An Introduction to the Work of Hobbes to attain and preserve it.
to attain and preserve it. It becomes clear that the only way to have peace is for each individual to give up
Thomas Hobbes presents himself as the first true political philosopher, the first to offer exact knowledge
of justice, sovereignty, and citizenship. Hobbes claims, moreover, that his systematic political science will
revolutionize political practice, enabling us to build more stable, peaceful, and productive societies. In
order to achieve these results, though, Hobbes must promote a view of the proper scope of politics that is
narrower than that of the ancients. By focusing political energies on the preservation of life and its
comforts, Hobbes helps to institute the proposal made earlier by Machiavelli: that politics should satisfy
certain basic, morally neutral needs rather than aim to organize us around contentious principles. Hobbes
emphasizes several ideas that have become central to modern politics and modern political science. He
argues that human beings are not naturally social or political, that the state of nature is a state of war, and
that we must self-consciously create a government that is based on mutual consent and that presupposes a
fundamental equality among its members. These ideas are most comprehensively set forth in
the Leviathan (1651), which text serves as the basis for this introduction to Hobbes’s thought.
Hobbes’s Political Science
Hobbes’s claim to found the first true political science should be understood against the background of the
political thinkers he seeks to supplant, chiefly Aristotle. Hobbes is dissatisfied with the wisdom Aristotle
claims to gain from considering multiple opinions about the good, remarking that hundreds of years of
philosophical conversation have made no discernible progress on this question. Hobbes aims rather to
elaborate a definitive and unambiguous science of the political good. Indeed, he argues that reading
Aristotle serves no purpose but to justify the ambitions of rebellious young men.
Because we can know completely and with certainty only what we make and control, Hobbes gives an
account of political order that portrays it as a self-conscious construction, an artifice we craft to remove
ourselves from a pre-political state of nature. In order to achieve the exact knowledge for which he aims,
Hobbes must limit his scientific claims to the implications that can be deduced from this decision to
institute a political order, or “commonwealth.” His political science proper therefore constitutes only the
section of the Leviathan that concerns the “consequences” that follow from this choice, namely, the rights
and duties of the sovereign and of the subjects that are necessary to maintain this basic political
agreement. This choice, however, follows upon our passions and our speech, especially our calling “good”
the object of our desires, and pleasure the appearance of it.
The State of Nature
Hobbes begins his discussion with a description of human passions and speech, our basic motions.
Following this, Hobbes develops his account of the state of nature from the claim that human beings are
naturally equal. By this he means that each individual possesses the natural right to preserve himself, and
furthermore the natural right to claim all things, or seek all power, that he judges necessary to this end.
Moreover, Hobbes writes, in the state of nature we are, for practical purposes, equal in physical and
mental capacity, since no one is strong or smart enough to defend himself with certainty against the threats
that arise from the efforts of other individuals to preserve themselves.
According to Hobbes, this rough equality of ability leads each person to have an equal hope of acquiring
good things for himself. As individuals strive to accumulate goods, they compete with each other, and
consequently create an atmosphere of distrust. The attempt to acquire things, and to preserve them from
the encroachments of others, causes us to try to dominate and control those around us. Furthermore,
Hobbes observes, some people care particularly to be known as that sort who can dominate—they are
vainglorious or prideful individuals who are unhappy if they are not recognized as superior.
These three things—competition, distrust, and the desire for glory—throw humankind into a state of war,
which is for Hobbes the natural condition of human life, the situation that exists whenever natural passions
are unrestrained. This state of war should be distinguished from wars as we usually experience them, for
in the natural state of war every individual faces every other individual as an enemy; it is the “war of every
man against every man.” The total absence of collaboration makes us miserable, and renders life “solitary,
poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”
Hobbes’s description of the state of nature proposes that what human beings want above all is to preserve
their lives and their goods, and what they fear above all is violence at the hands of others. This desire to
preserve ourselves against the threat of violent death is the core of Hobbesian psychology. Hobbes
suggests that his account will be ratified by honest introspection—after all, why else would we lock our
doors at night?
The Social Contract
Once the misery of the natural condition becomes clear, it is evident that something must be done to
change it. The first step is for individuals to decide to seek peace and to make the arrangements necessary
his natural right to acquire and preserve everything in whatever manner he sees fit.
As Hobbes stipulates, this must be a collective endeavor, since it only makes sense for an individual to
give up his right to attack others if everyone else agrees to do the same. He calls this collective
renunciation of each individual’s right to all things the “social contract.” The social contract inverts the
state of nature while also building upon some key passions responsible for the state of nature: it amounts
to a more intelligent way to preserve oneself and safely acquire goods.
Hobbes presents the social contract in the context of elaborating his “laws of nature,” which are the steps
we must take to leave the state of nature. In calling these rules “laws of nature,” Hobbes significantly
changes the traditional concept of natural law, in which nature offers moral guidance for human behavior.
By contrast, Hobbes’s laws of nature are not obligatory in his state of nature, since, as he makes clear,
seeking peace and keeping contracts in the state of nature would be self-destructive and absurd. In other
words, acting against the laws of nature cannot simply be called unnatural or unjust—for Hobbes, nothing
is naturally just, unjust, or blameworthy. Justice only exists as a convention, in the context of a civil
society.
The Leviathan, or the Sovereign
Particularly because there is no natural sanction for justice, we need to institute some guarantee that
everyone involved in the social contract will keep his word. Hobbes argues that individuals require a
“visible power to keep them in awe,” to remind them of the purpose of the social contract and to force
them, for fear of punishment, to keep their promises. This power must also be sufficient to keep in check
the yearning for superiority of those who desire honor or glory. Hobbes calls the power necessary to
transform the desire for a social contract into a commonwealth the sovereign, the Leviathan, or the “king
of the proud.”
The sovereign power is created when each individual surrenders his private strength to a single entity,
which thereby acquires the means to keep everyone in obedience. Every individual must also surrender his
private opinion about public issues to the sovereign—for to have sufficient power to safeguard the
contract, the sovereign must have the authority to decide what is necessary to keep it, and what constitutes
a transgression of it.
The relation of the sovereign to the subject is not a contract. Rather, as Hobbes makes clear, the individual
must understand his will to be identical with the sovereign will, since one who desires peace must
logically will whatever is necessary for peace to be maintained. The “real unity” that the subjects and the
sovereign comprise is dramatically expressed in the picture found on the cover of the Leviathan, in which
one finds a huge figure literally composed of small individuals.
Although it is commonly assumed that the Leviathan is a king, Hobbes makes clear that the sovereign
power can be composed of one person, several, or many—in other words, the Leviathan can equally well
describe a monarchy, an aristocracy, or a democracy. The only requirement that Hobbes sets for
sovereignty is that the entity has absolute power to defend the social contract and decide what is necessary
for its defense.
Religion in the Commonwealth
One power that Hobbes insists the sovereign must possess is the authority to determine the public
observance of religion. In Hobbes’s opinion, religion can be one of the chief threats to public peace, since
it can validate authorities other than those designated by the sovereign. Hobbes is concerned both with
Church authorities who make spiritual or moral claims with political intent, and also with the appeal to
private conscience, which Hobbes argues is essentially the claim that an individual opinion should take
priority over the common agreement represented by the political sovereign.
Hobbes attempts to counter the religious threat to public peace by drawing a strict distinction between
private belief and public worship, and then attempting to render private belief politically ineffectual while
submitting the form of public worship to the decision of the sovereign. Hobbes tries to make private belief
politically neutral by encouraging skepticism: his account of the human mind makes us doubtful of what
we know, and his reading of Scripture emphasizes the passages that insist on the mysteriousness of God’s
will. Hobbes ultimately pares back Christianity to the personal belief that “Jesus is the Christ,” who will
come—in some future time—to reign on earth. In the meantime, Hobbes insists, we should follow
Romans 13 in recognizing that all authority comes from God, and obey the civil sovereign.
Hobbes likens the obedience a subject owes the sovereign to that of a monk to the pope. Yet there is a
glaring difference: in the Hobbesian commonwealth, subjects owe only outward obedience to the
commands of the sovereign. Subjects must be allowed to believe whatever they want (in part because
persecution would unnecessarily disturb public peace), as long as they do not try to influence public
argument with their personal beliefs.
Hobbes, Liberalism, and Modern Politics
Hobbes’s emphasis on the absolute power of the Leviathan sovereign seems to put his political thought at
odds with liberal theory, in which politics is devoted to the protection of individual rights. Hobbes
nonetheless laid the foundation for the liberal view. His concept of the state of nature grounds politics in
the individual’s desire to preserve his life and his goods, and stipulates that the role of government is to
serve these ends. Happiness or “felicity” is continual success in obtaining what we desire. For Hobbes, the
individual has no natural duties toward others or to the common good; obligations are taken up only as
necessary means to one’s own ends. Furthermore, Hobbes makes clear that the individual retains his
natural right to preserve himself even after entering the commonwealth—he has no obligation to submit
himself to capital punishment or likely death in war. While Hobbes has a much more limited
understanding of individual rights than liberal theorists, his political science launches the argument that
the individual has an inviolable right by nature, and also suggests that politics exists to help further the
individual’s pursuit of his own happiness. Hobbes begins the liberal notion of representative government:
government represents but does not rule us; its duty is to make our lives and acquisitions safe, not to form
our souls.
Not long after Hobbes’s death, John Locke used many of the elements of Hobbes’s thought to develop the
first full account of modern political liberalism. Although Locke takes pains to distance himself from
Hobbes, Hobbes’s influence can be seen in Locke’s account of the state of nature, in his argument that the
origin of all legitimate government lies in the consent of the governed, and in his view that the political
community should aim to serve basic, common needs (Locke makes the preservation of property central).
Through Locke, Hobbes indirectly influenced the founders of the United States, who, in the Declaration of
Independence and the Constitution, proclaim a new kind of politics based on equality and consent, in
which government serves relatively limited and popular aims.
Hobbes’s political ideas aroused much controversy in his time, and they continue to be contentious. Some
disagree with Hobbes’s claim that politics should be viewed primarily as an instrument to serve self-
interest, and side with Aristotle in thinking that politics serves both basic needs and higher ends. On this
view, Hobbes’s attempt to divert public debate from tackling controversial but fundamental questions
hampers our pursuit of wisdom, happiness, and excellence. Others argue that Hobbes’s systematic focus
on achievable goals has made possible the security and prosperity that those in modern Western nations
enjoy, and furthermore that these conditions give us the leisure and peace to pursue knowledge and
excellence in private life. In either case, Hobbes’s contribution to the framework of the modern world
makes a study of his work important to understanding our political horizons.
Introduction to the Work of Locke
As is true of many seventeenth-century philosophers, John Locke’s interests span the disciplines that
comprise the modern natural and social sciences. His most famous contribution to the history of political
thought is his lucid articulation of the theoretical foundation of modern liberalism in his Two Treatises of
Government and A Letter Concerning Toleration. He also made important contributions to economics,
psychology, and education.
The Origins of Government
Locke was not the first philosopher to invoke a “state of nature” in his account of the origins of
government, but his state of nature in the Second Treatise merits comparison to previous incarnations of
the idea, and in particular to Thomas Hobbes’s use of the term in Leviathan. Locke claims that life in the
state of nature was “a state of perfect freedom” as well as equality and plenty, lacking only “a common…
authority to judge between them.”
Man in the state of nature possesses several rights by the law of nature, the most fundamental of which is
the right of self-preservation, from which follows what Locke calls his “strange doctrine” that everyone in
the state of nature has the right to punish offenders against that law without recourse to a higher magistrate
or judge. Anyone who offends against the law of nature “puts himself into a state of war” against the rest
of humanity, permitting anyone to punish him to the extent they judge necessary, including of course by
death. So, although Locke’s state of nature seems at first more pleasant than Hobbes’s, this universal
power to execute the law of nature soon leads to irresolvable conflict.
Because everyone is born equal and free, any form of rule over him requires his consent to be legitimate.
Society thus originates from a social contract. The purpose of forming and submitting to government is to
secure the individual rights to life, liberty, and property. Locke claims that citizens cannot fully give up
their authority to judge whether government is so infringing on their rights that it is acting tyrannically and
must be opposed.
The Right to Revolution
In the final chapter of the Second Treatise, Locke lays out an account of the causes of the dissolution of a
government, and in a departure from prevailing opinion about the rights of subjects, affirms the right of
citizens to resist a tyrannical government. Locke’s ideas differ both from earlier thinkers such as Hobbes,
who denied subjects any right to resist their sovereign, and those such as John Calvin, who admitted that
tyrants ought to be deposed but denied ordinary citizens the right to depose them, instead entrusting this
task to magistrates. Approximately a decade before the publication of the Second Treatise, Algernon
Sidney had advanced a position on rebellion similar to Locke’s in his Discourses Concerning
Government, a book that resulted in his execution for treason. Both Sidney’s and Locke’s writings on this
question were influential in the American Revolution. Several passages in the Declaration of
Independence directly echo Locke’s formulations in the Second Treatise.
Locke argues that if the legislature changes its form against the will of the majority, or if the executive
suspends or abolishes it, then the legislative power is sufficiently altered as to be considered dissolved.
The people are then released from their original contract and “at liberty to provide for themselves…by
erecting a new legislative.”
Anticipating objections to this doctrine, and particularly the accusation that it would encourage the people
to revolt frequently and without due cause, Locke insists that this right of resisting arbitrary power will be
used only as a last resort: “Great mistakes in the ruling part, many wrong and inconvenient laws, and all
the slips of humane frailty will be born by the people, without mutiny or murmur. But if a long train of
abuses, prevarications, and artifices, all tending the same way, make the design visible to the people, and
they cannot but feel, what they lie under, and see, whither they are going; ‘tis not to be wonder’d, that they
should then rouze themselves, and endeavor to put the rule into such hands, which may secure to them the
ends for which government was at first erected.”
Locke further denies that the people act inappropriately as judges of their own case—a power they were
required to surrender on their entrance into political society—when they revolt against their rulers. The
right to determine the validity of citizens’ grievances against the government rests with the people, and if
the government denies the people’s judgment, “the appeal lies nowhere but to Heaven…and in that state
the injured party must judge for himself, when he will think fit, to make use of that appeal.”
Labor and Property
The fifth chapter of the Second Treatise introduces Locke’s original theory of the origin and nature of
property. Although some had argued that there could be something like a natural basis to property, most
theorists (including Hobbes and, later, Rousseau) argued that property could not exist in nature, and could
only come into being after the state was formed. Locke rejects this view, and offers in its place an account
of property according to which property is the impetus for establishing a state, rather than its result. The
unequal distribution of property within a state can ultimately be justified by natural right rather than
merely by positive law.
Locke’s account begins with the assertion that the state of nature is a state of plenty, and stocked by God
with more than enough to sustain every individual in it, so that no man’s appropriating anything from this
common stock was “any prejudice to any other man, since there was still enough, and as good left.” The
individual acquires property in nature by “mixing his labor” with natural objects—collecting acorns, for
example, or planting seeds. But to ensure that there would be enough and as good for the next man, his
acquisition was originally limited by the law of nature that permits the acquisition of only “as much as any
one can make use of to any advantage of life before it spoils.” However, this does not ensure that all men
acquire equal property, for men are not by nature equally intelligent or diligent: “God gave the world to
men in common; but since he gave it them for their benefit, and the greatest conveniencies of life they
were capable to draw from it, it cannot be supposed he meant it should always remain common and
uncultivated. He gave it to the use of the industrious and rational.”
The invention of money further exacerbates but also justifies the disparities in property among men.
Money permits men to circumvent the natural prohibition against acquiring more than one can use before
it spoils, because money itself and the objects in which its value is stored never spoil, while the valuation
of things such as gold and silver is a matter of universal consent. By this means, “men have agreed to
disproportionate and unequal possession of the earth, they having by a tacit and voluntary consent found
out a way, how a man may fairly possess more land than he himself can use the product of.”
Before being improved by human labor, moreover, nature is worth little, “for ‘tis labor indeed that puts the
difference of value on every thing; and let anyone consider, what the difference is between an acre of land
planted with tobacco or sugar, sown with wheat or barley; and an acre of the same land lying in common,
without any husbandry upon it.” Locke develops in characteristically subtle fashion his argument that
labor, not nature, is the almost complete source of value.
Finally, Locke’s doctrine of property elevates its priority both in the foundation of states and as an end for
politics. Private property exists in the state of nature, but without a common judge to preside over
violations against it, remains very insecure. The effort to secure their property is one of the primary
motivations for men to establish a government, and the primary purpose of that government is, in turn, to
protect that property: “The reason why men enter into society, is the preservation of their property, and the
end why they chuse and authorize a legislative, is, that there may be laws made, and rules set as guards
and fences to the properties of all the members of the society, to limit the power, and moderate the
dominion of every part and member of the society.” For Locke, the protection of property preserves the
rights to life and liberty by fencing off a private sphere free from government and other men. Indeed, one
of the criteria for tyranny is the government’s unlawful confiscation of property. Locke’s defense of
private property became one of the central tenets of classical liberalism.
Toleration
Locke wrote several “letters” for publication defending a broad government policy of religious toleration
for dissenters from the state church, the first and most well-known of which was published anonymously
in 1689. Locke’s basic position against enforcing religious uniformity had been advanced by some earlier
thinkers such as Spinoza and Milton, who were faced with the same intractable conflicts created by the
Protestant Reformation. However, toleration as government policy had been rare and often short-lived in
Europe. England’s Toleration Act of 1689 was characteristic of the limited settlements that states reached
with their religious dissenters. The Act permitted all Trinitarian Protestants to worship publicly if they
signed an oath of allegiance, but non-Anglicans still could not hold public office. Although Locke agreed
that Catholics and professed atheists were too politically dangerous to tolerate, his own case for toleration
was much broader than the Act’s permissions. Locke’s articulation of the reasons for toleration has
become particularly influential for modern liberal-democratic thought and remains one of the foundations
of American thinking about church-state relations and First Amendment jurisprudence.
In his 1689 Letter, Locke offers both principled and prudential reasons for tolerating religious dissenters.
The foundational point from which his argument proceeds is that sincere Christian faith can only arise by
a voluntary act of an individual’s private will, and so can never be externally coerced. He argues that “the
care of men’s souls cannot belong to the civil magistrate, because his power consists only in outward
force; but true and saving religion consists in the inward persuasion of the mind.” While the threat of
punishment can persuade people to act in outward conformity with the state religion, such punishments
cannot bind men’s consciences or turn their hearts toward the true faith. They instead turn them against the
government that persecutes them, and undermine the Christianity of those who impose these measures,
because the imprisonment, torture, and execution of those whose souls one sets out to save is not in
keeping with the Christian call to charity and humility.
Locke draws a sharp distinction between the duties of civil and ecclesiastical authorities, which is the
forerunner of our contemporary doctrine of the separation of church and state. (We should note, however,
that Locke was not arguing for the disestablishment of England’s state church, only for limitations on its
authority over civil affairs). The civil magistrate’s task is to “secure…the just possession of these things
belonging to this life,” whereas a church is a voluntary body whose aim is “the publick worshipping of
God, in such a manner as they judge acceptable to him, and effectual to the salvation of their souls.” Each
power thus presides over its sphere by its own means. Churches are not obligated to admit or retain
members who deny their tenets, but they cannot inflict any legal punishment on those who deviate from
them. Their powers are limited to persuasion and admonition, since coercion of the conscience is always
impossible anyway. Legal compulsion regarding only “things indifferent”—that is, things unconnected
with religious doctrine and observance—is reserved for the civil authority.
This general separation of civil and ecclesiastical authority permits Locke to argue for broad legal
toleration of competing religious doctrines, including Judaism, Islam, and even paganism. “No man
whatsoever ought to be deprived of his terrestrial enjoyments, upon account of his religion.” Nonetheless,
all is not permitted under cover of religion, and Locke imposes certain limitations on what the civil laws
should be expected to tolerate. The first is that, although the government cannot prescribe the doctrine or
ceremonies of any church, it can proscribe practices that “are not lawful in the ordinary course of life nor
in any private house” and transgress the basic conventions of the civil society, such as human sacrifice.
Locke’s second limitation on toleration concerns religious doctrines “contrary to human society, or to
those moral rules which are necessary to the preservation of civil society.” This includes the doctrines of
those Catholics who “deliver themselves up to the protection and service of another prince” and so can
never be trusted to be loyal subjects of any civil government. It also includes atheists, because their denial
of God means that “promises, covenants, and oaths, which are the bonds of humane society, can have no
hold upon an atheist.”
Education
Some Thoughts Concerning Education fills a gap in the political theory that Locke lays out in the Two
Treatises by showing how “natural freedom and subjection to parents may consist together”–that is, how
the child who is born free but not reasonable becomes reasonable enough to exercise his freedom as a full
citizen. This is an especially important question precisely because of the limitations on government
established in the Second Treatise: where the civil law is to have only limited prescriptive power over the
private lives of citizens, it becomes increasingly important to inculcate self-restraint and self-discipline
that prevent the abuse of liberty. Education in Locke is elevated beyond its narrow sense as academic
training and returned to its ancient status as a tool for the cultivation of citizenship, so much so that, where
faced with a choice between the two ends, Locke chooses the latter:
Reading and writing and learning, I allow to be necessary, but yet not the chief business. I imagine you
would think him a very foolish fellow that should not value a virtuous or wise man infinitely before a
great scholar…Learning must be had, but in the second place, as subservient to greater qualities.
Locke’s curriculum follows from many of his psychological ideas in the Essay and is based in part on his
experience as a tutor to the third earl of Shaftesbury. Its major principle is that education should take
account of, and indeed manipulate, the child’s perceptions of pain and pleasure, so that through
habituation, he eventually internalizes the correct standards of good behavior and learns to govern himself.
Locke warns against both coddling and corporal punishment as two popular but dangerous modes of
childrearing—the former because it exacerbates a child’s natural willfulness and desire for “mastery,” the
latter because it either suppresses his desires so much that it leads to a slavish disposition or tempts him
towards violence and cunning. Rather than physical rewards and punishments, Locke urges the use of
“esteem and disgrace” to inculcate good behavior, an application of “the law of fashion and reputation”
from the Essay:
Children (earlier than we perhaps think) are very sensible of praise and commendation. They find a
pleasure in being esteemed and valued, especially by their parents and those whom they depend on…
Concerning reputation…though it not be the true principle and measure of virtue…yet it is that which
comes nearest to it; and being the testimony and applause of other people’s reason, as it were by common
consent…it is the proper guide and encouragement of children, till they grow able to judge for themselves
and to find what is right by their own reason.
Because children are so desirous of praise from the adults around them, and because “children (nay, and
men too) do most by example,” it is urgent that they be kept in virtuous company and away from bad
moral influences, including notably, the influence of other children. To avoid such influences, Locke
recommends that children be instructed at home by a tutor rather than in schools. Locke’s (and later,
Rousseau’s and John Stuart Mill’s) hesitation about the influence of both private and government schools
makes an interesting contrast to modern liberalism, which often assumes the necessity of public schooling.
Locke’s recommendations for academic training parallel his broader view of the importance of winning
the child’s will without the use of force. He criticizes the traditional Latin curriculum for being harsh and
ill-adapted to the minds of children, with its emphasis on complex grammar and rules, and suggests
instead that they be taught to read and write in their own languages first, and in such a way that “learning
might be made a play and recreation to children, and that they might be brought to desire to be taught.”
When they do move on to language instruction, including Latin, they ought to be taught through speaking
the language rather than rote memorization of grammatical rules. The use of games and pleasures to
induce children to study predates Locke, but has largely made its way into modern pedagogy through him.
An Introduction to the work of Rousseau
Few political philosophers have provoked such varying interpretations as Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–
1778). The reader who approaches Rousseau for the first time encounters an author apparently fond of
great paradoxes, offering what often seem incompatible principles—praising, for instance, Sparta and
austere political virtue in one work, and extolling the goodness of the solitary individual and the private
enjoyment of the sentiment of existence in another. Indeed, Rousseau has been claimed as the inaugurator
of socialism and nationalism on the one hand, and romanticism and existentialism on the other. He was
accused early on of inspiring some of the most extreme aspects of the French Revolution and was held up
as an authority by Robespierre. Yet, alongside the portrait of Rousseau the republican revolutionary, there
are others who have claimed to find in his writings a political teaching of anti-modern reactionary
conservatism, replete with hostility to commerce and industrial development, the condemnation of large
nation-states, and an opposition to the spread of scientific knowledge generally.
Rousseau himself was aware of the paradoxical impression his thought made, and discusses the issue in
his Letter to d’Alembert on the Theatre and other places. Yet Rousseau tells us that all of his major works,
starting from the work that first made him famous, the First Discourse (the Discourse on the Arts and
Sciences), form a “system.” Each rests on the same fundamental theoretical foundations, which spring
from a single principle. In a late work, Rousseau has a character summarize the lesson he has drawn from
a careful reading of Rousseau: “I saw throughout the development of [Rousseau’s] great principle that
nature has made man happy and good but that society corrupts him and causes his misery.”
What is the nature of man’s current corruption, and what are its deepest causes, according to Rousseau?
Of what, in his view, does man’s “natural goodness” consist? What solution or solutions might there be to
cure human beings of their present maladies? The overview of Rousseau’s thought that follows considers
in very brief outline how these central questions are developed in Rousseau’s most important political
works.
Discourse on the Arts and Science–The Critique of the Enlightenment
“What will become of virtue if riches are to be acquired at any cost? The politicians of the ancient world
spoke constantly of morals and virtue; ours speak of nothing but commerce and money.”  – Discourse on
the Arts and Sciences (1750)
Rousseau’s political writing begin from his allegation of mankind’s corruption in modern European
political life. He appears as a critic of the Enlightenment and its animating view that advancement in the
arts and sciences is inextricably linked with moral and political progress. In response to a prize essay
competition from the Academy of Dijon, which posed the question, “Has the restoration of the Sciences
and the Arts Contributed to the Purification of Morals?”, Rousseau offered the iconoclastic argument that
such a restoration had failed to do so.
Rousseau argues that the popularization of philosophy by enlightenment thinkers is in fact its
vulgarization–animated not by the pure love of wisdom but by the desire for social honors and prestige.
Modern society, so far from lifting Europeans from their former servitude in feudal Europe, in fact fosters
new forms of dependence and servitude. The manners of polite society, Rousseau admonishes, are but a
counterfeit of virtue with which one masks one’s selfishness for the sake of one’s vanity. Above all, the
Enlightenment accords naturally with despotism because it is hostile to religion and even tends to breed
atheism, whereas the political virtue of such societies as Sparta and the Roman Republic was animated
above all by their citizens’ civic piety.
The First Discourse is highly rhetorical, and its surface impression can mislead about its deeper thesis. It
occasioned a number of attacks, to some of which Rousseau took the trouble to reply. (In addition, his
short writing Preface to Narcissus offers a useful summary of his argument). Rousseau was accused of
attacking learning and science while himself obviously being a man of great learning, of desiring a return
to primitive barbarism, and of advocating the burning of the great libraries of Europe. In clarifying his
views Rousseau stresses several points. First, his thesis extends beyond the specific question posed by the
Dijon Academy, for he holds that there is a fundamental opposition between science and political virtue as
such, not merely in his own day. Hence his thesis is not primarily historical, but theoretical. He does not
deny that as compared to the medieval period and its scholasticism (which he calls “a state worse than
ignorance”), the period immediately following represented a manner of progress. Yet a lesser corruption
relative to this earlier extreme must not be mistaken for the “purification of morals.”
Second, Rousseau rejects the accusation that he is an enemy of the arts and sciences. They harm a virtuous
political order, but for a society that is already corrupt, it is only the arts and sciences that can ameliorate
the effects of corruption for those few who have “not yet become bad.”
Finally, Rousseau emphasizes that science as such is not bad. It is the natural calling of those “few
sublime geniuses” of the human race (such as Bacon, Newton, and Descartes). Rather, science or
philosophy is not suitable for “man in general.” Rousseau avails himself of the ironic proclamation that he
is an “honest man who knows nothing and esteems himself none the less for it.”
Rousseau understands his First Discourse to be the work of a philosopher aimed at the protection of “man
in general” from the dangers of philosophy. At the same time, because the Enlightenment popularization
of philosophy impoverishes it, he aims also at the protection of true philosophy. This dual intention must
be kept in mind when interpreting all of Rousseau’s later works.
The Second Discourse – Nature, Human Nature, and the History of Humanity
“The Philosophers who have examined the foundations of society have all felt the necessity of going back
as far as the state of Nature, but none of them has reached it.” – Second Discourse
Rousseau states in the Confessions that his Discourse on the Origin and the Foundations of Inequality
Among Men (or Second Discourse) is the work in which his principles “are made manifest with the
greatest boldness, not to say audacity.” He takes up the theme of the state of nature, and offers a critical
reply to Hobbes and Locke, each of whom had made the concept central to their political teachings. While
Rousseau accepts Hobbes’s anti-Aristotelian contention that human beings are not by nature political
animals, he rejects Hobbes’s description of the state of nature, accusing Hobbes and others of projecting
back onto natural man the vices and psychological characteristics of man already living in society.
Part one of the work depicts human beings who are not yet corrupted by entrance into civilization. This
state is not a war of all against all, as Hobbes had claimed. The human being in this pure state of nature is
“naturally good,” by which Rousseau means that he is self-sufficient—nature supplies him with what he
desires, his wants never outstripping his needs. Man in the pure state of nature is for Rousseau not a
“noble savage,” as is sometimes claimed, but an amoral, even quite stupid animal. He is solitary, apart
from chance meetings occasioning the opportunity for sex and reproduction; care of children by females is
minimal.
The single characteristic that sets humans apart from other animals is what Rousseau calls “perfectibility.”
Man is more malleable than the other animals, possessing the ability to learn and devise better means to
satisfy his needs. Rousseau denies that man’s movement out of the pure state of nature is teleological or
providential. Rather, what lifts man is a series of “accidents” that eventually bring about the development
of greater intellectual and psychological capacities, the capacity for language being the most significant.
This process eventually lifts natural man from his pre-social state into the most primitive social groupings.
Rousseau calls this age of primitive society the “happiest and most durable epoch” and the “best state of
man.” But, his view is complicated, for he later describes this putative best state of man as one in which
“vengeances had become terrible and men bloodthirsty and cruel”; and, this putative best epoch occurs
before “all our faculties” as human beings have developed. Rousseau’s presentation of human history here
points toward a tension between the “good” of man in general or of the human species, and the “good” of
man when he is considered as an individual being with the capacity for reason, science, and philosophy.
In unfolding his conjectural history Rousseau goes on to describe the genesis of agriculture, family life,
and the idea of private property. The fundamental basis of conventional inequality arises from the unequal
distribution of property. The political community that protects private ownership originates in an act of
fraud by the few rich, who wish to dominate the many poor, an act Rousseau memorably describes as “the
most well-conceived project ever to enter the human mind” by which a “few ambitious men henceforth
subjugated the whole of Mankind to labor, servitude and misery.”
In the pure state of nature, man (and other animals) possesses two traits: amour-de-soi, or a natural love-
of-self consisting of the desire to preserve oneself; and pitié, or a spontaneous form of compassion
occasioned by witnessing the suffering of others of the same species. Although both traits remain in some
form in civil society, each is transformed by the emergence in man of a third trait or power of the soul–
amour-propre, or self-concern that originates in men’s ability to compare themselves with one another and
the corresponding desire for social esteem. Rousseau’s theory of amour-propre is complex. His
presentation often seems wholly negative; it is depicted as the source of man’s base vanity and his desire
to dominate others, and of his servitude to the opinions of others and hence his loss of true inner freedom.
Yet Rousseau also sees amour-propre as the origin of all the moral and social virtues.
On the Social Contract — The Foundations of Political Freedom
“Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains. One who believes himself the master of others is
nonetheless a greater slave than they. How did this change occur? I do not know. What can make it
legitimate? I believe I can answer this question.” – On the Social Contract
The problem of man’s corruption provides the starting point for Rousseau’s political treatise, On the
Social Contract, which presents itself as offering a political solution in the form of a blueprint for a
republican form of government.
Rousseau introduces the work by stating that he takes “men as they are and laws as they can be.” In this
way, he seeks to “reconcile…what right permits with what interest prescribes, so that justice and utility are
not at variance.” At the same time, in beginning with the proclamation that “man is born free, and
everywhere he is in chains,” Rousseau seems to call into question the legitimacy of all existing regimes.
The work is animated by the attempt to reconcile the natural freedom of the individual with the authority
of state. As its title indicates, Rousseau follows in the modern social contract tradition of Grotius, Hobbes,
and Locke. But he argues that these earlier political doctrines are incapable of securing a morally
legitimate political order: Hobbes’s Leviathan state gives legal sanction to despotic rule, while Locke’s
commercial republic cannot provide true political freedom, because its formal legal rights merely cloak
the domination of the poor by the rich.
The key concept of the Social Contract is what Rousseau calls the General Will, understood as the
collective will of the entire citizen body. In obeying the General Will and the laws formed in accordance
with it, the individual citizen, Rousseau argues, retains his original, natural freedom, because he is not
obeying any outside authority but in fact only his own will.
Rousseau’s account of the General Will has long perplexed interpreters. On the one hand, it seems to
present a democratic conception of political authority in which the collective will of a people serves as the
basis for all public morality and law. On the other hand, one can view it as a conception of the common
good that transcends the desires of the public in any specific circumstance and hence that serves, not as a
vehicle for their desires, but as a standard with which to judge them.
Of particular difficulty is understanding what Rousseau means by the statement that the General Will can
“never err.” Abstractly, this claim is coherent though tautological—the General Will, because it wills
itself, cannot be at variance with itself. Some scholars have pointed to an alternative interpretation: by the
General Will’s inability to “err” Rousseau means that the highest authority in a properly functioning
society can only be society itself, and never a different authority, namely, the pre-political rights of the
individual, or any theological claims of religious authorities.
Two additional features of The Social Contract deserve particular mention. The first is Rousseau’s
discussion of the role of the Legislator, whom he describes as the human being of “superior intelligence,”
able to see “all of men’s passions yet experienced in none of them.” Political societies require for their
founding a lawgiver capable of “changing human nature…of transforming each individual, who by
himself is a perfect and solitary whole, into a part of a larger whole.” Such a founder, Rousseau argues,
will need to use some kind of religious teaching in order to lend sufficient authority to the laws and
customs he introduces (Rousseau gives as examples Lycurgus, founder of Sparta, and Calvin, whom he
presents as a founder or re-founder of Geneva). Rousseau’s concept of the Legislator restores to modern
political philosophy a theme central to the classical political thought of Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero, and
preserved in Machiavelli in the form of the new founder-prince, but which is largely absent from the social
contract theories of Hobbes and Locke.
The problem of religious authority, raised in the discussion of the Legislator, is the one with which
Rousseau ends the work. The penultimate chapter, on “Civil Religion,” elaborates what Rousseau
considers the gravest challenge facing any political project of republican liberty in modern European life.
The classical republics that Rousseau offers elsewhere in the work as models all had as their basis civil
religions; patriotism and piety were in essence identical, as each city or nation had its particular gods. The
ancient Israelites had, according to Rousseau, a civil religion comparable to the pagan peoples under the
laws given them by Moses. All this changes with the rise of Christianity, which in its universality and in
its distinction between political and spiritual authority creates a situation of divided loyalty or sovereignty
for the citizens of any Christian polity. Rousseau offers an extraordinarily bold critique of Christianity in
these passages, and it was this part of the work that was most responsible for it being banned in France
and Rousseau’s native Geneva in his lifetime. In the closing section of the work, he concludes that
Christianity, which he says has “triumphed completely,” makes the re-establishment of healthy political
orders impossible.
Immanuel Kant
Political Philosophy
Kant’s political philosophy is entwined with his moral philosophy. Political activity is ultimately governed
by moral principles based on human autonomy. Therefore, in his essay “On the Common Saying: ‘This
May be True in Theory, But it does not Apply in Practice,’” Kant is critical of political thinkers, such
as Machiavelli, who believe that amoral or immoral means are permissible in politics. Still, although Kant
argues that morality is obligatory in politics, he does not believe that people’s actual political behavior is
controlled by duty.
One of the most important political acts required by duty is the establishment of a state based upon law,
a Rechtsstaat. In the Doctrine of Right (the second part of the Metaphysics of Morals), Kant tells us that
the only innate right is “freedom, insofar as it can coexist with the freedom of every other in accordance
with a universal law.” Human freedom and dignity must be respected, and this is possible only within a
constitutional state governed by law, which protects the civil rights of individuals. Kant differentiates
“republics,” the kind of government he advocates, from “despotisms” according to whether their executive
and legislative branches are separated from one another. When executive and legislative powers are
invested in a single body, the government becomes despotic because law is no longer universal but is
determined by a particular will. Direct democracies thus are inevitably despotisms because the majority
oppresses the minority rather than acting according to universal law.
Kant’s emphasis on lawful government and civil rights connects him to the natural rights thinking of
predecessors such as Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau. However, Kant’s justification for the state is not
limited to the justifications offered by these thinkers. Kant does not argue merely that individuals enter the
state or social contract for prudential reasons, because their interests are best served by the state, but also
that we have an obligation to respect human freedom, and this requires us to create a Rechtsstaat if one
does not already exist.
Whatever the place of morality in politics, Kant sees that humans are governed by their inclinations and
desires, which make them partial to themselves and dangerous to one another. Further, actual rulers often
repress their subjects. Yet, despite the fact that actual governments often fall short of realizing the
principles of right, Kant abjures the idea that subjects ought to revolt against existing governments to
create more perfect ones. He regards any “right to revolution” as incoherent because states are the only
existing embodiment of right. Instead, Kant argues that subjects always have a duty to obey their
governments, though they may use their public reason to criticize them.
Kant’s political philosophy is characterized by a disjunction between the realm of political principle and
the material motives of much human behavior. In order to draw these two together, he argues that it is
precisely by means of humankind’s negative or asocial characteristics that societies are created and drawn
closer to meeting the requirements of morality. As he puts in his essay “Perpetual Peace,” the problem of
civil government can be solved even for a race of devils, if they be intelligent. Even the most self-
interested actors will come to understand that a state is the best means of protecting their own interests
against others, even if they would rather exempt themselves from the law. They would design institutions
which could constrain all to obey the law and act as if they were governed by morality. In Kant’s words,
the establishment of a lawful and peaceful state “does not require that we know how to attain the moral
improvement of men but only that we should know the mechanism of nature in order to use it on men,
organizing the conflict of the hostile intentions present in a people in such a way that they must compel
themselves to submit to coercive laws.”
Kant’s views on international relations exhibit the same tension between principle and fact. Kant argues
that a state of perpetual peace is required morally. However, such a state can only come about when a set
of improbable political conditions take effect. For perpetual peace to occur, all states must possess a
republican civil constitution, participate in a union of states, abolish standing armies, and refuse to take on
national debts for war, among several other conditions. Although we cannot expect existing governments
to establish these conditions merely from their own desires, a historical teleology exists (Kant argues)
whereby they might come about nonetheless. War plays a central role in this process. It is under the threat
of war that humans form governments, and find that republican constitutions are most effective in meeting
internal and external dangers. Moreover, as individuals and states pursue their interests through the
medium of growing commerce, they find that war is incompatible with profit. States will thus avoid war in
order more effectively to pursue wealth. Part of the reason that the continued pursuit of self-interest
promotes peace is that modernization and economic advancement will make wars so catastrophic in their
effects and expensive in their conduct that states will become increasingly inclined to avoid them. We
therefore come closer and closer to the condition of peace that morality enjoins.
Although political institutions are brought about by the wicked elements in the human constitution, Kant
hopes that such institutions might have some rehabilitative effects on their subjects. As he writes in
“Perpetual Peace”: “A good constitution is not to be expected from morality, but, conversely, a good
moral condition of a people is to be expected only under a good constitution.” However, the gap between
the ideal world of morality and the natural world of politics can never be closed completely. Kantian
morality depends on intentions. If a race of devils act according to the law only because they are
compelled to by their own interest, their state would not be a morally good one. They only act as if they
are moral. Morality requires that one follows duty out of a will to do so. Yet, it is impossible, within the
natural world, to distinguish with certainty between an individual who acts from duty and one who follows
the law out of a natural inclination. Indeed, it is impossible to make this distinction with certainty in one’s
own case. Nor is it possible to distinguish a state of firmly established perpetual peace from a temporary
lull in international conflict. In spite of these limits, Kant argues that the mere possibility of perpetual
peace and of the coincidence of happiness and morality is enough to oblige us to make these ideals our
ends.