Social Contract

Of the social Contract or Principles of the political right is a political work of Philosophie of Jean-Jacques Rousseau published in 1762. It is known to expose clearly and forces that the only form legitimate political power is the capacity which finds its base in the will of the people (or “general Will”). He is often regarded as the principal inspirer of the ideas of the French revolution.

Context of the social Contract

Origin and bases of the inequality

The Politique is a subject which interests Rousseau for a long time, and the social Contract is not the first of its works which is devoted there. Thus, as of 1735 it gives an idea of what will be its design and its interest for the political subject in the article “Political Economy” of the Encyclopédie or reasoned Dictionary of sciences, arts and the trades with this sentence: “It is certain that the people are, with long, which the government makes them be”; phrases that in 1752 it reformulates in the foreword of Narcisse or the Lover of itself : “the defects do not belong as well to the man as with the badly controlled man”: the man is for him good by nature, it is the company which can make it bad.

Is the Speech on the origin and the bases of the inequality among the men , appeared in 1755 is the work of Rousseau to answer the question raised by the academy of Dijon in 1753 “Which the origin of the inequality among the men and if it is authorized by the natural law? ”. The nature of the man before the History and the types of company do not deteriorate it is for Rousseau the means of comparing and of ruling on these various types of organization. Rousseau thus defines the state of nature, which is not a “wild state” but a philosophical fiction like assumption Heuristique, a state obtained by abstraction by withdrawing what the company brought to the man. It describes then the way which had the man to organize in company, starting from the practice of the Agriculture and the Property right which necessarily occurs about it. The Discours treats legitimacy of the companies and types of capacities, and what will be the political foundations of the social Contract exposes.

Presentation of the Social Contract

In Of the social contract , Rousseau establishes that a social good organization rests on a pact guaranteeing the equality and freedom between the citizens. This pact is contracted between all the participants, i.e. the exhaustive whole of the citizens. In the Social pact, each one gives up its natural freedom to gain a civil liberty. The popular Souveraineté is the basic principle of the social contract. The indivisibility of this Souveraineté is another basic principle, by which it should be understood that the capacity of the Sovereign could not be divided (Rousseau employs this term to designate the sovereign people) and cannot separate some by personal interest, because the personal interest is contrary with the research of the general interest, alone objective of the social contract. This social contract, Rousseau sees it like making following the state of nature in which reign the law of the strongest. For him, the law of the strongest cannot be a guiding principle of a company because it is incompatible with the general interest, and thus with the social contract: “Most extremely is never enough strong to be always the Master, if it does not transform his force into right and obedience to have about it. ”
The loss of the social contract, it is the return to the state of nature, primitive, animal, “tyrannical and vain”. A company which breaks its social contract would not be any more one free society….

Of the social contract starts with these words:

“I want to seek if, in the civil order, there can be some rule of legitimate and sure administration, by taking the men such as they are, and the laws such as they can be. I will try to always combine, in this research, which the right allows with what interest prescribed, so that justice and the utility are not divided. ” (Book I, Preamble)

Of the social contract is a political treaty of philosophy presenting how the man, once passed of the state likely to it state of company, can set up an social order at the service of the general interest . The social pact which Rousseau proposes establishes that each one must give up its natural rights to obtain the freedom which the company gets. This Aliénation of each subject of the State is this pact which offers to each one the equality: “The clauses social pact are reduced all to only one: the total alienation of each associate with all his rights at all the community: because firstly, each one being given entire, the condition is equal for all; and the condition being equal for all, no one does not may find it beneficial to make it expensive to the others. ” (Book I, Chapter 6) The legitimacy of the social pact rests on the fact that the man does not alienate with the clean direction his natural right but understands that the social pact is on the contrary the indispensable condition of the existence of its natural right.

It is on this pact that Rousseau makes rest the democracy. If freedom and the equality are not ensured by the sovereign people (that it calls the Sovereign by personification) towards itself, or so of the private interests then do that the pact is divided or alienated (chapters 2.1 and 2.2 reference), it is the primitive state of nature which takes again its rights. Rousseau says that to break this pact will be to make that “the state of nature would remain, and association would become necessarily tyrannical or vain”.

For Rousseau, “the principle of the political life is in the sovereign authority”, and any division of this authority is harmful: “All the times that one believes to see the Souveraineté divided, one are mistaken; that the rights which one takes for parts of this Souveraineté him are all subordinates, and always suppose supreme wills of which these rights give only the execution. ”

It also tackles the legislative problems, in the delivers II, (“by the social pact, we gave the existence and the life to the body politic: it is now a question of giving him the movement and the will by the legislation. ”) by specifying the concept of law, which applies to the whole of the people, and is ruled by the whole of the people, sovereign: “When all the people rule on all the people, he considers only itself; and if it is formed a ratio then, it is whole object under a point of view with the whole object under another point of view, without any division of the whole. Then the matter on which one statue is general like the will which rules. It is this act which I call a law. ” (Book II, Chapter 6) In this delicate part, Rousseau attempts to maintain and show that “only the public interest controls”. It then starts to approach different the bodies body politic , with, for example the legislator .

The delivers III presents the various shapes of government, of legislatures, and the delivers IV between more precisely in the democratic practices (tribunat, election…)

Detailed plan of the work

DELIVER I

The introduction of book I is essential because it is there that Rousseau defines the ends of the Social Contract : “I want to seek if, in the civil order, there can be some rule of legitimate and sure administration (...)”. Rousseau thus wonders which conditions the political power could be legitimate, i.e. a type of company in which the man will not be not alienated. It will take “the interest however constantly” counts some meaning by there that it will want to describe a political power legitimates and who moreover will correspond to the interests of any man.

Chapter I (“Prone of this first Book”). It starts with the very famous sentence “the man was born free, and everywhere it is in irons”. By there, in a concise way, Rousseau denounces the state of alienation which introduces any form of illegitimate political power and set of themes of the following chapters.

Chapter II (“Of the first Companies”). Rousseau initially will show that the base of any company is a convention. The family is the first case studied by Rousseau of which he denies at once that it is natural. What is natural or more exactly what is registered in the nature of the man it is the desire to preserve itself: " Its first law is to take care of its own conservation, its first aid are those which it owes with him-même". And Rousseau to add “(...) the children only remain related to the father as a long time as they need him to preserve itself. As soon as that this need ceases, the natural bond dissolves. ”

Rousseau evokes then the opinion of Aristote, of Hobbes and Grotius according to which the company does not rest on a convention but on the superiority of certain individuals. According to this thesis, it is thus the superiority of some which is with the base of the social hierarchy. Rousseau criticizes this idea while pointing out that “any man born in slavery is born for slavery, anything is not more certain. ” But he explains at once: “the slaves lose all in their irons, until the desire to leave there; they like their constraint as the companions of Ulysses liked their degradation” wanting to say by there that the social hierarchy is not natural but that it rests on an original convention. He makes fun even of this idea because being him even downward of Adam and Noah he could claim to be able to reign on the whole of mankind.

Chapter III (“Of the right of most extremely”). This chapter as well as chapter IV will disqualify two types of capacities like types of legitimate power: slavery and the force. Rousseau disqualifies this second type of being able because of the following argument: when I yield to the force, the physical threat or the threat, I am careful. But that does not mean only that which uses of its force against me has of it the right or which its capacity is legitimate. “To yield to the force is an act of need, not of will; it is at most an act of prudence. In which direction could this be a duty? ”

Chapter IV (“Of slavery”): Slavery is him also an illegitimate convention. The primary reason of Rousseau to affirm that is the following one: that which is put in slavery cannot want it voluntarily in any case if it is healthy of spirit. Slavery is thus always the fruit of an external pressure and thus it would not know to be legitimate. “Thus, of some direction which one considers the things, the right of slavery is null, not only because it is illegitimate, but because it is absurd and does not mean anything. These words, slave and right, are contradictory; they are excluded mutually. Either of a man to a man, or of a man to people, this speech will be always also foolish: “I make with you a convention all with your load and all with my profit, which I will observe as much as I will like it, and that you will observe as much as I will like it. ”. Because, according to Rousseau, to give up freedom is incompatible with the human nature (“is to give up its quality of man, with the rights of humanity, even with its duties”). Such a renouncement cannot have price.

Rousseau raises moreover a whole series of difficulties which those encounter which would like to affirm the legitimacy of slavery.

Grotius affirms for example that a whole people could alienate his freedom to make themselves prone of a king. That Rousseau answers that even if a man had the right to alienate himself near a Master it could not do it for his children (“they are born men and free; their freedom belongs to them, no one has right to have which it only them”).
Moreover, “Grotius and the others draw from the war another origin of the alleged right of slavery. The winner having, according to them, the right to kill overcome, this one can repurchase his life at the expense of his freedom; all the more legitimate convention as it turns to the profit from both. ” But the war is not a private relation but of State in State and could not exist in the state of nature or the social state where the laws condition the human reports/ratios. The war and the right of conquest have like bases only the law of the strongest.

Chapter V (“Which it is always necessary to go up with the first convention”). This chapter revêt an particular importance because it is only here that Rousseau will start to develop its own design of what constitutes a legitimate power.

The question which Rousseau raises is the following one: how the constitution of people as an entity sui generis is possible? In other words: in which (S) condition (S) an aggregate of individuals forms a whole which one can describe as people? “it would be good to examine the act by which people are people; because this act, being necessarily former to the other, is the true base of the company. ”

When “of the scattered men successively controlled to only one”, it is indeed only of aggregation and not about association; an organization which does not resist time. According to Grotius people can be given to a king. The people are thus people before being given. The true base of the company is with the result that the people regard themselves as such, and it is what it will be necessary to study. It is this question which will lead Rousseau to expose celebrates it theory of the social contract.

Chapter VI (“Of the social pact”).

In this chapter Rousseau will bring a very original answer to the question which it raised with the whole beginning of the Social Contract : “I want to seek if, in the civil order, there can be some rule of legitimate and sure administration (...)” (Foreword with the first book). In other words: how an unspecified authority can be imposed in a legitimate way on people? “To find a form of association which defends and protects from all the common force the person and the goods of each associate, and by which each one, linking itself with all, however obeys only itself, and remains as free as before. Such is the fundamental problems whose social Contract gives the solution. ”

The originality of the solution of Rousseau is that it will exceed dualism opposing the people and the political power one to the other. It indeed will see in the constitution of a political power putting back on the social contract the base even of the existence of the people. In Kantian terms one can say that the political power insofar as it rests on the social contract is the condition of possibility of the existence of the people as people and not as a simple aggregation. “(...) This act of association produces a moral and collective body, composed of as many members as the assembly has voice, which receives from this same act her unit, its me common, its life and its will. ” The question of the legitimacy of a capacity resting about the social contract thus does not arise more. The political authority is not indeed any more one violence made to the people but what enables him to exist.

The social contract is necessary according to Rousseau when the needs are higher than what each man can make to provide for it by itself. To survive it is necessary for them then to be linked and “act in concert”.

The fundamental condition of the social contract is “the total alienation of each associate with all his rights at all the community”. The gasoline of the social pact is summarized as follows: “Each one of us shares his person and all her power under the supreme direction of the general Will; and we receive in body each member like indivisible part of the whole”. This has several consequences:

engagement is total and identical for all;
each one does not may find it beneficial any to make it unjust because this injustice would relate to it directly;
“finally, each one being given to all is not given to anybody”.

This act of association produces a body moral and collective is called now République or body politic (formerly one said: “Quoted”), named by its member “State when it is passive, Souverain when it is active, Puissance by comparing it with its similar”. The citizens take the name of people: “Citizens like participant in L `sovereign authority, Subjects as subjected to the laws of the State. ”

Chapter VII (“Of the Sovereign”): Association is double and reciprocal: each individual is citizen because it takes part in the sovereign authority, and subject because it is subjected to the laws. The sovereign could not by his unit limit itself with laws, it is held only by what requires the social contract. The sovereign does not need guarantor compared to his subjects: he cannot have contrary interest with the private individuals who compose it. On the other hand each individual can have a particular will which differs from that from sovereign (by accepting the rights which is them his as a citizen but by refusing those of subject), it is this possible injustice which gives to the sovereign the right of constraint. One can force that which does not comply with the rules “with being free” thus to respect them because “obedience with the law which one was prescribed is freedom”. This constraint makes the social pact possible, and guarantees its good performance and its justice, without that engagement would be absurd.

Chapter VIII : (“Of the civil statue”): The passage of the state likely to it civil statue transforms the live animal of the instinct into gifted of reason and intelligent man, basing its acts on the reason; it then gains moral freedom and the possibility of property (different from the possession which is the effect of the force) guarantee by the law.

Chapter IX (“Of the real field”): Within the framework of the social contract each one is given, like all its goods, with the sovereign, who restores them by guaranteeing some the right. The Property right is thus one of the effects of the social pact, which exists only thanks to the safety of the community.

The right of first occupant on a ground, which is a right only after creation of the property right, depends on several conditions: that nobody lives there previously, that one occupies only the quantity of ground necessary, and that one works there. The property is then limited, and the social pact allows a moral and legitimate equality between the men. “the fundamental pact substitutes a moral and legitimate equality so that nature had been able to put physical inequality between the men, and that, being able to be unequal in force or genius, they all become equal by convention and of right”.

DELIVER II

Chapitre I (“That the Souveraineté is inalienable”): The principles established in the first book establish that the forces of the State can only be directed by the general Will (the agreement of the private interests) for tending towards the community property. The sovereign, being a collective, can agree temporarily with the will of a man, but could not subject itself in the duration to its will: it can be represented only by itself.

Chapitre II (“That the Souveraineté is indivisible”): The sovereign is a collective being, it cannot be divided or to exclude whoever without what it would be nothing any more but the expression of a particular will. Only the executive can be segmented, but its parts remain subordinate to the law, and thus to the sovereign.

Chapitre III (“If the general Will can wander”): The deliberations of the people can however lead to the error if, instead of entering each voice and each will one lets them dissolve in partial associations: the sum of these associations does not lead then to the general Will and the Community property. Moreover, if one of these associations “is so large that it overrides all the others”, the deliberation leads only to one particular opinion: these associations must be avoided or, if they exist, sufficiently numerous to reflect the general Will.

Chapter IV (“Of the terminals of the Sovereign capacity”): The social pact gives to the sovereign an absolute right on all its subjects. Nevertheless this right, to exist, must be reasoned: the will of the sovereign always has a cause and “can charge the subjects with no useless chain at the community”. The sovereign can act only on the general cases and must leave the facts or the specific rights to the executive (“by the nature of the pact, any act of Souveraineté obliges or supports also all the Citizens, so that the Sovereign knows only the body of the nation and does not distinguish any of those which compose it”).

Chapter V (“Of the right of life and dead”): The contractors of the pact must agree the risk to be condemned to death to ensure their own security with respect to the potential assassins; the sovereign cannot order to kill but will be able to confer this right, and the right of reprieve belongs to him.

Chapter VI (“Of the law”): The legislation is what makes it possible the body politic to be preserved. Justice comes from God but it is not in oneself sufficient, one needs the possibility of sanction (thus the law) so that it guarantees the equality. The law can rule only on the cases general and abstracted, it is the will of “all the people on all the people”. It is made by all the people which could not “be unjust with itself”, and concerns also the Prince, since he belongs to the State; to help it to make the good choices concerning itself, the people will be helped in his choices by the legislator who will show to him “the objects such as they are, some time such as they must appear, show him the good way to him which looks for, to guarantee of the seduction of the particular wills, to bring closer in its eyes the places and times, to balance the attraction of the advantages present and significant, by the danger of the distant and hidden evils”.

Chapter VII (“Of the Legislator”): The legislator must have extraordinary qualities, almost inhuman: “One would need Gods to give laws to the men”. The purpose of he is to light the general Will, and for this reason will have to modify the men who compose it and to make them, starting from isolated units, of the indivisible parts of the whole. It has an use with share in the State: it constitutes the republic but “does not enter its constitution”, its laws order the men but he does not order any of it. It does nothing but suggest, no legislative power or executive exerts. If the people are not in measurement to hear it, it can use the force of conviction and the prestige of the religion by putting “the decisions in the mouth of immortal”.

Chapter VIII, IX and X (“Of the people”): The good legislation cannot be adopted by any people or State. The habits and the prejudices should not be too enracinés, it should be waited until the people are rather mature, and the time of this waits depends on the types of government having preceded and the expectations of the people.

the State will have to be “neither too large to be well controlled, nor too small to be able to be maintained by itself”, too large it would be administratively too heavy, incompetent to act everywhere and would have an inheritance common to all its members, too small it would be weak compared to the other States.
It is necessary that the State has the good proportion between the number of inhabitants who occupy it and his surface, “that the ground is enough with maintenance to its inhabitants, and that there is as many inhabitants as the ground can about it nourish”. The State must be ordered in one moment of pleasure and peace and not of political crisis or famine.

Rousseau summarizes these chapters: “Which people are thus specific to the legislation? That which, being already bound by some union of origin, interest or convention, did not still carry the true yoke of the laws; that which has neither habits, nor well enracinées superstitions; that which does not fear to be overpowered by a sudden invasion; who, without entering the quarrels of his neighbors, can only resist each one of them, or help himself of to push back the other; that whose each member can be known of all and where one is not forced to charge a man with a larger burden than a man cannot carry; that which can do without the other people, and any other people can do; that which is neither rich nor poor, and can be sufficed for itself; finally that which joins together the consistency of former people with the docility of new people. ” Chapter XI (“Of the various systems of Legislation”): The Freedom and the equality are the main objects of a system of legislation: freedom because its members must be independent of the State to make its force, the equality to maintain freedom. The equality does not mean that all the members are strictly on the same level or the suppression of the property, but that the differences are decent. The legislation must tend towards the equality, and adapt to the State for which it is intended, with its Géographie, its economy and density of its population.

Chapter XII (“Division of the Laws”): There are three kinds of laws:

political laws, relating to the State itself (only covered by the Social Contract),
the civil laws, which govern the report/ratio of the members between them or towards the State,
the criminal laws, which relate to the sanctions related to disobedience to the other laws.

A fourth law, with part although very significant can be added: they are “manners, the habits and especially the opinions”, dedicated to the legislator it guarantees the other laws.

Style

The style, the expression, the Rhétorique of the text are enthralling, percussion, effective, and make it possible to include/understand with wonder, with a little attention as Rousseau recommends it, its new ideas and which can appear “contrary with the common ideas”. A lesson of political and philosophical writing timeless, and as would say Boileau, here is the proof that “what one conceives well states clearly and the words to say it arrive easily”.

Posterity of the social Contract

Kant and Rousseau

It is rather little known that the formula of Rousseau “obedience with the law which one was prescribed is freedom. ” (Book I, Chapter 8), strongly the concept of autonomy of the subject at Kant influenced. Roger Vernal ( the vocabulary of Kant , volume II, Paris, 1973, p. 224), writes that “the Kantian doctrines amount interiorizing in the person and for her moral life, the civil liberty such as Rousseau defined it for the social life…” It is worth the sorrow to underline it because Gellner in Nations and nationalisms considers that the concept of autonomy applied to the people or in the nations, takes part of a kind of importation of the vocabulary of Kant in the policy, whereas, on the contrary, it is well the political thought of Rousseau that Kant imported (legitimately besides) in its philosophy morals, in the Critique of the reason practices .

Rousseau and the French revolution

Rousseau proposes with the social contract to reform the company in which he lived: the Ancien Mode did not allow the free expression of the general Will nor that of the individual will. The social Contract , by involving the French revolution partly (and while being one of its important references) will allow the expression of the general Will but not that of individual freedom, that Rousseau is unaware of in this text, whereas it did of them one of the principal theses of the Emile , insistent on the importance of the individual development and the blooming of natural faculties of each individual: in that these two texts can be regarded as complementary.

See too

External bond

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