NATURAL LAW:

SOCIAL CONTRACT THEORY -

JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU
1712-1788
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU
1712-1788

Legacy…
French Revolution
Republicanism
NATURAL LAW: SOCIAL CONTRACT THEORIES - ROUSSEAU

Du Contrat Social, Principes du

droit politique
1762
The social contract – principles of
political right

Quick reading on Rousseau 

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jean-Jacques-Rousseau/Major-works-of-politi
cal-philosophy
 NATURAL LAW: SOCIAL CONTRACT THEORIES - ROUSSEAU

State of nature
Rousseau offer a different analysis :
• a pre-social condition - human being -
not developed or deprived of
development of moral potential
• the nature of man is ‘good’ but…
“Human beings are born free but
everywhere in chains”
 NATURAL LAW: SOCIAL CONTRACT THEORIES - ROUSSEAU

State of Living in (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality)

nature society Jelousy & Inequality
<materialistic>
solitary Innocence & love <competitive> <social/political hierarchy>
<cooperation>
original Acquisitition of ‘property’
humans were societies + pride
not social started when
people built Differential social + political position
beings but
their first [social/political oppression]
entirely huts, a  Inequality
solitary… development
were that facilitated Civil society as Rousseau describes it,
healthy, cohabitation of comes into being to serve two purposes: to
happy, good, males and provide peace for everyone and to ensure
and free females; that in the right to property for anyone lucky
turn produced enough to have possessions. It is thus of
the habit of some advantage to everyone, but mostly to
living as a the advantage of the rich, since it
family and transforms their de facto ownership into
associating with rightful ownership and keeps the poor
neighbours. dispossessed. It is a somewhat fraudulent
social contract that introduces
government, since the poor get so much
less out of it than do the rich.
The Social Contract begins with the
sensational opening sentence: “Man is
born free, and everywhere he is in
chains,” and proceeds to argue that men
need not be in chains. If a civil
society, or state, could be based on a
genuine social contract, as opposed to
the fraudulent social contract depicted
in the Discourse on the Origin of
Inequality, people would receive in
exchange for their independence a better
kind of freedom, namely true political,
or republican, liberty. Such liberty is
to be found in obedience to a self-
imposed law.
NATURAL LAW: SOCIAL CONTRACT THEORIES - ROUSSEAU

social contract:

only ref to ‘pactum unionis’ not

‘pactum subjectionis’

the notion of the ‘general will’ -

the people as the sovereign
‘he who give himself to all and
everyone, give himself to no one”
NATURAL LAW: SOCIAL CONTRACT THEORIES - ROUSSEAU

social contract
‘is advanced the basics upon which
human beings ‘agree’ to combine in
society and which is founded
precisely upon the facilitation of the
development of potential’
not a surrender to a ‘sovereign’ but
to a ‘political society’
the controlling power is volunte
generale - the ‘general will’ of the
members of society.
 NATURAL LAW: SOCIAL CONTRACT THEORIES - ROUSSEAU

A society, by contrast, is a set of persons

with a set of individual wills, and conflict
between separate wills is a fact of universal
experience. Rousseau’s response to the problem
is to define civil society as an artificial
person united by a general will, or volonté
générale. The social contract that brings
society into being is a pledge, and the
society remains in being as a pledged group.

(hence….Rousseau’s republic is a creation of

the general will— of a will that never falters
in each and every member to further the
public, common, or national interest — even
though it may conflict at times with personal
interest) r’ ??
de
‘ le a
i be ’>
he ‘ tr
o t
yal ty t
ge lo
P le d
NATURAL LAW: SOCIAL CONTRACT THEORIES - ROUSSEAU

‘Individual subject himself to the

general will – a collective obligation –
that will facilitate ‘free’ development
through the provision of necessary
moral framework.

‘general will’ is not the will of the

majority; nor is it the will of the people
(whatever that the people fancy)
NATURAL LAW: SOCIAL CONTRACT THEORIES - ROUSSEAU

ROUSSEAU:
‘general will’ is
‘ a will focused upon the general
good rather than upon individual
benefits, whilst taking into account
of the diversity of actual human
interests’
NATURAL LAW: SOCIAL CONTRACT THEORIES - ROUSSEAU

‘general will’ …..

‘the hypothetical opinion which a wise

and well informed people would hold’
relationship to law: “ the wisdom
informing good law making pursuant to
the general will derives ultimately from
a divine or higher rational source.
Re obligation to Government: the social
contract is made with society, not
government; so government may
change but not society itself.
 https://www.britannica.com/topic/general-will

Rousseau distinguished the general will from the particular and often contradictory wills of individuals and groups. In Du
Contrat social (1762; The Social Contract), Rousseau argued that freedom and authority are not contradictory, since
legitimate laws are founded on the general will of the citizens. In obeying the law, the individual citizen is thus only obeying
himself as a member of the political community.

For Rousseau, however, the general will is not an abstract ideal. It is instead the will actually held by the people in their
capacity as citizens.

. To partake in the general will means, for Rousseau, to reflect upon and to vote on the basis of one’s sense of justice.
Individuals become conscious of their interests as citizens, according to Rousseau, and thus of the interest of the republic
as a whole, not through spirited discussions but, on the contrary, by following their personal conscience in the “silence of
the passions.” In this sense, the public assembly does not debate so much as disclose the general will of the people.
Rousseau argued that the general will is intrinsically right,

On the one hand, the general will reflects the rational interest of the individual (as citizen) as well as that of the people as a
whole. On the other hand, the general will is not purely rational because it emerges out of an attachment and even a love
for one’s political community.

Rousseau assumed that all people are capable of taking the moral standpoint of aiming at the common good and that, if
they did so, they would reach a unanimous decision. Thus, in an ideal state, laws express the general will. While citizens
may be wrong and deceived, according to Rousseau, they will aim at justice as long as they pursue the interest of the people
rather than follow their interests as individuals or as members of different groups. Seen from this perspective, the
individual who breaches the law is acting not only against the instituted government but also against that individual’s
higher interest as a member of the political community. In a famous passage of The Social Contract, Rousseau argued that
requiring such an individual to abide by the law is thus nothing else than “forcing him to be free.

While scholars differ on the meaning of the aforementioned passage, there is wide agreement that Rousseau was concerned
with preserving civil liberty and autonomy, not with giving free reign to government.

In fact, the concept of the general will also implies a proscription against despotism. For Rousseau, government is
legitimate only insofar as it is subordinated to popular sovereignty or, in other words, follows the general will of the people.
Government loses all legitimacy the moment it places itself above the law to pursue its own interest as a separate political
body.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/constitution-politics-and-law/The-social-
contract

Rousseau and the general will

Whereas Hobbes created his unitary sovereign through the mechanism of individual and
unilateral promises and whereas Locke prevented excessive concentration of power by
requiring the cooperation of different organs of government for the accomplishment of
different purposes, Rousseau merged all individual citizens into an all-powerful
sovereign whose main purpose was the expression of the general will. By definition, the
general will can never be wrong; for when something contrary to the general interest is
expressed, it is defined as the mere “will of all” and cannot have emanated from the
sovereign. In order to guarantee the legitimacy of government and laws, Rousseau
would have enforced universal participation in order to “force men to be free,” as he
paradoxically phrased it. In common with Hobbes and Locke, Rousseau required the
assent of all to the original social contract. He required smaller majorities for the
adoption of laws of lesser importance than the constitution itself. His main concern was
to provide for legitimacy through universal participation in legislation, whereas Locke
and Hobbes were more concerned to provide constitutional stability through consent. As
a result, Rousseau’s thought appears to be more democratic than that of his English
predecessors.
 NATURAL LAW: SOCIAL CONTRACT THEORIES - ROUSSEAU

HOBBES STATE
& GOVERNMENT
LOCKE RULER
Political Rousseau
authority criticises this
Under this social
contract - authority structure
and power to make because it
law is handed over enable a section
to the state/political of society to
authority. Law is an control the rest
imposition by a resulting in
powerful authority inequality and
injustice
PEOPLE
CITIZENS
SUBJECTS
 The state/lawmakers/
government is
INDISTINGUISHABLE
ROUSSEAU from the
society/community
Political authority [@solidarity]
@ the Sovereign
Members of society
THE COMMUNITY participate directly in
(PEOPLE/SOCIETY) govenment/law-
making process.

STATE
This way, laws will
GOVERNMENT manifest the ’general
Law makers will’

People know
(rationally) what is
’good’ for them
collectively
 NATURAL LAW: SOCIAL CONTRACT THEORIES - ROUSSEAU

ROUSSEAU
Political obedience –
Participative democracy.

 Partipative law making

Horizontal political relations.

(Modern form  Co-operation STATE-SOCIETY)

Significance:

Natural rights and natural interest

 collective interests [solidarity]  role of society and
state to protect and govern.

Compare:
LOCKE – property = rights of the individual person

ROUSSEAU – Protection of property – serve a collective interest.

BUT: On the argument of GENERAL WILL  SOLIDARITY 
laws must also protect/assist the less/disadvantage people in
society (poor,sick,old,under-educated etc.)
Critical

General will
synonymous
 solidarity + social cohesion
 egalitarianism > elitism
 communitarianism

Problematic:

 communalism
 nationalism
 nation state
 individualism/individual rights
Quick reading on Rousseau 
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jean-Jacques-Rousseau/Major-works-of-political-philosophy

Rousseau begins his Discours sur l’origine de l’inegalité (1755; Discourse on the Origin of Inequality) by distinguishing
two kinds of inequality, natural and artificial, the first arising from differences in strength, intelligence, and so forth,
the second from the conventions that govern societies. It is the inequalities of the latter sort that he set out to explain.
Adopting what he thought the properly “scientific” method of investigating origins, he attempts to reconstruct the
earliest phases of human life on earth. He suggests that original humans were not social beings but entirely solitary,
and to that extent he agrees with Thomas Hobbes’s account of the state of nature. But in contrast to the English
pessimist’s view that human life in such a condition must have been “poor, nasty, brutish, and short,” Rousseau
claims that original humans, although admittedly solitary, were healthy, happy, good, and free. Human vices, he
argued, date from the time when societies were formed. Rousseau thus exonerates nature and blames society. He says
that passions that generate vices hardly existed in the state of nature but began to develop as soon as people formed
societies. He goes on to suggest that societies started when people built their first huts, a development that facilitated
cohabitation of males and females; that in turn produced the habit of living as a family and associating with
neighbours. That “nascent society,” as Rousseau calls it, was good while it lasted; it was indeed the “golden age” of
human history. Only it did not endure. With the tender passion of love there was also born the destructive passion of
jealousy. Neighbours started to compare their abilities and achievements with one another, and that “marked the first
step towards inequality and at the same time towards vice.” People started to demand consideration and respect.
Their innocent self-love turned into culpable pride, as each person wanted to be better than everyone else.
The introduction of property marked a further step toward inequality, since it made law and government necessary as a
means of protecting it. Rousseau laments the “fatal” concept of property in one of his more-eloquent passages,
describing the “horrors” that have resulted from the departure from a condition in which the earth belonged to no
one.

Civil society, as Rousseau describes it, comes into being to serve two purposes: to provide peace for everyone and to ensure
the right to property for anyone lucky enough to have possessions. It is thus of some advantage to everyone, but mostly to
the advantage of the rich, since it transforms their de facto ownership into rightful ownership and keeps the poor
dispossessed. It is a somewhat fraudulent social contract that introduces government, since the poor get so much less out of
it than do the rich. Even so, the rich are no happier in civil society than are the poor because people in society are never
satisfied. Society leads people to hate one another to the extent that their interests conflict, and the best they are able to do
is to hide their hostility behind a mask of courtesy. Thus, Rousseau regards inequality not as a separate problem but as one
of the features of the long process by which human beings become alienated from nature and from innocence.
The Social Contract begins with the sensational opening sentence: “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains,” and
proceeds to argue that men need not be in chains. If a civil society, or state, could be based on a genuine social contract, as
opposed to the fraudulent social contract depicted in the Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, people would receive in
exchange for their independence a better kind of freedom, namely true political, or republican, liberty. Such liberty is to be
found in obedience to a self-imposed law.
Rousseau’s definition of political liberty raises an obvious problem. For while it can be readily agreed that an individual is free if he
obeys only rules he prescribes for himself, this is so because an individual is a person with a single will. A society, by
contrast, is a set of persons with a set of individual wills, and conflict between separate wills is a fact of universal experience.
Rousseau’s response to the problem is to define civil society as an artificial person united by a general will, or volonté
générale. The social contract that brings society into being is a pledge, and the society remains in being as a pledged group.
Rousseau’s republic is a creation of the general will—of a will that never falters in each and every member to further the
public, common, or national interest—even though it may conflict at times with personal interest.
Rousseau sounds very much like Hobbes when he says that under the pact by which they enter civil society people totally alienate
themselves and all their rights to the whole community. Rousseau, however, represents this act as a form of exchange of
rights whereby people give up natural rights in return for civil rights. The bargain is a good one, because what is surrendered
are rights of dubious value, whose realization depends solely on an individual’s own might, and what is obtained in return
are rights that are both legitimate and enforced by the collective force of the community.

For Rousseau there is a radical dichotomy between true law and

actual law. Actual law, which he described in the Discourse on the
Origin of Inequality, simply protects the status quo. True law, as
described in The Social Contract, is just law, and what ensures its
being just is that it is made by the people in their collective capacity
as sovereign and obeyed by the same people in their individual
capacities as subjects. Rousseau is confident that such laws could not
be unjust because it is inconceivable that any people would make
unjust laws for itself.