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Jean-Jacques RousseauThe Social Contract
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1762A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
How to Balance Liberty with Authority
Rousseau’s central dilemma is how to build an ordered political community that is answerable to civil authority, without sacrificing an undue amount of humankind’s natural liberty. His love of natural liberty distinguishes him from political theorists like Hobbes, who believes that natural unfettered human freedom leads to a state of total war and lives that are “solitary, nasty, brutish, and short” (Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan. Baltimore: Penguin Books. 1968.). It follows, then, that humankind should give up its freedoms in return for protection from a sovereign authority, ideally a king who can act decisively and forcefully to preserve the state.
By contrast, one of the cornerstones of Rousseau’s philosophy is that people are naturally compassionate, but society corrupts this impulse. As humankind proliferated, competition for resources required humanity to cooperate if it expected to survive. This cooperation required individuals to form associations in which each member complied with the dictates of some authority. Theorists like Machiavelli argue that authority is rooted in brute force; the individual strong enough to seize power is entitled to wield it. But Rousseau rejects this doctrine as being wholly incompatible with natural rights and liberties, concluding, “To yield to force is an act of necessity, not of will—at the most, an act of prudence. In what sense can it be a duty?” (24).
Hobbes’s solution is to establish an implicit social contract between ruler and ruled, but to Rousseau this remains insufficient because it requires the subject to relinquish all their rights: “To renounce liberty is to renounce being a man, to surrender the rights of humanity and even its duties” (25). Instead, Rousseau’s social contract exists between the people and what he calls “the general will.” The general will is an abstract concept representing the common interest of a group of people who decide to live in a political association together. Laws are passed according to this will, and no individual is asked to give up more than any other member of the community. This, according to Rousseau, is the best way to preserve liberty while still requiring individuals to comply with the law in an ordered society.
Some of Rousseau’s contemporaries, particularly Voltaire, question whether people who subjugate their individual will to the general will can really be considered free. In the margins of his copy of The Social Contract, Voltaire wrote: “All of this is wrong. I do not give myself completely to my fellow citizens. I do not give the right to kill me and rob me by the majority. I obey to help my fellow citizens and to get their assistance, to do justice and to receive it” (“‘The Social Contract.’ Voltaire’s notes.” The National Library of Russia Online Exhibitions. Retrieved: 20 Jul. 2021. http://expositions.nlr.ru/eng/ex_rare/Voltaire_Rousseau/dogovor.php.). Rousseau would argue, however, that the “civil liberty” one gains from deferring to the general will is an elevated form of liberty that transcends even natural liberty. He writes, “[W]hat a man acquires in the civil state [is] moral liberty, which alone makes him truly master of himself; for the mere impulse of appetite is slavery, while obedience to a law which we prescribe to ourselves is liberty” (29). The freest individual, he believes, is the one who chooses to live according to the common good rather than be driven by one’s appetites.
The Best Form of Government Depends on the Circumstances
In keeping with the political theory of his day, Rousseau identifies three basic forms of suitable government: monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy. Monarchical governments answer to one individual magistrate, generally a king or queen. Aristocratic governments are led by a minority group of magistrates, elevated to their position either by birth or by popular election. Democratic governments involve the direct political participation of all or a significant majority of citizens; in effect, every individual in the political community is a magistrate.
For all of the forcefully negative rhetoric he directs toward monarchies in Book 1, Rousseau admits that under some circumstances a single king or queen is most appropriate. The biggest factor when determining if a state would be best served by a monarchy is its size, as large territories present unique and daunting administrative challenges. Where monarchies have an advantage is in the force, speed, and decisiveness with which their rulers may act, given that they do not have to contend with other magistrates in an aristocratic council—let alone tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of other magistrates in a democracy. The obvious downside to monarchy, however, is that this force of governance, in the hands of an evil or incompetent monarch, can easily be applied in ways that harm the body politic. A wicked monarch may become a despot, instituting tyrannical rule that betrays the general will by engaging in arrogant wars of offense and fleecing its populace to pay for them. An incompetent monarch may allow power to slip into the hands of self-motivated ministers, leading to a weakened state that eventually tends toward anarchy.
By contrast, Rousseau believes democracies are only suitable for very small territories with modest populations. This is largely due to practical considerations, as it is simply unworkable to ensure equal political participation from millions of citizens, and even if this was possible, the government would be too slow and enervated to act decisively to ensure peace and prosperity—the entire object of political association in the first place. Keep in mind that when Rousseau refers to democracies, he refers to pure direct democracy, in which every citizen or a significant majority plays a role in the execution and administration of laws, not the representative form of democracy adopted by the United States and many other modern western republics. Moreover, he admits that the democracies of ancient Sparta and the Roman Republic may only be possible when there is a permanent underclass of disenfranchised enslaved people: “Is liberty maintained only by the help of slavery? It may be so” (58).
While there may be no best form of government for every circumstance, the form Rousseau prefers in most circumstances is aristocracy, specifically elective aristocracy. He believes aristocracy represents a happy medium possessing some of the force and decisiveness of monarchies, with some of the protections against despotism of democracies. Finally, he steps out of the realm of the theoretical to point out that most governments are a mixture of two or more of these forms, with some autonomy given to ministers in a monarchy, and barriers to participation in place in most democracies.
The Relationship Between Sovereignty, the Government, and the People
When political theorists discuss sovereignty or the sovereign, they essentially mean “supreme authority.” Rousseau is no different, yet where he most differs is that in his view “the government” is not a form of sovereignty, properly speaking. No monarch, magistrate, or assembly is sovereign in Rousseau’s formulation of the social contract. Instead, only the transcendent general will is sovereign, and therefore his contract is between the people and the general will only. The government, whether it be monarchical, aristocratic, or democratic, is merely commissioned to carry out the laws which are dictated ahead of time by the general will. As such, Rousseau writes, “[The general will] is always ready to sacrifice the government to the people, and never to sacrifice the people to the government” (44).
These distinctions are important to understanding how Rousseau thinks about the separation of powers, a cornerstone of modern republics. The notion that legislative power, or lawmaking, should be separate from executive power, or the execution and enforcement of those laws, was pioneered in 1690 by the English philosopher John Locke in his Two Treatises of Government. The idea was refined and expanded upon to include the judiciary branch—which interprets laws—in Montesquieu’s The Spirit of the Laws in 1748. (Montesquieu is quoted by Rousseau on three separate occasions in The Social Contract).
Rousseau departs from Locke and Montesquieu in that he does not divide sovereign authority into legislative, executive, and judicial branches. In his mind, sovereignty is indivisible, as the general will is eternal and transcendent. It nevertheless finds its expression through original legislative action, the passing of laws prior to the formation of the state. Only the sovereign general will may pass these laws, and they must be entirely general in their wording and effect. It is then up to the government to execute the laws in particular matters, yet these acts of execution and enforcement do not constitute sovereignty. This creates an additional protection against oppression, for if the government begins to perform its duties in such a manner that curtails some members’ liberties at the expense of others, the people are free to dissolve the government at no risk to the social contract.
This formulation, however, creates some practical difficulties regarding legislation. Rousseau’s idea of the legislator who passes down the laws of sovereignty at the onset of a state’s existence is largely an abstraction. He gives little clue pertaining to where these legislators come from except to say that they should ideally be an outsider. Legislators gain their authority to make laws from the people, yet Rousseau is vague about why a people would grant law-making authority to someone outside their community or how the legislator might prove their credentials, aside from appealing to divine authority. Furthermore, Rousseau admits that one of the most difficult challenges for legislators is to convince the people that the proposed laws are good, when such people—having not yet known good laws—are ill-suited to receive them.
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