will is offense. When Rousseau argues that there ought to be no distinction between an individual’s public and private life, he is arguing our public personas supersede our private personas. Rousseau asserts that the theory of the social contract can be simply defined as the idea that “Each of us places his person and authority under the supreme direction of the general will, and the group receives each individual as an indivisible part of the whole”3. From the social order, humankind derives all other rights, not from nature. This is another area in which Rousseau differs from other major Enlightenment thinkers like John Locke. However, Rousseau is consistent with Enlightenment thought in claiming that all legitimate authority is based on agreement. Human beings exit the state of nature as a means of escaping the adverse forces they are compelled to live under in the absence of a political authority. While individuals cannot change the forces acting upon themselves, they can channel their energies “to find a form of association which defends and protects with the whole common energy, the person and property of each associate, and by which each individual associate, uniting him to all, still obeys only himself and remains as free as before”4. What this implies is the subordination of the individual will to the collective, where a moral and collective body is formed of the members of the community. Under this condition, all members of the community are equal, since each sacrifice just as much in terms of his physical freedom. Moreover, by the social contract, man passes from the natural to the civil state, and gains ownership of all that acknowledged as public property. Needless to say, the idea presented in Rousseau’s Contrat Social gave impetus to the French Revolution, which culminated at the end of the 18th century. He imparted the French Revolution with a guiding philosophy, and was called by Thomas Carlyle “the Evangelist of the French Revolution”. Just as the French Revolution failed to bring about the change to a democratic republic in a peaceful and voluntary manner, so does the distinction between revolution and democracy get lost sometimes in Rousseau’s writing. The contradictions inherent in his political philosophy may suggest to some hints of anarchy, and to others hints of republican freedom. For instance, Rousseau claims the general will of the civil society is the unanimous consent of the citizens, and yet assumes that the general will is nothing more than the sum of individual wills. Along with Rousseau’s theory on the origin of the civil society, the absolute equality of all people, and the absolute freedom of people, social contract theory is riddled with false claims. Civil society, for Rousseau, is based on convention. This runs contrary to a widely believed anthropological premise saying man is, by nature, disposed to sociability and political community. Man, as essentially social, may need not to take the forces of the state of nature as reason to form the civil society. In the state of nature, Rousseau holds to the first principle of being born free, where this kind of "natural freedom" is the physical freedom to do whatever one wishes. Rousseau implies that man, in the state of nature, is an animal that operates with instinct as his guide and brute force as his means of survival. What this picture ignores, however, is that if natural freedom is the ability to act, it is an act limited by the constraints of being human. That is, if all men are born into the state of natural freedom, men are born with the natural duty to utilize such freedom to accomplish his own ends. If all men are born free to an equal degree, with right to living a human life, this freedom is given by laws and conditions of the social contract. The natural state of man is freedom, and Rousseaus view of that freedom leads to an individualism without limits. However, then again, Rousseaus Contrat Social stands by the claim that all of humankind is born equal. This claim is true with respect to the right to live a human life and to be treated as a human being (and not as a slave, which is something Rousseau discusses to a great extent). Among the rights man derives from his membership in the civil society is the right to be helped toward moral perfection. However, this principle is false if Rousseau is claiming that equality in freedom means equality in humanity, for a man is not individually equal to his wife, a son is not individually equal to his father, and a poor person is not individually equal to the rich person. All of these individuals have different needs, rights, and special duties based upon their place in the social order. An infant is clearly not discharged with the duties of his father who works in the Kings Court. Although all members of the civil society sacrifice equally for the existence of the political community, as protection against the conditions of the state of nature, the natural relations between people in the civil society is a matter of equality and hierarchy. The origin of all social interactions is not arbitrary will and independence, but liberty exercised in the context of some kind of social structure. If Rousseau takes individual equality to its logical extreme, the political extreme he leads to is the absence of any political authority, which leads back into the state of nature. The central thrust of Rousseaus social contract theory is that the civil society comes about by means of the sacrifice of some individual rights for the protection that only the political community can provide. From detailing the absolute individualism inherent to the state of nature and the natural state of man, Rousseau proceeds to substitute in the absolute socialism inherent in the civil society in which all members sacrifice their individual will for the benefit of the general will. For a society in which property, morality, justice, religion, and rationality are all constructs of the state and are emergent properties of the general will, there is little left for the individual will. As the French Revolution demonstrated, society is not founded in the free sacrifice of rights and personality but in the equal and democratic composition of all individual self-interests to reach individual and collective perfection. Empirically, no government has ever originated in consent, and, theoretically, there is no reason to believe that individuals, in full possession of natural rights, would choose voluntarily subordination to the controls of a government. Rousseaus political philosophy also represents a conceptual reversal of duties and roles between individuals and their civil society. Instead of being the origin of duties and rights, as Rousseau believes, society is the safeguard against violations of individuals and small collectives against enemies like criminals and foreign invaders. The existence of the state depends on its effectiveness in these goals of protection, rather than entitlement. In the end, the civil society is not constructed from individually equal parts; rather, it is formed from elements that vary widely in their responsibilities, rights, and duties in the context of the state. Nevertheless, these responsibilities, rights, and duties are available to the efforts of all citizens in the free society. The central problem with Rousseaus social contract, which is a problem with Lockes and Hobbes as well, is that it does not provide specific standards by which one is to judge whether ones particular civil society, its sovereign or its government, is a legitimate state at all. In Rousseau, the general will is the source of political and moral truth, and as such, is entitled to changing the equation in terms of the proper function of the state. Moreover, if, as Rousseau comments, the general will is analogous to an individual human being in its decision-making, what is to prevent political subjectivism within that body5? Without a distinguishing criterion of a legitimate government and state, short of the theoretical principle of the general will and the social contract, which is empirically dubious in itself, Rousseaus Contrat Social does little to placate concerns about whether their civil society is necessary. With all of these complaints lodged against Rousseau’s internal inconsistency, consider what Rousseau wants human beings to sacrifice as they enter into the civil society. In the early state of nature, the philosopher paints a picture of humanity as naturally free, endowed with physical liberties and instincts to guide him. This is such a radically different picture from the image of the civil society he injects into his social contract theory. Although Rousseau makes man dependent on the state for his morality and rationality, Rousseau sets such a powerful distinction between the human nature he describes initially and the alienated human in the civil society that it is difficult to picture man in such a condition, making such enormous sacrifices against their individual drives toward liberties. A more realistic solution for Rousseau is to propose the purpose of a government is to protect already existing rights, rights known in the Enlightenment as “natural rights” that are not contingent upon the political community. Leaving the individual’s right to be recognized as a human being to protection by the civil society leaves the door open for violations to republican-democratic principles of equality and liberty. The French Revolution is the closest thing we as contemporary scholars have to observing Rousseau’s principles in practice in the real world, and, frankly, few like the prospect of a Reign of Terror. Exactly why the French Revolution turned into a bloody massacre may be attributed to the philosophical ambiguity in Rousseau’s central tenets: revolving around questions of whether Rousseau’s words justified the absolute freedom of Enlightenment democracy, or the absolute equality of Enlightenment anarchy. The error inherent within Jean-Jacques Rousseaus social contract theory is its inconsistency with its authors own assumptions about human nature and the state of nature. While Rousseau declares the state of nature to be one of absolute freedom and equality (and thus individualism), he substitutes the state of absolute freedom with the state of absolute subjugation to the general will. It is this walking along the lines of extremes that makes the political philosophy of the Enlightenment thinker suspect in practice. Rousseau is hesitant to grant individual citizens the right to make free and voluntary choices in the state. Instead, they must give up their individual wills in order to receive the benefits of the being members of the political community. Rousseaus social contract theory, like those of John Locke and Thomas Hobbes, proposes that civil and social order arises out of the forfeiture of some rights and liberties to the governing body, which then establishes a rule of law. Those who agree to this social contract agree to the terms and conditions of the contract. However, just how voluntary this social contract is remains a theoretically unresolved question. Empirically, governments do not arise out of consent as Enlightenment thinkers suggested. In the capitalist society, the state and government arises out of the will to protect property and rights: rights and property that exist prior to the rights and common property given to individuals once the government and state are set in place. Read More