Noble Savage, The Social Contract(s) and General Will

▪ The absolutism in France had its own course and it created its own problems.

▪ ‘Rousseau was writing in a tradition of social criticism that decried the corruption of the court, an

inflated royal bureaucracy, and an exploitative system of taxation which served not only public
purposes but private gain (Wood, 2012: 196).’

▪ Rousseau criticized the immorality of the social conditions of his era. However, this moral perspective

was a secular and humanistic one. The well being of the people was his main concern.

▪ ‘The problem he set himself, which would drive his political ideas from beginning to end, was to find a

mechanism for attaining common goods that emanated freely from the individuals who shared them,
rather than from some external power of coercion, but did not make unreasonable demands on civic
virtue or depend on mutual deception (Wood, 2012: 191).’
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 Politics cannot be insulated from morality (goodness of
humans depends on the goodness of political configuration)

Voice of conscience: Virtue

Morality disappears Virtue: other than

Critique of
as sicence and art moral virtue, virtue of
civilization
progress citizenship as well
Virtue of citizenship:
Praise of Rome and Sparta (happy ignorance)
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 Unity of ‘Reason’ and Conscience
‘Reason’ → Ethical Rationalism
Reaching ‘humanity level’ through rationale
He is not against science and
art, but against isolation from
Critique of ‘bourgeois’ society Because of inequality
virtue and turning them into
commodities.
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 Tracing the geneology of evil
Hobbes, Locke, Grotius
have attributed the
Human: Self-loving and compassionate
features of civilized human
to natural human

What distinguishes human

Because of this,
Rousseau establishes a
‘negative anthropology’
(cutting off features that
are social)
from animal:
1- making a choice;
Society → source of
evil, as well as virtues
2- ability to improve
(development)

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State of nature is not the direct cause of state of society ! →
It is an interaction of external causes and natural abilities

3rd stage: mining 4th stage: ‘classes’

and farming → → wars between
2nd stage: social division of the rich and the
1st stage: shelters, families labor → private poor → human
Disasters and and creation of property – becomes wolf to
coming together society → first enclosure → human (different
form of inequality created inequality than Hobbes,
by powerful and since it is in state
intelligent of society)
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 The most powerful has to disguise its power as right and
obedience as obligation in order to stay as master

Division of self-
love/egotism →
Human starts to
State → Coercive egotism in the
live in the level of
apparatus state of society →
phenomenons
bourgeois society
and individual

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 ‘Nature (history) does not
move backwards’ → you
cannot go back to the times Real Social Contract
of ‘noble savage’ (happy
ignorance)

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Real Social Contract → All individuals bind themselves
(with all of their rights) to the social whole

Moral and collective State, sovereign, sovereign power → the members

body, the whole → are the people as unity; citizens as parts of
public personality sovereign authority; subjects as submitters

Citizen (abstract) → Subject (concrete)

pure consciousness +
pure conscience

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 Ruler →
Ruled →
Sovereign
People →
People →
Subject →
Citizen →
Concrete
Abstract
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 The aim of General Will
the ‘Real (Citizens as
Social parts of the
Common
Contract’ → whole) over
Good
to create Personal
‘social, free (Private)
human’ Will

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 Sovereignty
cannot be
represented Sovereignty is
→ Only absolute and
Sovereignty is
general will true → it is
nonassignable
can represent unlimited and
itself as a nonarbitrary
collective
entity
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 Will → Power →
Legislative Executive

People can be
represented on the level
of Executive Power
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 Political
Individuals
Laws (Real) Social society is
may fight
liberate liberty not the
and die for
humans (like against protector of
the state that
the free and Natural existing
protects
happy freedom → natural
them (as
savage was obeying the rights; it is
citizens, as
before false law → real the creator
truly free
contract) freedom of the social
humans)
rights!

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 The main
‘People importance is
identified with on the rights
Leviathan’ → State → and freedoms People is the
People, which Common of individuals sovereign; state
gathered benefit → (as citizens). is
auctoritas and pursues public State is an quintessentially
potestas in goodness instrument for democratic.
itself, is this → The state
sovereign moulded by
morality

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