Jean-Jacques Rousseau

• Negative impact of science and

reason
• Critique of Civil Society
• Nature of State and Human
• Concept of General will
• Concept of sovereignty
• General will as the sovereign
• Comparison Hobbes, Locke and
Rousseau
 Introduction
He is known as father of French revolution and father of concept of popular
sovereignty as he has given the theory of general will.

He lived in the age of reason, French Enlightenment, and while he attacked the
ancient regime, he was also critical of the Enlightenment.

He is best remembered for or his theory of General Will, which provides a

philosophical justification for democratic governance.
• Rousseau was the first person to highlight the negative impact of science and reason.
• As a thinker he was the fisrt person to suggest that man is not bad rather society is bad. Hence what
is to be changed is society. Man will automatically become good.

In the opening statement of his book social contract he suggest that “Man is born
free, but he is everywhere in chains”.
 Life and Time
Rousseau lived at a time when the absolutist feudal order presided over by Louis XV
reigned France.

Political power, privilege and social prestige was the monopoly of the king, clergy and the
nobility, who lived extravagantly at the expense of the masses engaged in a grim battle of
survival.

Sharing the discontent and the desire for change was a new emergent class of the French
bourgeoisie, which found the extant order too restrictive for its own development and had
joined hands with the peasantry.

In shaping the climate of opinion and the spirit of dissent against the ancient regime the
French Enlightenment played a major role. Enlightenment judged everything based on
reason and experience alone.
Inevitably it brought under attack many things that had hitherto been taken for
granted, including the church and the traditional political institutions of France.

Rousseau shared some of the enlightenment ideas, but not wholly. In so far as the
philosophes desired change, pinned their faith in man as a agent.

Rousseau was with them, but he did not share their idea of progress implied in
their modernity and had greater regard for feeling than respect for rationality.
 Negative impact of science and reason- Revolt against
Reason
Rousseau attacked Enlightenment, in a prize-winning essay written in 1749 on the
question: "Has the progress of science and asts contributed to corrupt or purify
morality?" Rousseau argued that science was not saving but bringing moral ruin upon us.
Progress was an illusion.

What appeared to be advancement was in reality regression. The arts of civilised society
served only to ‘cast garlands of flowers over the chains men bore’.

The development of modern civilization had not made men either happier or more
virtuous. Virtue was possible in a simple society, where men lived austere frugal lives.
In the modern sophisticated society man was corrupted, and greater the
sophistication the greater the corruption.

He also found support in Roman history-so long as Rome was poor and simple she
was able to command respect and conquer an empire; after having developed luxury
and engulfed the riches of the Universe Rome 'fell prey to peoples who knew not
even what riches were,’

Rousseau argued that 'our minds have been corrupted in proportion as the arts and
sciences have improved’.

The much-vaunted politeness, the glory of civilised refinement, was for Rousseau, a
'uniform and perfidious veil' under which he saw 'jealousy, suspicion, fear, wildness,
reverse, hate and fraud.’
Against intelligence, the growth of knowledge and the progress of sciences, which the
Enlightenment believed to be the only hope of civilisation, Rousseau set amiable and
benevolent sentiments, the goodwill and reverence.

He privileged sentiments and conscience over reason and proposed that all moral
valuations he had done on the basis of sentiments.

Intelligence was dangerous because it undermined reverence; science was destructive

because it takes away faith; reason was bad because it sets prudence against moral
intuition.

Without reverence, faith and moral intuition there is neither character nor society.
Critique of Civil Society
The themes introduced in his prize winning essay were developed further in his second
essay written in 1754 on "what is the origin of inequality among men, and is it
authority by natural law?”

The second Discourse, as this essay is called, is a narrative of the fall of man-how his
nature got twisted, warped and corrupted with the emergence of civil society, which in
turn was necessitated by the rise of the institution of private property and the need to
defend it by institutionalising social inequality through 'law’.

Rousseau says that in the state of nature, which is a condition prior to the emergency of
society, man was a 'noble savage'; lived in isolatioll and had a few elementary, easily
appeased needs.
Nature of State
• State of nature was state of bliss.
• It is a description of human life before the advent of modern age, science and reason.
• Freedom is to act according to one’s choice or will. It also means to act according to one’s
true nature.

What is the condition of happiness?

• When person is free to act according to his nature and Happiness got spoilt.
• According to Rousseau with the growth of civilisation, when man started settled life gradually
he started losing happiness.
• The definition of a rational man in modern society is a man who knows how to maximise his
self interest, profit and pleasure.
• Rationality taught man the difference between how you calculate self interest, profit and
pleasure.
• Rationality taught man how to make difference between mine and thine.
• According to him, man has self love as well as sympathy for others. Man is essentially good.
Though Rousseau critiqued 'civil society', he did not suggest man to choose the savage
existence, as some of his contemporaries mistook him.

For Rousseau society was inevitable, without which man could not fulfill him or realise
his native potentials.

• The key to the construction of the ideal social-political order was to handle the
problem of political obligation, namely, why Should men obey the state through a
proper reconciliation of authority with freedom, as it ought to be-a task which
according to Rousseau, was unsatisfactorily and inadequately done by his
predecessor philosophers.
• We return again to the forests to live among bears? This is a deduction in the manner
of my adversaries, which I would as soon anticipate and let them have the shame of
drawing."
 Concept of General will – General Will/Popular
Sovereignty
Terms and conditions of the contract:
• All people agree to act to with their real will.
• The sum of real wills of all creates the general will.
• General will is the sum of real wills of the all.
• General will is essentially good because it is the sum of good wills.
• General will is represented in the state and in Rousseau people coming together form the state.
• General will is represented by the state and people are state.
• The idea comes to near the view that state is individual writ large.

What does state symbolise?

• When people combine together they form body politic e.g. it is assumed that the members of the
constituent assembly were working with their real will and constituent assembly represented the
general will on will of the people of India.
General will is indivisible, collective and always right. We are free only
when we follow the general will.
• Rousseau goes to the extent of suggesting that man should be forced to be free.
• It means if anyone does not obey the laws of the state, state should have power to punish. It
is for this reason said that general will is Hobbes’s Leviathan with his head chopped off.

Types of sovereignty:

• Legal sovereignty – it comes in Hobbes theory. According to it supreme power to make law
lies with the state to Hobbes state is a 3 rd party i.e. beneficiary (monarch).
• Political sovereignty – It comes in the works of John Locke, according to Locke, sovereignty of
state is actually exercised by the people who form the government (parliament).
• Popular sovereignty – it is a philosophical notion. It suggests that sovereignty lies with the
people but is a very philosophical view (ideal).
 General will as the sovereign
Rousseau’s general will is Hobbes’s Leviathan with his head chopped off.
• In Hobbes, state is the 3rd party and the beneficiary state is like the crown/monarch.
• In Rousseau, there is no head power is diffused throughout the body politic.
• However, in effect general will as well as Leviathan both have absolute powers.
• If Hobbes gives monopoly over the use of coercive to Leviathan. Rousseau also suggests that man can
be forced to be free. Hence it is said that there is not much different except morphological difference.
• However it would be unfair if we compare Leviathan and General Will and believe that they are same.
Rousseau was actually the greatest exponent of direct democracy.
• Rousseau was impressed by the system of direct democracy which was prevailing in Switzerland even
at that time.
• According to Rousseau the only way general will emerges is when people go for direct participations in
law making.
• Thus Rousseau’s ideas are subjected to the manipulation by the totalitarians justifying state that
Rousseau is one of the greatest champions of democracy.
• With Rousseau also starts the idea of positive liberty when he says that man is free only when he obeys
the state.
• Another term for positive liberty is moral freedom.
 Comparison Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau
Hobbes
The state of nature is a state of
war. No morality exists. Everyone
lives in constant fear. Because of this
State of Nature fear, no one is really free, but, since
even the “weakest” could kill the
“strongest” men ARE equal.
Purpose of To impose law and order to prevent
Government the state of war.
Governments are designed to
control, not necessarily represent.
Representation
Governments must be designed to
protect the people from themselves.
Impact on
Founders
Locke
Men exist in the state of nature in perfect
freedom to do what they want. The state
of nature is not necessarily good or bad. It
is chaotic. So, men do give it up to secure
the advantages of civilized society.
To secure natural rights, namely man’s
property and liberty.
Representation ensures that governments
are responsive to the
people. Representation is a safeguard
against oppression.
1. Governments must be designed to
protect the people from the
government.
2. Natural Rights must be secured.
Rousseau
Men in a state of nature are free and
equal. In a state of nature, men are
“Noble Savages”. Civilization is what
corrupted him.
To bring people into harmony. To
unite them under the “General Will”.
Representation is not
enough. Citizens cannot delegate
their civic duties. They must be
actively involved. Rousseau favors a
more direct democracy to enact the
general will.
1. Governments must be
responsive and aligned with the
general will.
2. People make a nation, not
institutions.
3. Individual wills are subordinate
to the general (collective) will.