INTR JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU INTRODUCTION JOSHUA COHEN Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) was born in Geneva. His mother died two days after his birth, and his father—a watchmaker-fled when Rousseau was ten. Raised by his uncle, spite the geographic separation, Rousseau maintained a strong public identification with Rousseau left Geneva at age sixteen and eventually settled in Paris in the early 1740s. De- Geneva throughout much of his life. He came to intellectual maturity in absolutist France, in debate with the leading thinkers of the French Enlightenment, but the image of Geneva as a small, self-governing republic, in which the people are sovereign and all citizens are sub- ject to law, continued to provide political bearings. Whereas Rousseau's early experience in Geneva inspired his political thought, his theory of human nature came to him later, and in a flash, as he walked from Paris to Vincennes in 1749 (he was on his way to visit Diderot, then imprisoned in the château of Vincennes). Reflecting on a question set by the Academy of Dijon-“Has the restoration of the sciences and the arts contributed to the purification of morals?”—Rousseau was overtaken, he says, by a flood of ideas, “a thousand lights." Lying at the heart of this “sudden inspiration" was the thought that dominated his subsequent writing: "that man is naturally good, and that it is solely by (our) institutions that men become wicked." This conception of natural goodness- an alternative to the Augustinian doctrine of original sin and the Hobbesian theory of human nature—is, as Rousseau explained to Archbishop Beaumont of Paris, the "fundamental principle of all morals” and the basis of "all my writings. Unified by this fundamental idea, Rousseau's principal writings on human nature and politics fall into three groups. In his early, "critical" essays-the Discourse on the Arts and Sciences (1750), Discourse on the Origins of Inequality (1755), and Letter to M. d'Alembert on the Theater (1758)—he challenges the Enlightenment view that the advance of science and understanding has improved the human condition, making human life freer, happier , lectual and more virtuous. Rousseau rejects this complacent view and reveals a darker side to intel- progress. Connecting enlightenment with the evolution of constraint, unhappiness, and vice, he explains how human beings, though naturally good, have been corrupted. His more positive writings-Of the Social Contract, Emile, the best-selling novel New Heloise (1761), Letters from the Mountain (1764), and constitutional proposals for Corsica (1765) and would cure our corrupt condition, restoring freedom through virtue and providing us with a Poland (1772)- present a scheme of political institutions and a program of education that Confessions, Reveries of the Solitary Walker, and Rousseau, Judge of Jean-Jacques, published after Rousseau's death-he testifies to his own authenticity, insisting that he has all 418 TRUCTION 419 misery and vice. when caught up in the web of deception, hypocrisy, and manipulation that defines con Real society. These writings, though intensely personal and self-revealing, also pres- ca universal message: Rousseau's own uncorrupted sincerity is evidence of humanity's satural goodness and illustrates the possibility of extricating ourselves from self-imposed Rousseau's political philosophy describes the terms of that extrication. The fundamental political problem, he says, is to find a form of association that defends and protects the person and goods of each associate with all the common force, and by means of which cach counting with all nevertheless obeys only himself and remains as free as before. The portance of this problem reflects the central role in our nature of self-love and freedom. Because we love ourselves, we cannot be indifferent to the security of our person and goods But not just any form of protection will do. We are "born free." with a capacity to choose and regulate our own conduct. This capacity is the source of humanity's special worth, of our canding as moral agents who can make claims on others and take responsibility for our condot. Freedom is so fundamental that "renouncing one's liberty is renouncing one's dig. mity as a man, the rights of humanity and even its duties." So we must find a form of security that does not demand such renunciation Of the Social Contract presents Rousseau's solution: a political society that achieves a harmony of obedience and freedom." In this society, obedience to authority does not require a subordination of will that denies our freedom and corrupts our sensibilities. The proposed harmony is puzzling. How could each person accept political authority, thus uniting with all for common security, while obeying only himself or herself, achieving the "moral freedom" that consists in giving the law to oneself, and so remaining "as free as before"? Rousseau's explanation has two components, corresponding to two kinds of doubt about the possibility of such a political society - doubts about content and motivation The problem of content arises because accepting authority, which is required for security. appears to involve letting oneself be ruled by the decisions of others (perhaps the majority). To show that self-government can be reconciled with the chains of social connection and bonds of political authority, we need some way to dispel this appearance-to show that the idea of such reconciliation is even coherent. Rousseau's conception of a society guided by a general will addresses this problem. In such society, the political obligations of citizens are fixed by laws, those laws reflect a shared un- derstanding of the common good and that understanding expresses an equal concern for the poed of each citizen. Because the content of the conception of the common good reflects an qual concern with the well-being of each citizen, the society provides security for the person anzen remains free in fulfilling legal obligations. Those obligations are acceptable to citizens a free agents because each can regard the obligations to the common good as self imposed. Rousseau's solution to the fundamental problem requires, then, that the parties to the social compact treat each other as equals, both in the institution of equal citizenship and in Togelating conduct by reference to reasons of the common good. To institutionalize and sostain the supremacy of the general will, Rousseau proposes a system of nonrepresentative, direct democracy. Citizens themselves are to assemble regularly to reaffirm their social boods, evaluate the performance of the executive, and choose the fundamental laws that will best advance their common good
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