Rousseau and the Nature of Human Freedom

Maurice Quentin de la Tour, Portrait of Jean Jacques Rousseau (replica of 1753 portrait, image dates to the last third of the 18th century). Image via Wikimedia Commons.

Maurice Quentin de la Tour, Portrait of Jean Jacques Rousseau (replica of 1753 portrait, image dates to the last third of the 18th century). Image via Wikimedia Commons.

Rousseau’s thought experiment on the state of nature[1] produces some interesting insights into our moral psychology and the social mediation of identity, as well as offering some provocative claims about the nature of human culture. And Rousseau’s influence on subsequent political theory has been substantial, in directions that might seem surprising, given the focus in the First and Second Discourses on the individual and the value of independence. As one of the editors of our edition points out, some accuse Rousseau of being “the author of a totalitarian political theory.”[2] This is precisely Bertrand Russell’s view, asserting that “Hitler is an outcome of Rousseau.”[3] Such an assessment clearly points to the arguments presented in Rousseau’s essay On the Social Contract, published in 1762, principally the view presented there that the citizen of a polity must identify absolutely with the infallible general will of the state, and that whoever refuses to obey the general will must be “forced to be free.”[4] How does Rousseau get from his utter rejection of human society in the first two discourses to an enthusiastic, absolute affirmation of the state? The answer must lie in Rousseau’s account of the crucial transition from the state of nature to civil society.

Frontispiece to Continental European edition of Rousseau's The Social Contrast (1762)

Frontispiece to Continental European edition of Rousseau’s The Social Contrast (1762)

But on this point there is also significant ambivalence in Rousseau. Despite his insistent privileging of the state of nature as the site of natural virtue, and his characterization of human society as depravity in essence, Rousseau ultimately asserts that early life in society “must have been the happiest and most durable epoch” in human history.[5] In The Social Contract, one finds this thought even more profoundly and emphatically stated, where Rousseau argues that entrance into the civil state results in the transformation of the human being “from a stupid, limited animal into an intelligent being and a man.”[6] Although in both passages he still considers the potential for abuse and corruption to be a significant concern, the exit from the state of nature also eventuates in the development of the human faculties and the acquisition of moral liberty, “which alone makes man truly master of himself. For to be driven by appetite alone is slavery, and obedience to the law one has prescribed for oneself is liberty.”[7]

Bracketing the possible inconsistencies of Rousseau’s account here, what I find most problematic about this conjectural picture of the entrance of human beings into society are the conditions on which the social compact depends. Rousseau defines human beings as distinct from other sentient beings by virtue of two essential characteristics, which are already present in the state of nature: 1) human freedom, and 2) perfectibility.[8] But just what are the features of human freedom in the state of nature, and how can a human possess a faculty of perfectibility without possessing the category of the moral? Remember that the moral conception is one of the products of the social world in Rousseau’s account, and that solitary human beings would have no sense of moral duty, just as they would lack all other categories of judgment.

Bertrand Russell in 1965. Photo from Hulton Archive/Getty Images.

Bertrand Russell in 1965. Photo from Hulton Archive/Getty Images.

To put it plainly, the quality of freedom that Rousseau attributes to human beings in the state of nature does not sound like freedom worth having. More importantly, it does not seem to offer a basis for the radical reconfiguration of the world effected by entrance into this contract with other consenting human beings. Other than the impulsive aversion to suffering, which Rousseau terms the natural virtue of pity, and from which all other social virtues derive, it is hard to see just what freedom a human being is supposed to possess. Indeed, as quoted above, Rousseau ultimately suggests that true freedom is only a result of the binding together of individuals into society, but freedom is also a necessary precondition of the founding of society. What is called for is a robust account of human freedom divested of the circularity that I have tried to describe in Rousseau. True human freedom would have to be self-legitimating, self-authorizing, in order to offer sufficient ground for the developmental account that Rousseau wants to offer: the liberty that Rousseau describes as “obedience to the law one has prescribed for oneself.” This is a thought that German Idealism (e.g., Fichte, Kant, Hegel) will take to be the central problem of modern philosophy—it is also this line of thinking that results for Russell[9] in the terrific destruction of the Second World War, at the hands of totalitarian empires.[10]

Notes

[1] Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Basic Political Writings, ed. David Cress (Cambridge: Hackett, 2011), p. 40. Rousseau repeatedly admits that his speculations about natural man are pure conjecture, thus a thought experiment, and this thought-experimental framework had been used many times before him (e.g., Hobbes, Locke, Montesquieu) and after him (e.g., Rawls, Nozick). More generally, thought experiments have become a conventional genre is the practice of philosophy, although there is some dispute as to just what these contrived, fantastic narratives are actually capable of establishing. For an example of resistance to this type of theorizing, see Bernard Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 1985).

[2] David Wooton, “Introduction” to Rousseau’s Basic Political Writings, ed. David Cress (Cambridge: Hackett, 2011), p. x.

[3] Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1945), p. 685.

[4] Jean-Jacques Rousseau, p. 167. The point is also made very emphatically in the “Discourse on Political Economy,” where he suggests that ideally citizens would be educated from birth to accept total identification with the state, “never to consider their own persons except in terms of being related to the body of the state, and […] not to perceive their own existence except as part of the state’s existence” (137).

[5] Rousseau, p. 74.

[6] Rousseau, p. 167.

[7] ibid.

[8] Rousseau, p. 53.

[9] Russell wrote his monumental, Nobel Prize-winning History of Western Philosophy in the midst of that war, with no certainty as to the outcome.

[10] Hitler’s “Third Reich” [Drittes Reich] literally means the Third Empire.


Kurt BuhananKurt Buhanan earned his PhD at UC Irvine, and has published on German literature and film, visual culture, and critical theory. He has articles on the poet Paul Celan and the contemporary filmmaker Christian Petzold forthcoming in the journals Semiotica and The German Quarterly, respectively. Unlike Bertrand Russell, he does not hold Rousseau responsible for the rise of Hitler, but he would be happy to discuss the point.

 

 

4 thoughts on “Rousseau and the Nature of Human Freedom

  1. Srbuhi Terityan

    The question of “freedom” is very prominent in the modern world. With so much oppression and subjugation throughout the world it raises the question of Rousseau’s idea if man was more ethical and moral in his natural state, before society was created, before civilization. Specifically America in being considered the land of the free is flooded in oppression currently with the election. Immigrants are terrified in being in their own homes now due to the election. Racism, Sexism, Oppression are still prominent in America. How can we truly consider ourselves to be the land of the free when there is so much oppression going on throughout our country? Was Rousseau right? Should America digress to a life with no civilization? Will oppression finally end when we do?

  2. Srbuhi Terityan

    The question of “freedom” is very prominent in the modern world. With so much oppression and subjugation throughout the world it raises the question of Rousseau’s idea if man was more ethical and moral in his natural state, before society was created, before civilization. Specifically America in being considered the land of the free is flooded in oppression currently with the election. Immigrants are terrified in being in their own homes now due to the election. Racism, Sexism, Oppression are still prominent in America. Was Rousseau right? Should america digress to a life with no civilization? Will oppression finally end when we do?

  3. Emma Springer

    Rousseau states that society and man was better in its natural state; however, when confronted with the idea of advancement and human accomplishment, one has to wonder if it is worth it. I was very intrigued by the philosophical questions you posed here mostly because of their applicability to modern day. Today in America we say we have freedom, but in so many cases, people are oppressed. If we had not advanced to this state in society, would we still have the levels of racism and discrimination that we have today? Also, would the freedom of the natural state be worth the loss of all our technological and cultural advancements?

  4. Jacqui Frizzi

    I think that the issue of determining what “freedom a human being is supposed to possess” is still an issue today. Two instances that have received a lot of attention in light of the recent election are abortion laws and gun laws. In both cases there is a desire to restrict the freedom of an individual to a certain extent. The debate can be traced back to Rousseau’s idea of “obedience to the law one has prescribed for oneself” in the sense that not everyone feels like the laws are ones they agree with and chose.

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