POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY 4
ROUSSEAU
Locke & Hobbes:
1. SoN and its problems
2. CS and its solutions
For Roussea the SoN is not too bad, social contract does not bring civil society
3 steps:
1. SoN
2. CS, bad
3. SC transforming CS (via revolution, etc.)
- SoN
- man is born free, but everywhere in chains
- Hobbes projected the failings of the present state onto the SoN
- SoN for Rousseau makes people live happy, easy lives
- man is driven by self-preservation, not greed
- PITIE: natural repugnance towards the suffering of others, performs the function of virtue and law in SoN
- no justice in SoN, but this does not make SoN men evil
- CS, bad
- increasing pop., low resources leads to CS out of necessity
- leads to war, egotism, greed, etc.
- a transition stage
- SC transforming CS
- via GENERAL WILL: common good, what is right for all, JUSTICE
- obedience to GW = freedom
- rejection of self-interest, embrace of common good
- those who reject GW must be compelled by the entire political body
- one must be forced into the freedom of GW
- against political parties which represent smaller groups, we must embrace the complete social body
- also anti public discussion, same reason (division, non-unitary)
- pro direct democracy
BENJAMIN CONSTANT: critique of R
- blamed Rousseau for the outcomes of French Rev.
- Rousseau was for an ancient kind of liberty, now irrelevant
- Modern liberty: peaceful co-existence, individual liberty
- Rousseau allows for tyranny of the majority
- political participation in modernity mandatory, but less so than in ancient societies
- all about preventing totalitarianism
LIBERTY IN H, L & R:
- Hobbes: Liberty given up to CS, in exchange for stability, SoN has the liberty of anarchy
- Locke: only loss is being your own judge, but its trivial
- Rousseau: no liberty lost, SC and GW is as free as SoN; Natural Liberty = Civil Liberty; only stage 2 is not free