The social contract & discourses
Chapter 1 · 1/55
The social contract & discourses
Chapter 1
1Note: Images of the original pages are available through the the Google Books Library Project. 2See http://www.google.com/books? 3id=exNPAAAAMAAJ THE SOCIAL CONTRACT & DISCOURSES by JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU London & Toronto Published by J. 4Dent & Sons In New York by E. 5Dutton & Co Everyman's Library Edited by Ernest Rhys Philosophy and Theology ROUSSEAU'S SOCIAL CONTRACT, ETC. 6Translated with Introduction by G.D.H. 7Cole, Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford INTRODUCTION For the study of the great writers and thinkers of the past, historical imagination is the first necessity. 8Without mentally referring to the environment in which they lived, we cannot hope to penetrate below the inessential and temporary to the absolute and permanent value of their thought. 9Theory, no less than action, is subject to these necessities; the form in which men cast their speculations, no less than the ways in which they behave, are the result of the habits of thought and action which they find around them. 10Great men make, indeed, individual contributions to the knowledge of their times; but they can never transcend the age in which they live. 11The questions they try to answer will always be those their contemporaries are asking; their statement of fundamental problems will always be relative to the traditional statements that have been handed down to them. 12When they are stating what is most startlingly new, they will be most likely to put it in an old-fashioned form, and to use the inadequate ideas and formulae of tradition to express the deeper truths towards which they are feeling their way. 13They will be most the children of their age, when they are rising most above it. 14Rousseau has suffered as much as any one from critics without a sense of history. 15He has been cried up and cried down by democrats and oppressors with an equal lack of understanding and imagination. 16His name, a hundred and fifty years after the publication of the _Social Contract_, is still a controversial watchword and a party cry. 17He is accepted as one of the greatest writers France has produced; but even now men are inclined, as political bias prompts them, to accept or reject his political doctrines as a whole, without sifting them or attempting to understand and discriminate. 18He is still revered or hated as the author who, above all others, inspired the French Revolution. 19At the present day, his works possess a double significance. 20They are important historically, alike as giving us an insight into the mind of the eighteenth century, and for the actual influence they have had on the course of events in Europe. 21Certainly no other writer of the time has exercised such an influence as his. 22He may fairly be called the parent of the romantic movement in art, letters and life; he affected profoundly the German romantics and Goethe himself; he set the fashion of a new introspection which has permeated nineteenth century literature; he began modern educational theory; and, above all, in political thought he represents the passage from a traditional theory rooted in the Middle Ages to the modern philosophy of the State. 23His influence on Kant's moral philosophy and on Hegel's philosophy of Right are two sides of the same fundamental contribution to modern thought. 24He is, in fact, the great forerunner of German and English Idealism. 25It would not be possible, in the course of a short introduction, to deal both with the positive content of Rousseau's thought and with the actual influence he has had on practical affairs. 26The statesmen of the French Revolution, from Robespierre downwards, were throughout profoundly affected by the study of his works. 27Though they seem often to have misunderstood him, they had on the whole studied him with the attention he demands. 28In the nineteenth century, men continued to appeal to Rousseau, without, as a rule, knowing him well or penetrating deeply into his meaning. 29"The _Social Contract_," says M. 30Dreyfus-Brisac, "is the book of all books that is most talked of and least read." 31But with the great revival of interest in political philosophy there has come a desire for the better understanding of Rousseau's work. 32He is again being studied more as a thinker and less as an ally or an opponent; there is more eagerness to sift the true from the false, and to seek in the _Social Contract_ the "principles of political right," rather than the great revolutionary's _ipse dixit_ in favour of some view about circumstances which he could never have contemplated. 33The _Social Contract_, then, may be regarded either as a document of the French Revolution, or as one of the greatest books dealing with political philosophy. 34It is in the second capacity, as a work of permanent value containing truth, that it finds a place among the world's great books. 35It is in that capacity also that it will be treated in this introduction. 36Taking it in this aspect, we have no less need of historical insight than if we came to it as historians pure and simple. 37To understand its value we must grasp its limitations; when the questions it answers seem unnaturally put, we must not conclude that they are meaningless; we must see if the answer still holds when the question is put in a more up-to-date form. 38First, then, we must always remember that Rousseau is writing in the eighteenth century, and for the most part in France. 39Neither the French monarchy nor the Genevese aristocracy loved outspoken criticism, and Rousseau had always to be very careful what he said. 40This may seem a curious statement to make about a man who suffered continual persecution on account of his subversive doctrines; but, although Rousseau was one of the most daring writers of his time, he was forced continually to moderate his language and, as a rule, to confine himself to generalisation instead of attacking particular abuses. 41Rousseau's theory has often been decried as too abstract and metaphysical. 42This is in many ways its great strength; but where it is excessively so, the accident of time is to blame. 43In the eighteenth century it was, broadly speaking, safe to generalise and unsafe to particularise. 44Scepticism and discontent were the prevailing temper of the intellectual classes, and a short-sighted despotism held that, as long as they were confined to these, they would do little harm. 45Subversive doctrines were only regarded as dangerous when they were so put as to appeal to the masses; philosophy was regarded as impotent. 46The intellectuals of the eighteenth century therefore generalised to their hearts' content, and as a rule suffered little for their _lèse-majesté_: Voltaire is the typical example of such generalisation. 47The spirit of the age favoured such methods, and it was therefore natural for Rousseau to pursue them. 48But his general remarks had such a way of bearing very obvious particular applications, and were so obviously inspired by a particular attitude towards the government of his day, that even philosophy became in his hands unsafe, and he was attacked for what men read between the lines of his works. 49It is owing to this faculty of giving his generalisations content and actuality that Rousseau has become the father of modern political philosophy. 50He uses the method of his time only to transcend it; out of the abstract and general he creates the concrete and universal. 51Secondly, we must not forget that Rousseau's theories are to be studied in a wider historical environment. 52If he is the first of modern political theorists, he is also the last of a long line of Renaissance theorists, who in turn inherit and transform the concepts of mediæval thought. 53So many critics have spent so much wasted time in proving that Rousseau was not original only because they began by identifying originality with isolation: they studied first the _Social Contract_ by itself, out of relation to earlier works, and then, having discovered that these earlier works resembled it, decided that everything it had to say was borrowed. 54Had they begun their study in a truly historical spirit, they would have seen that Rousseau's importance lies just in the new use he makes of old ideas, in the transition he makes from old to new in the general conception of politics. 55No mere innovator could have exercised such an influence or hit on so much truth. 56Theory makes no great leaps; it proceeds to new concepts by the adjustment and renovation of old ones. 57Just as theological writers on politics, from Hooker to Bossuet, make use of Biblical terminology and ideas; just as more modern writers, from Hegel to Herbert Spencer, make use of the concept of evolution, Rousseau uses the ideas and terms of the Social Contract theory. 58We should feel, throughout his work, his struggle to free himself from what is lifeless and outworn in that theory, while he develops out of it fruitful conceptions that go beyond its scope. 59A too rigid literalism in the interpretation of Rousseau's thought may easily reduce it to the possession of a merely "historical interest": if we approach it in a truly historical spirit, we shall be able to appreciate at once its temporary and its lasting value, to see how it served his contemporaries, and at the same time to disentangle from it what may be serviceable to us and for all time. 60Rousseau's _Emile_, the greatest of all works on education, has already been issued in this series. 61In this volume are contained the most important of his political works. 62Of these the _Social Contract_, by far the most significant, is the latest in date. 63It represents the maturity of his thought, while the other works only illustrate his development. 64Born in 1712, he issued no work of importance till 1750; but he tells us, in the _Confessions,_ that in 1743, when he was attached to the Embassy at Venice, he had already conceived the idea of a great work on _Political Institutions_, "which was to put the seal on his reputation." 65He seems, however, to have made little progress with this work, until in 1749 he happened to light on the announcement of a prize offered by the Academy of Dijon for an answer to the question, "Has the progress of the arts and sciences tended to the purification or to the corruption of morality?" 66His old ideas came thronging back, and sick at heart of the life he had been leading among the Paris _lumières_, he composed a violent and rhetorical diatribe against civilisation generally. 67In the following year, this work, having been awarded the prize by the Academy, was published by its author. 68His success was instantaneous; he became at once a famous man, the "lion" of Parisian literary circles. 69Refutations of his work were issued by professors, scribblers, outraged theologians and even by the King of Poland. 70Rousseau endeavoured to answer them all, and in the course of argument his thought developed. 71From 1750 to the publication of the _Social Contract_ and _Emile_ in 1762 he gradually evolved his views: in those twelve years he made his unique contribution to political thought. 72The _Discourse on the Arts and Sciences_, the earliest of the works reproduced in this volume, is not in itself of very great importance. 73Rousseau has given his opinion of it in the _Confessions_. 74"Full of warmth and force, it is wholly without logic or order; of all my works it is the weakest in argument and the least harmonious. 75But whatever gifts a man may be born with, he cannot learn the art of writing in a moment." 76This criticism is just. 77The first Discourse neither is, nor attempts to be, a reasoned or a balanced production. 78It is the speech of an advocate, wholly one-sided and arbitrary, but so obviously and naively one-sided, that it is difficult for us to believe in its entire seriousness. 79At the most, it is only a rather brilliant but flimsy rhetorical effort, a sophistical improvisation, but not a serious contribution to thought. 80Yet it is certain that this declamation made Rousseau's name, and established his position as a great writer in Parisian circles. 81D'Alembert even devoted the preface of the _Encyclopædia_ to a refutation. 82The plan of the first Discourse is essentially simple: it sets out from the badness, immorality and misery of modern nations, traces all these ills to the departure from a "natural" state, and then credits the progress of the arts and sciences with being the cause of that departure. 83In it, Rousseau is already in possession of his idea of "nature" as an ideal; but he has at present made no attempt to discriminate, in what is unnatural, between good and bad. 84He is merely using a single idea, putting it as strongly as he can, and neglecting all its limitations. 85The first Discourse is important not for any positive doctrine it contains, but as a key to the development of Rousseau's mind. 86Here we see him at the beginning of the long journey which was to lead on at last to the theory of the _Social Contract_. 87In 1755 appeared the _Discourse on the Origin and Foundation of Inequality among Men_, which is the second of the works given in this volume. 88With this essay, Rousseau had unsuccessfully competed in 1753 for a second prize offered by the Academy of Dijon, and he now issued it prefaced by a long Dedication to the Republic of Geneva. 89In this work, which Voltaire, in thanking him for a presentation copy, termed his "second book against the human race," his style and his ideas have made a great advance; he is no longer content merely to push a single idea to extremes: while preserving the broad opposition between the state of nature and the state of society, which runs through all his work, he is concerned to present a rational justification of his views and to admit that a little at any rate may be said on the other side. 90Moreover, the idea of "nature" has already undergone a great development; it is no longer an empty opposition to the evils of society; it possesses a positive content. 91Thus half the _Discourse on Inequality_ is occupied by an imaginary description of the state of nature, in which man is shown with ideas limited within the narrowest range, with little need of his fellows, and little care beyond provision for the necessities of the moment. 92Rousseau declares explicitly that he does not suppose the "state of nature" ever to have existed: it is a pure "idea of reason," a working concept reached by abstraction from the "state of society." 93The "natural man," as opposed to "man's man," is man stripped of all that society confers upon him, a creature formed by a process of abstraction, and never intended for a historical portrait. 94The conclusion of the Discourse favours not this purely abstract being, but a state of savagery intermediate between the "natural" and the "social" conditions, in which men may preserve the simplicity and the advantages of nature and at the same time secure the rude comforts and assurances of early society. 95In one of the long notes appended to the Discourse, Rousseau further explains his position. 96He does not wish, he says, that modern corrupt society should return to a state of nature: corruption has gone too far for that; he only desires now that men should palliate, by wiser use of the fatal arts, the mistake of their introduction. 97He recognises society as inevitable and is already feeling his way towards a justification of it. 98The second Discourse represents a second stage in his political thought: the opposition between the state of nature and the state of society is still presented in naked contrast; but the picture of the former has already filled out, and it only remains for Rousseau to take a nearer view of the fundamental implications of the state of society for his thought to reach maturity. 99Rousseau is often blamed, by modern critics, for pursuing in the Discourses a method apparently that of history, but in reality wholly unhistorical. 100But it must be remembered that he himself lays no stress on the historical aspect of his work; he gives himself out as constructing a purely ideal picture, and not as depicting any actual stages in human history. 101The use of false historical concepts is characteristic of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and Rousseau is more to be congratulated on having escaped from giving them too much importance than criticised for employing them at all. 102It is doubtful whether the _Discourse on Political Economy,_ first printed in the great _Encyclopædia_ in 1755, was composed before or after the _Discourse on Inequality_. 103At first sight the former seems to be far more in the manner of the _Social Contract_ and to contain views belonging essentially to Rousseau's constructive period. 104It would not, however, be safe to conclude from this that its date is really later. 105The _Discourse on Inequality_ still has about it much of the rhetorical looseness of the prize essay; it aims not so much at close reasoning as at effective and popular presentation of a case. 106But, by reading between the lines, an attentive student can detect in it a great deal of the positive doctrine afterwards incorporated in the _Social Contract_. 107Especially in the closing section, which lays down the plan of a general treatment of the fundamental questions of politics, we are already to some extent in the atmosphere of the later works. 108It is indeed almost certain that Rousseau never attempted to put into either of the first two Discourses any of the positive content of his political theory. 109They were intended, not as final expositions of his point of view, but as partial and preliminary studies, in which his aim was far more destructive than constructive. 110It is clear that in first conceiving the plan of a work on _Political Institutions_, Rousseau cannot have meant to regard all society as in essence bad. 111It is indeed evident that he meant, from the first, to study human society and institutions in their rational aspect, and that he was rather diverted from his main purpose by the Academy of Dijon's competition than first induced by it to think about political questions. 112It need, therefore, cause no surprise that a work probably written before the _Discourse on Inequality_ should contain the germs of the theory given in full in the _Social Contract_. 113The _Discourse on Political Economy_ is important as giving the first sketch of the theory of the "General Will." 114It will readily be seen that Rousseau does not mean by "political economy" exactly what we mean nowadays. 115He begins with a discussion of the fundamental nature of the State, and the possibility of reconciling its existence with human liberty, and goes on with an admirable short study of the principles of taxation. 116He is thinking throughout of "political" in the sense of "public" economy, of the State as the public financier, and not of the conditions governing industry. 117He conceives the State as a body aiming at the well-being of all its members and subordinates all his views of taxation to that end. 118He who has only necessaries should not be taxed at all; superfluities should be supertaxed; there should be heavy imposts on every sort of luxury. 119The first part of the article is still more interesting. 120Rousseau begins by demolishing the exaggerated parallel so often drawn between the State and the family; he shows that the State is not, and cannot be, patriarchal in nature, and goes on to lay down his view that its real being consists in the General Will of its members. 121The essential features of the _Social Contract_ are present in this Discourse almost as if they were commonplaces, certainly not as if they were new discoveries on which the author had just hit by some happy inspiration. 122There is every temptation, after reading the _Political Economy_, to suppose that Rousseau's political ideas really reached maturity far earlier than has generally been allowed. 123The _Social Contract_ finally appeared, along with _Emile_, in 1762. 124This year, therefore, represents in every respect the culmination of Rousseau's career. 125Henceforth, he was to write only controversial and confessional works; his theories were now developed, and, simultaneously, he gave to the world his views on the fundamental problems of politics and education. 126It is now time to ask what Rousseau's system, in its maturity, finally amounted to. 127The _Social Contract_ contains practically the whole of his constructive political theory; it requires to be read, for full understanding, in connection with his other works, especially _Emile_ and the _Letters on the Mount_ (1764), but in the main it is self-contained and complete. 128The title sufficiently defines its scope. 129It is called _The Social Contract or Principles of Political Right_, and the second title explains the first. 130Rousseau's object is not to deal, in a general way, like Montesquieu, with the actual institutions of existing States, but to lay down the essential principles which must form the basis of every legitimate society. 131Rousseau himself, in the fifth book of the _Emile_, has stated the difference clearly. 132"Montesquieu," he says, "did not intend to treat of the principles of political right; he was content to treat of the positive right (or law) of established governments; and no two studies could be more different than these." 133Rousseau then conceives his object as being something very different from that of the _Spirit of the Laws_, and it is a wilful error to misconstrue his purpose. 134When he remarks that "the facts," the actual history of political societies, "do not concern him," he is not contemptuous of facts; he is merely asserting the sure principle that a fact can in no case give rise to a right. 135His desire is to establish society on a basis of pure right, so as at once to disprove his attack on society generally and to reinforce his criticism of existing societies. 136Round this point centres the whole dispute about the methods proper to political theory. 137There are, broadly speaking, two schools of political theorists, if we set aside the psychologists. 138One school, by collecting facts, aims at reaching broad generalisations about what actually happens in human societies! 139the other tries to penetrate to the universal principles at the root of all human combination. 140For the latter purpose facts may be useful, but in themselves they can prove nothing. 141The question is not one of fact, but one of right. 142Rousseau belongs essentially to this philosophical school. 143He is not, as his less philosophic critics seem to suppose, a purely abstract thinker generalising from imaginary historical instances; he is a concrete thinker trying to get beyond they inessential and changing to the permanent and invariable basis of human society. 144Like Green, he is in search of the principle of political obligation, and beside this quest all others fall into their place as secondary and derivative. 145It is required to find a form of association able to defend and protect with the whole common force the person and goods of every associate, and of such a nature, that each, uniting himself with all, may still obey only himself, and remain as free as before. 146This is the fundamental problem of which the _Social Contract_ provides the solution. 147The problem of political obligation is seen as including all other political problems, which fall into place in a system based upon it. 148How, Rousseau asks, can the will of the State help being for me a merely external will, imposing itself upon my own? 149How can the existence of the State be reconciled with human freedom? 150How can man, who is born free, rightly come to be everywhere in chains? 151No-one could help understanding the central problem of the _Social Contract_ immediately, were it not that its doctrines often seem to be strangely formulated. 152We have seen that this strangeness is due to Rousseau's historical position, to his use of the political concepts current in his own age, and to his natural tendency to build on the foundations laid by his predecessors. 153There are a great many people whose idea of Rousseau consists solely of the first words of the opening chapter of the _Social Contract_, "Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains." 154But, they tell you, man is not born free, even if he is everywhere in chains. 155Thus at the very outset we are faced with the great difficulty in appreciating Rousseau. 156When we should naturally say "man ought to be free," or perhaps "man is born for freedom," he prefers to say "man is born free," by which he means exactly the same thing. 157There is doubtless, in his way of putting it, an appeal to a "golden age"; but this golden age is admittedly as imaginary as the freedom to which men are born is bound, for most of them, to be. 158Elsewhere Rousseau puts the point much as we might put it ourselves. 159"Nothing is more certain than that every man born in slavery is born for slavery.... 160But if there are slaves by nature, it is because there have been slaves against nature" (_Social Contract_,
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