Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Fundamental Political Writings

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Matthew W. Maguire, David Lay Williams, Ian Johnston

• Publisher: Broadview Press
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781460406427
• Topic: Filosofía
• Subtopic: Filosofía política

This classroom edition includes On the Social Contract, the Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts, the Discourse on the Origins of Inequality, and the Preface to Narcissus.

Each text has been newly translated and includes a full complement of explanatory notes. The editors' introduction offers students diverse points of entry into some of the distinctive possibilities and challenges of each of these fundamental texts, as well as an introduction to Rousseau's life and historical situation. The volume also includes annotated appendices that help students to explore the origins and influences of Rousseau's work, including excerpts from Hobbes, Pascal, Descartes, Mandeville, Diderot, Voltaire, Madame de Staël, Benjamin Constant, Joseph de Maistre, Kant, Hegel, and Engels.

On the Social Contract

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1762)

ON THE SOCIAL CONTRACT

OR

THE PRINCIPLES OF POLITICAL RIGHT

BY

JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU

CITIZEN OF GENEVA

Let us speak of the laws of an equal federation. (Aeneid XI)¹

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Foreword

BOOK 1

Which examines how people pass from the state of nature into the civil state and what are the essential conditions of the social pact.

Chapter 1: Subject of this First Book

Chapter 2: On the First Societies

Chapter 3: On the Right of the Strongest

Chapter 4: On Slavery

Chapter 5: That It Is Always Necessary to Go Back to a First Agreement

Chapter 6: On the Social Compact

Chapter 7: On the Sovereign

Chapter 8: On the Civil State

Chapter 9: On Real Property

Book 2

Which deals with legislation.

Chapter 1: That the Sovereignty Is Inalienable

Chapter 2: That the Sovereignty Is Indivisible

Chapter 3: Whether the General Will Can Be Mistaken

Chapter 4: On the Limits of the Sovereign Power

Chapter 5: On the Right of Life and Death

Chapter 6: On the Law

Chapter 7: On the Lawgiver

Chapter 8: On the People

Chapter 9: [On the People] (continued)

Chapter 10: [On the People] (continued)

Chapter 11: On the Various Systems of Legislation

Chapter 12: The Division of the Laws

Book 3

Which deals with political laws, that is to say, with the form of the government.

Chapter 1: On Government in General

Chapter 2: On the Principle that Determines the Various Forms of Government

Chapter 3: Division of Governments

Chapter 4: On Democracy

Chapter 5: On Aristocracy

Chapter 6: On Monarchy

Chapter 7: On Mixed Governments

Chapter 8: That All Forms of Government Are Not Appropriate for Every Country

Chapter 9: On the Signs of a Good Government

Chapter 10: On the Abuse of Government and Its Tendency to Degenerate

Chapter 11: On the Death of the Body Politic

Chapter 12: How the Sovereign Authority Is Maintained

Chapter 13: [How the Sovereign Authority Is Maintained] (continued)

Chapter 14: [How the Sovereign Authority Is Maintained] (continued)

Chapter 15: On Deputies or Representatives

Chapter 16: That the Institution of Government Is Not a Contract

Chapter 17: On the Institution of Government

Chapter 18: Ways to Prevent the Usurpations of the Government

Book 4

Which continues to deal with political laws and sets out ways one can strengthen the constitution of the state.

Chapter 1: That the General Will Is Indestructible

Chapter 2: On Voting

Chapter 3: On Elections

Chapter 4: On the Roman Comitia

Chapter 5: On the Tribunate

Chapter 6: On Dictatorship

Chapter 7: On the Censorship

Chapter 8: On Civil Religion

Chapter 9: Conclusion

FOREWORD

This small treatise is part of a more extensive work that I carried out earlier, without having taken into account my own powers, and that I abandoned a long time ago. Of the various parts one could extract from what it was, this is the most significant, and to me it seemed the least unworthy of being offered to the public. The rest no longer exists.

BOOK 1

I wish to explore whether in the civil order, if one takes men as they are and laws as they might be, there can be some sure and legitimate rule of administration. In this search, I will attempt always to unite what right permits with what interest prescribes, so that there will be no division of justice and utility.

I launch my undertaking without demonstrating the importance of my subject. People will ask me if, writing on politics, I am a prince or a lawgiver. My answer is that I am neither, and that is the reason I am writing on politics. If I were a prince or a lawgiver, I would not waste my time talking about what must be done. I would do it, or remain silent.

Since I was born a citizen of a free state and a member of the sovereign, no matter how weak the influence of my voice on public affairs may be, the right to vote on such issues is enough to impose on me the duty to instruct myself about them. And every time I meditate on governments, I am happy that in my research I always find new reasons to love the government of my country!

CHAPTER 1
SUBJECT OF THIS FIRST BOOK

Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains. Someone who believes he is the master of others does not escape being more enslaved than they. How did this transformation come about? I do not know. What can render it legitimate? This question I believe I can resolve.

If I were to consider nothing but power and the effects that follow from it, I would say: as long as a people is compelled to obey and does obey, it is doing well; as soon as it can throw off its yoke and does shake it off, it is doing even better, for by recovering its liberty through the same right that robbed the people of it, either it is justified in taking it back or those who deprived the populace of freedom had no justification for doing so. But the social order is a sacred right that serves as the foundation for all the others. This right, however, does not come from nature and is thus founded on conventions. It is a matter of knowing what these conventions are. Before coming to that, I ought to establish what I have just asserted.

CHAPTER 2
ON THE FIRST SOCIETIES

The oldest of all societies and the only natural one is that of the family. Even there, the children remain linked to the father only as long as they need him for their self-preservation. As soon as this need ends, the natural bond dissolves. Once the children are free of the obedience they owed their father and the father is free of the care he owed his children, they all return equally to independence. If they continue to remain united, this is no longer natural but voluntary, and the family maintains itself only by convention.

This common liberty is a consequence of the nature of man. His first law is to look after his own preservation, his first cares are those he owes himself, and as soon as he reaches the age of reason, since he is the sole judge of the means appropriate to preserving himself, he thereby becomes his own master.

Thus, the family is, if you will, the first model of political societies.² The leader is viewed as the father, and the people as the children. Since they are all born equal and free, they do not alienate their freedom except for their own advantage. The only difference is that in the family the love of the father for his children repays him for the care he takes of them, and that in the state the pleasure of commanding replaces this love, which the leader does not feel for his people.

Grotius denies that all human power is established for the benefit of those who are governed.³ He cites slavery as an example.⁴ His most characteristic style of reasoning is always to establish right by fact.⁵ One could use a more logical method, but not one more favorable to tyrants.

Thus, according to Grotius, it is unclear whether the human race belongs to a hundred men or whether these hundred men belong to the human race, and in his whole work he seems to incline towards the former opinion. That is also Hobbes’s sentiment. And in this way, the human race is divided into herds of cattle, each of which has its chief, who guards it in order to devour it.

As a shepherd has a nature superior to that of his flock, so the shepherds of men, who are their leaders, also possess a nature superior to that of their peoples. The emperor Caligula, according to what Philo reports, reasoned this way, and from this analogy came to the appropriate conclusion that either kings were gods or the people were beasts.⁶

Caligula’s reasoning is the same as the arguments in Hobbes and Grotius. Before all of them, Aristotle had also claimed that men are not naturally equal, but that some are born for slavery and others for dominion.⁷

Aristotle was correct, but he took the effect for the cause. All men born into slavery are born for slavery. Nothing is more certain. Slaves lose everything in their chains, even the desire to escape them. They love their servitude, just as Ulysses’ companions loved their brutish condition.⁸ So then if there are slaves by nature, that is because there have been slaves against nature. Force made the first slaves; their cowardice has kept them so.

I have not said anything about king Adam or about emperor Noah, father of three great monarchs who divided up the universe among them, as did the children of Saturn, whom some have claimed they recognize in Noah’s sons. I hope that people will find my moderation agreeable, for since I am a direct descendant of one of these princes—perhaps of the oldest branch—how do I know that with a verification of titles, I might not find myself the legitimate king of the human race? Whatever the case, one cannot deny that Adam was the sovereign of the world, just as Robinson [Crusoe] was of his island, as long as he was the sole inhabitant. And this empire had the advantage that in it, the monarch was secure upon his throne, and had to fear neither rebellions, nor wars, nor conspirators.

CHAPTER 3
ON THE RIGHT OF THE STRONGEST

The strongest is never strong enough to be master all the time, unless he transforms his power into right and obedience into duty. From that comes the right of the strongest, a right which, although apparently intended ironically, is truly established in principle. But are we never to receive an explanation of this phrase? Force is physical power. I do not see what morality can result from its effects. To yield to force is an act of necessity, not of will, at most an act of prudence. In what sense can that be a duty?

Let us assume for a moment this alleged right. I maintain that the result of such a right is nothing but inexplicable nonsense. For as soon as it is force that creates right, the effect changes with the cause. Every force that is more powerful than the first inherits its right. Once we can disobey with impunity, we can do so legitimately, and since the strongest is always right, it is simply a matter of making ourselves the strongest. But what kind of right perishes when force ends? If we must obey because of force, we have no need to obey because it is our duty, and if we are no longer forced to obey, we have no obligation to do so. One can see, therefore, that this word right adds nothing to force. Here it signifies nothing at all.

Obey those in power. If that means yield to force, it is a good precept, but superfluous. I reply that it will never be violated. All power comes from God—that I concede—but all sickness comes from Him as well. Does that mean we are forbidden to summon the doctor? If a brigand surprises me in a part of the forest, am I not merely compelled by force to surrender my purse, but also in conscience obliged to give it to him, when I could withhold it? For in the end, the pistol he holds is also a power.

So let us agree that force does not create right, and that we are obliged to obey only legitimate powers. Thus, we inevitably return to my original question.

CHAPTER 4
ON SLAVERY

Since no man has a natural authority over his fellow man and since force creates no right, therefore conventions remain as the basis of all legitimate authority among human beings.

If a particular individual can alienate his liberty, Grotius says, and make himself the slave of a master, why could not an entire people alienate its liberty and make itself subject to a king?⁹ In this question there are a number of ambiguous words that require an explanation, but let us restrict ourselves to that word alienate. To alienate means to give or to sell. Now, a man who makes himself the slave of someone else is not giving but selling himself, at least for his subsistence. But why does a people sell itself? A king, far from providing his subjects their subsistence, derives his own only from them, and, according to Rabelais, a king does not live on a pittance. So, do subjects surrender their persons on condition that their goods will also be taken away? I do not see what they have left to preserve.

Some will say that the despot assures his subjects civil tranquility. That may be so, but what do they gain from that, if the wars that his ambition draws them into, if his insatiable greed and the humiliating demands of his ministers bring them more desolation than their own quarrels would have done? What do they gain from it, if this tranquility is itself one of their miseries? People also live peacefully in dungeons. Is that enough to make them a good place to live? The Greeks imprisoned in the cave of Cyclops lived there peacefully, while waiting for their turn to be devoured.¹⁰

To say that a man gives himself gratuitously is to make an absurd and inconceivable claim. Such an act is illegitimate and void, for the sole reason that the man who does it is not in his right mind. To say the same thing about an entire people is to assume a population of madmen. Madness creates no rights.

Even if each man were able to alienate himself, he cannot alienate his children. They are born human beings and free. Their liberty belongs to them. They alone have the right to dispose of it. No one else has that right. Before they reach the age of reason, the father can stipulate in their name the conditions for their preservation, for their well-being, but he cannot give them away irrevocably and unconditionally. For such a gift is contrary to the ends of nature and goes beyond the rights of paternity. Thus, for an arbitrary government to be legitimate, in every generation the people would have to have the power to accept or reject it. But then this government would no longer be arbitrary.

To renounce one’s liberty is to renounce one’s quality as a man, the rights of humanity, and even his duties. There is no possible compensation for someone who surrenders everything. Such a renunciation is incompatible with the nature of man, and to remove all liberty from someone’s will is to remove all morality from his actions. Finally, it is an empty and contradictory convention to stipulate, on the one hand, an absolute authority and, on the other, an unlimited obedience. Is it not clear that we have no obligations towards someone from whom we have the right to demand everything? And does this condition alone, where there is no equivalence or exchange, not involve nullifying the act? For what right would my slave have against me, since all he possesses belongs to me? Now that his right is mine, this right I have against myself is meaningless.

Grotius and others derive from warfare another origin for the alleged right of slavery.¹¹ Since the victor, according to them, has the right to kill the vanquished, the latter can purchase his life back at the expense of his liberty, and this convention is all the more legitimate because it is profitable to both parties.

But it is clear that this alleged right to kill the vanquished in no way results from the state of war. Given the simple fact that human beings living in their original independence have no sufficiently constant relations among themselves to constitute either a state of peace or a state of war, they are not naturally enemies. What constitutes war is a r...