Does Rousseau’s Du Contrat Social signal the advent of modern democracy? Or does it represent a dangerous recipe for the suppression of individual human freedom?

When Jean Jacques Rousseau wrote his Social Contract, the idea of liberty and freedom were not new theories. Many political thinkers such as John Locke and Thomas Hobbes had already evolved with their own clarification of liberty and freedom of mankind, and in fact John Locke had already publicized his views and ideas on the social contract as well. In Rousseau’s case, what he did was to transform the ideas incorporated by such substantial words, and present us to another method to the social contract dilemma. What would bring man to leave the state of nature, and enter into a structured civil society? Liberals believes that this was the assurance of protection - liberty to them implied being free from destruction and harm towards one’s property. Rousseau’s concept of freedom was entirely different from that of traditional liberals. According to Rousseau, liberty is meant to voice out your opinion, and participation as human being. “To renounce liberty is to renounce being a man” (Wootton, 454).

One of the most important writers of the Enlightenment was the philosopher and novelist Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778). The work of Rousseau has influenced a generation and beyond and it is argued that the main ideals of the French and American revolutions arose from his works, for example The Discourse on Equality. The main concept of Rousseau's thought is that of 'liberty', and his belief that modern society forced humans to give up their independence, making everyday life corrupt and unfree. One of the central problems Rousseau confronted is best summed up in the first line of arguably his most important work, The Social Contract.

In this book, Rousseau aims to discover why people gave up their liberty and how political authority became legitimate. In his case, sovereignty is vesting in the entire populace, who enter into the contract directly with one another. He explained, “The problem is to find a form of association which will defend and protect with the common force the person and goods of each associate, and in which each, while uniting himself with all, may still obey himself alone, and remains as free as before.” That was the fundamental problem which Social Contract provides the solution.

He states that humans have become vain, and greedy as time has progressed and that the advances in technology only aided in this decline. Rousseau believes that all humans once derived from a “state of nature”. Which believes to be a time of peace and tranquility but as time moved forward and the population of humans grew and jobs were born and technology advanced is when problems truly began to arise within the community. Another of Rousseau’s ideas is that all men are created as equals and that men should not be able to govern over men, so therefore the only type of authority that Rousseau finds acceptable is the authority that is generated out of agreements and the cooperation of a community. He believes in personal rights and having your own will but in order to have an succesful authority or community you may have to conform to others will for the good of the community.

Rousseau establishes the Social Contract (Compact) that will provide the solution for a protective community of free individuals, who submit their freedoms or duties to the betterment of the whole collective body. While the individual is still free to conduct his life in freedom, the same citizen has a requirement to conduct business and make decisions that will be what’s best for the body. If everyone in the body commits to the arrangements of the contract, then the general members will have no problems with compelling to the political structure (Rousseau pg. 11).

With this, all peoples are equal and completely free or, to put it more eloquently, “in giving himself to all, each person gives himself to no one” (Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. Basic Political Writings. Hackett Pub. Co., 1987. p. 148). In this respect, Marx and Rousseau share common ground. They both believe that a community or state ruled by all needs to exist to ensure freedom for all. Marx and Rousseau agree that control that comes from above/without/utilizing force can never be rendered legitimate. Likewise to Rousseau, the core of Marx’s notion of freedom is epitomized in this phrase: “Liberty is, therefore, the right to do everything which does not harm others” (C., Tucker, Robert, and Engels, Friedrich. The Marx-Engels Reader, First Edition. New York: W. W. Norton, 1972. p. 40). The break between the two is most noticeable concerning Marx’s central idea that the procurement of the rights of production is the key to freedom. When human beings are estranged from their labor they are estranged from themselves, from each other, and, ultimately, made subjects because of it. Freedom necessarily means that human beings must have the right to produce freely as production is a natural extension of oneself. As we shall see, this problem is only exacerbated by civil society.

Though the civil society and social contract do exist in today’s society, Rousseau’s state of nature could never be in existence. In reality, it is impossible to have ever been in a state of nature. This is supported by Rousseau’s idea that at birth, one is born into a society called “family.” This society is eventually dissolved but children eventually build a social contract with individuals as they grow up and mature. Furthermore, this supports the fact that social contracts and civil societies do exist, even when the state of nature never did. Each day, this is immanent when one forms social bounds with the people around them. Rousseau’s ideas developed from his time period and his life. He was writing this essay during the French Revolution which is in itself a perfect example of the destruction of a social contract between a society and its king and turning into a social contract of the general will of the population to form a new society. Though our time period may be different then those of Rousseau’s, his message will still have a

Rousseau clearly promotes totalitarianism in The Social Contract, and hints at it in a few passages from his Second Discourse. He desperately attempts to lay down a form of government that eliminates any chance for the people to be victims. Rousseau specifically shows us the faults in the other types of government and tries to prevent them in his ideas. He wants to create a political situation where people have as much sovereignty as possible.

Although his concept agrees with that of Locke’s democratic commonwealth, he wanted to further the involvement of citizens in a political society. In book one in Of the Social Contract, Rousseau creates the Social Pact. In this pact he defines the terms that each active member of the collective body upholds himself to: “Each of us puts in common his person and his whole power under the supreme direction of the general will; and in return we receive in a body every member as an indivisible part of the whole” (p. 373, clmn. 1, para. 5).

All men must consent to this “two-way commitment between the public and the individuals belonging to it” (8). This social compact between the subjects of a state creates the states “unity, its common identity, its life and its will” (7). Rousseau then laid out the two crucial parts of a state and their crucial separation: the sovereign, or the people, and the government. At the end of Book I, Rousseau summarized his proposed social contract by stating that it “replaces…physical inequalities as nature may have set up between men by an equality that is moral and legitimate, so that men who may be unequal in strength or intelligence become equal by agreement and legal right” (11). Rousseau’s social contract in theory would give each individual, regardless of physical strength or education, guaranteed freedom from the chains of the state.

It is evident that the conception of a fraudulent social contract in the, Discourse on Inequality, influenced Rousseau’s formulation of his social contract theory in, The Social Contract. Rousseau doesn’t engage about the choice in electing oneself into a contract, like Locke, but he states that when men are no longer able to maintain themselves in the state of the nature, they are urged to unite forces and form an association. Rousseau implies that artificial institutions like property don’t play a role in the need for forming an association. The ownership of one’s possessions, Rousseau states, is something man gains by the social contract, not something he has prior to. Furthermore, the general will acts as a guiding force in political order.

While it may be true that, Jean-Jacques Rousseau central idea in The Social Contract needs little explanation considering how it has been well-expounded upon by many scholars over the past 200 years. Nonetheless, this paper will begin with discussing Rousseau’s key concepts, leading to Constants criticisms, to put into clearer comparison in relation to Rousseau.

Therefore it is the people who hold the power within the state, and also the legal subjects within the republic. Rousseau refers to the individuals as citizens when they are acting passively, and sovereign when acting as an active group for example, devising laws. He writes 'this public group, so formed by the union of all other persons...power when compared with others like itself' (lines 41-43 Rousseau extract). Rousseau's evaluates his solution, perhaps tersely earlier in his work by suggesting that 'the total alienation of each associate, together with all his rights, to the whole of the community' (lines 17-18 Rousseau extract). The main aspects that incorporates Rousseau's version of social contract theory is that he wants to make a distinct separation of the 'will of all' from 'general will'. Will of all or individual will, is private wills and specific to each of the state's members, while general will is a common will for all and reflect the common good for state members. By separating the two wills, can help to reduce conflict that may arise between the two, and by evaluating all the opinions of each member. It is possible to see what issues are more pressing, and cancel out individualistic wills, if the majority of individuals share the opinions, thus making this majority, the general will. Rousseau sums this up when he writes, 'There is often a great deal of

Thus, the group collectively is more important than each individual that makes it up. The sovereign and the general will are more important than its subjects and their particular wills. Rousseau goes so far as to speak of the sovereign as a distinct individual that can act of its own accord.

As the individual relinquishes all he had to the sovereign, it would suggest he was going to become a slave to the state. However, this is exactly what Rousseau was trying to avoid. This sovereign was not concerned with a simple majority; in fact Rousseau expressed distain for existing forms of civil state and their limited freedoms; “ England regards itself as free, it is grossly mistaken; it is free only during the election of its Members of Parliament. As soon as they are elected, slavery overtakes it, and it is nothing.” (Rousseau, as cited in Garrard, 2012, p.33) His general will was a more a greater, almost spiritual consciousness, which Rousseau outlined, somewhat abstractly, as “a form of association which will defend the person and goods of each member with the collective force of all, and under which each individual, while uniting himself with the others, obeys only himself and remains as free as before” (Rousseau, 1968 p.60). The laws or constraints “never formally stated, they are everywhere the same, everywhere tacitly admitted and recognised” (Rousseau, 1968, p.60). Yes, you would give up natural liberty, but you would gain civil liberty, thus achieving freedom, however now within the constraints of the general will, a structure that