The Rootless Wanderer
In writing these blogs, I try to give some idea of the nature of the person whose philosophy I am reviewing. Last week, I gave a longer introduction to Rousseau; this week, I want to make a few concluding remarks. As a philosopher, Jean-Jacque Rousseau is easy to admire; as a person he is not so easy to admire. He was a wounded and difficult person.
Rousseau never married, yet fathered five children by a common law wife, all of which children he abandoned to an orphanage. [1] He lived with this woman for many years, without bothering to marry her—something both his Catholic and Protestant faiths would prohibit. The fact that he abandoned his children, as he had been abandoned, speaks of the deep wounding of his childhood.
At an early age, he lied about a theft he had committed, condemning the woman he falsely blamed to protect himself to a terrible future. Although he regretted his action, he took no steps to undo his deceit. He was in frequent conflict with friends and foes alike. Both Voltaire and Edmund Burke, two very different men, found Rousseau a difficult person. The trauma of his childhood and youth left an indelible mark on his character. In any case, he is a complex human being.
As indicated last week, Rousseau was a Genevan, and signed his most important works, “Jean-Jacque Rousseau, Citizen of Geneva.” Yet, he was never really at home in Geneva or anywhere else. He gave up his citizenship twice during his lifetime. His life was one of physical and intellectual wandering. His later years were marked by mental illness, conflict with others, and financial and other difficulties. In the end, his life was a public success, but a personal failure. He was a wanderer, physically, intellectually, and morally, all his life. Nevertheless, the more one reads him, the greater his status as a thinker becomes, even if, like me, one is not fully attracted to his philosophy.
The Social Contract
Inequality and the Social Contract. Like Hobbes and Locke, Rousseau bases his political philosophy on the notion of a social contract that establishes a polity. Hobbes, as we have seen, based his notion of a social contract on the need to avoid the “endless war of everyone against everyone else.” Locke bases his theory of the social contract upon the social nature of the human person. Rousseau bases his theory on the inequality of human persons and the need of those in power, and at the peak of existing social structures, to secure their position. [2] This is the part of Rousseau’s philosophy most directly responsible for modern revolutionary theory.
For Rousseau, the creation of private property and privilege was bound to lead to wars, social tension, and social evils. Those with status easily saw this as a threat and reacted by proposing a social contract. Thus, he says:
“With this end in mind, after having shown his neighbors the horror of a situation that armed them all against each other and made their possessions as burdensome as their needs, and in which no one could find safety in either poverty or wealth, he easily invented specious reasons to lead them to his goal. ‘Let us unite,’ he says to them, ‘in order to protect the weak from the oppressions, restrain the ambitious, and assure everyone of possessing what belongs to them.’” [3]
The result of this artifice, was an institutionalization of the power of those with property and position. In other words, for Rousseau the beginning of political society was a deception, a crime, and a mistake. Obviously, it is hard to create a coherently optimistic view of human society if, in the end, human society is, and always has been, a mistake and con by the powerful against the weak.
In this series, I try to maintain a sympathetic dialogue with the writers of the past, recognizing that in every social situation, good people have tried to improve society as best they knew how. The recent tendency to critique past thinkers and actors because they did not create a perfect world is one of the things these blogs are intended to critique and change: There is no perfect society, and no thinker is capable of providing an unblemished blueprint for one. In this case, one can appreciate the great inequality that plagued French society of Rousseau’s day (and indeed our own). Nevertheless, it is difficult to see Rousseau’s analysis as completely satisfactory.
Likely as not, human society was in the first instance created by any form of compact, but imposed by the strong or simply evolved as an extension of the human family as larger groups emerged. History is a long, tragic story of the human race’s search for justice and a just social order. No group of people has ever been able to endure without a political organization, and some organization is generally better than none at all. In this argument, Rousseau the literary provocateur has overstated his case.
One of the implications of Rousseau’s notion of the unfortunate beginning of society is a kind of revolutionary hopelessness. If human society was a mistake from the inception, then it is hard to see a way forward that does not include the destruction of human society. In this respect, he was a forerunner of what has emerged in the Cancel Culture movement and the infinite number of groups that critique Western Society and its roots.
The Free Individual. Rousseau begins his “On the Social Contract” with one of the most famous lines in philosophical history: “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.” [4] As catchy is the phrase may be, it is one of the least accurate in literary and philosophical history. Rousseau might easily and more accurately on his own analysis have said, “The human race was born in slavery, but every so often achieves some degree of freedom.” Historically, it would have been more accurate and would point more clearly to the precarious nature of freedom, which is created and maintained only with great difficulty.
One characteristic that Rousseau, Locke and Hobbes have in common is the atomistic reliance on the individual abstracted from preexisting social ties as the foundation of society. This is, of course, also historically inaccurate. In my view, it is also philosophically the wrong place to begin. Because human beings emerge from a society (families, schools, etc.) we must see individuals and human social structure as “emergent phenomenon” and dependent upon the societies from which they emerge. To paraphrase Rousseau: Human beings are born in society, and develop individuality and secure freedom only as they interact with the persons in that society.” When the members of a society grant individuals the ability to develop themselves, such people find a unique personhood that is to be cherished by that society to the extent possible.
As indicated throughout this series of blogs, there has never been a “state of nature” separate from some form of social institutions, from the crudest family of savages to the most complex modern societies. Throughout human history, most societies have lacked significant institutional or personal freedom. We, in the modern West, are a unique development, and one that needs to be preserved. To attempt to continue to fit political philosophy into the structure of social contract theory, as useful as it has been, is to force facts to fit a theory instead of creating a theory that fits the facts.
The General Will
The Subjective Move. Rousseau is the originator of the notion of a “General Will” expressed by the voters in a democratic society. Many people think of it as his foundational achievement as a social and political philosopher. If the idea of a Social Contract provides a vehicle to construct a society of atomized individuals, the General Will as a political idea is an answer to the question the mechanism that can form a society based on the Social Contract.
While ancient writers focused on ideas like “The General Good” or “Public Peace” (transcendent public goods built into the nature of human society), Rousseau develops a notion of a “General Will” of the people. Right at the beginning one sees the individualistic and power-focused nature of modernity. The General Will is not something outside of the human person society seeks, it is something inside of the human condition to be imposed. As a “General Will” of the people, it has embedded within it a lack of limitations. This movement is the foundation of the modern tendency towards tyranny on a large scale. [5] A more humble place to start might be to consider that General Will and General Good as something we are seeking as a polity, but which our human finitude and self-centeredness makes impossible to fully achieve.
Freedom and the General Will. Rousseau was aware of the problem with an unrestricted General Will and tries as best he can to find a reasonable way in which freedom can be protected. He recognizes that the basic problem of the General Will is to provide for a social cohesion while maintaining some idea of personal freedom. [6] The problem is that the social contract as conceived of by at least Hobbes and Rousseau, requires that the individual grants all personal rights (“whole and entire” to freedom and property to the state, and receives back in return his or her rights to share in the public good. [7] This results in a union of persons, “as perfect as possible.” [8]
At this point it is important to highlight another weakness in the modern project for social organization: having reduced human society to atomized units (individuals) who are united not by social bonds of love but by “contract,” the union is one of force imposed by power—the power of the majority. The idea of balance of powers and limited government are the inevitable result of this movement, since the power is by its very nature absolute and susceptible of abuse.
In Rousseau’s view, the act of giving one’s self to the whole amounts to giving one’s self to no one. [9] Thus, Rousseau says:
“Finally, in giving himself to all, each person gives himself to no one. And, since there is no associate over whom he does not acquire the same right that he would grant others over himself, he gains the equivalent of everything he loses, along with a greater amount of force to preserve what he has. If, therefore, one eliminates from the social contract everything which is not essential to one once finds that it is reduceable to the following terms. Each of us places his person and all his power in common under the supreme direction of the general will; and as once, we receive each member as an indivisible part of the whole. “ [10]
A close analysis of the foregoing quotation shows the difficulty with Rousseau’s project. It is not coherent to say that people can both give themselves to an idealized “whole” and not give oneself to anyone. It assumes that the “whole” will have the same interests as the “one” and respect the rights and humanity of the one, which human experience shows to be unlikely. The experience of humanity with dictatorships of left and right, from the French revolution to contemporary societies, shows that this is not the case.
In every totalitarian, communistic or oligarchic state, whoever is in control has abused those who are part of the “indivisible whole” they lead. The problem is easily identified by the use of terms like “force and power.” Force and power do not give space for personal freedom, love and respect for the human individual does. Secondly, a sovereign of unlimited power, is almost certainly going to abuse that power, unless human nature changes dramatically from what the unvaried experience of the human race throughout history shows to be likely.
In my view, all this intellectual confusion flows from a mechanical view of nature, of human nature and human society combined with an inaccurate view of human nature. The way out is not a better social compact theory (a view that will be finally defended when, if ever, these blogs reach Rawls and contemporary society), but a merger of social contract theory into a more organic and human view of society that sees human relationship and human sociability as the fundamental foundation of society, upon which any “social compact” rests.
Secondly, as I think Rousseau would agree, the notion of a “General Will” is simply incoherent in modern, large, bureaucratic nation states. His theory was formed with small, socially bonded, racially homogenous, religiously Christian, Geneva in mind. Modern multi-cultural societies are much too complex for any such notion to be a useful guide to political life and leadership. The General Will is too easily seen as the “Will of the Majority,” something easily manipulated by revolutionaries and oligarchs in every age. Despite Rousseau’s attempts to distinguish the two, political parties and politicians are inclined to view themselves and their policy preferences as embodying the General Will, which is one of the causes of so much of the policy incoherence of our society.
Calvin and Rousseau
Before concluding, I want to reflect on Calvin in the light of Rousseau. The historical counterpoint of Calvin and Rousseau is important in order to apprehend the difficulty of attempts of some to create a “Christian America” on a Calvinist basis. By the time of Rousseau, only 200 years after Calvin, intellectuals in Europe had reacted against the narrow confines of the intellectual system that Calvin and his followers created. The modern secular world was in the process of emerging, with its materialism, blind faith in human progress, and rejection of tradition and traditional religious faith. Attempts to create a “Christian America” are likely to experience a similar fate even if they were successful (which I think highly unlikely). In fact, we may be experiencing such a reaction today in the United States. One of Newton’s laws of physics states that “Every action is likely to provoke an equal opposite reaction.” In my experience, this is true in families, the church, local and national politics, and life in general. Even if a “Christian America” could be created or recreated (depending on your view), it would be reacted against within a short time and forgotten in only a slightly longer period of time. The best course for Christians, and followers of Calvin (which I have been most of my adult life), is to focus upon serving with wisdom and love the society we are in and that society that is emerging, remembering that “the Son of man came to serve, not to be served” (Mark 20:28), and that Christians are called to “take up their crosses” and follow their master (Matthew 16:24).
Conclusion
In these two short blogs, I have been only able to scratch the surface of the depth of Rousseau’s thought. As mentioned before, I think of Rousseau as less of a modern thinker as a kind of late Renaissance thinker trying to defend ideals of classical society in the face of the theories of Locke and especially Hobbes. I think that he would be appalled by the use of his ideas by French and modern revolutionaries. A true and just appraisal of this thought would require much time and a much better mind than I possess. For the purposes of this series of blogs, it is important to see his notion of the General Will and the Social Compact as both continuous with Hobbes and Locke and exploratory of the implications and difficulties in their work.
I cannot be sure, but I think that Rousseau would agree with most of what I have said in this blog. If I am correct in my basic analysis of Rousseau as fundamentally a classic and Renaissance thinker, reacting against the excesses of the Enlightenment, then he too would see where the Enlightenment project has led, the dead end it has reached, and the need for a more human and organic political theory—one that incorporates notions of social contract and the necessity of governments to seek to serve the will and desires of those they lead, while avoiding the focus on will and power to which the Enlightenment project was so susceptible.
Finally, I may return to Rousseau. In Part 3 of the Social Contract he much modifies the more extreme implications of what he earlier says. In addition, my time in this blog as not allowed me to talk about his ideas on the subject of war and of political economy, which I would like to explore sometime in the future.
Copyright 2021, G. Christopher Scruggs, All Rights Reserved
[1] See, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, at Britannica.com, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jean-Jacques-Rousseau, downloaded March 24, 2021 which I have relied upon for some of this biography.
[2] “Discourse on Inequality” in Jean-Jacque Rousseau: The Basic Writings 2nd ed. Trans and Edited by Donald A. Cross (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Press), 78. All citations in this blog are from this edition of Rousseau’s work.
[3] Id, at 79.
[4] “On the Social Contract” in Jean-Jacque Rousseau: The Basic Writings 2nd ed. Trans and Edited by Donald A. Cross (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Press), 136.
[5] I am not entirely happy with this statement of the situation. Certainly, there is an objective aspect to the General Will, if such a think exists. It is, however, dependent upon the subjective wills of the people rather than being something rationally and ideally objective as, for example, Plato and the classic tradition would have thought. In any case, the notion of a General Will of the people has led, and is inclined to lead, to over-reaching by people in power who may consider that they are the embodiment of the General Will.
[6] On the Social Contract, 164.
[7] Id.
[8] Id.
[9] Id.
[10] Id. I have underlined force and power. The italics are in the original.