Rousseau’s Social Contract—Book 1

The General Will

The subject of the first book is legitimacy and “the general will.” The book is broken into two parts. The first part runs from the introduction through chapter four. Rousseau establishes his definitions of right and convention. What is by convention is very rarely established by right. Paradoxically, what is established by force is what is usually understood as convention. The second part of the book is about the general will, or how it is that a convention can be established by right.

First Part: Legitimacy

The traditional conventionalist view held that laws are a matter of convention and that all conventions are the result of force. Laws pretend to be neutral but in fact support one faction within the community over another. Conventionalism is almost always an anti-democratic doctrine. Democracies claim to have laws that are the same for all. However, these laws are actually the tool of the many weak to hold down the few very strong by force and fraud. Real men see through this and ignore the law; when they are very powerful real men, they are able to break down the façade of “law” and establish an honest political organization based on open force. Conventionalism therefore holds that force and right go together in nature, but are hypocritically or duplicitously separated by convention. The many are unfit to rule because they cannot honestly lay claim to the tools which they use to rule. They cannot honestly claim to rule by force because as soon as the veil is lifted, the better men will cease to be confused and will lay waste to the dishonest regime.

Rousseau turns this on its head and produces a democratic conventionalist doctrine. On the one hand, he follows the traditional conventionalists by claiming that force is the way of nature. He departs from the conventionalists by saying that this force does not establish right. When a man has a right, others have a duty to respect that right. They should obey the rightful ruler out of duty, such that even if they find themselves able to disobey, they still lack any right to do so. There might be slavery by nature; there is no slavery by right. One cannot determine what ought to be from what is. Since nature always is, it does not determine for us what ought to be.

The ancient answer to this conundrum is the “best regime.” The best regime is rare, but it is the same in every place (i.e., it is natural), and every actual regime takes its value from its proximity to the best regime (i.e., nature is unavoidable). Rousseau does not give this answer. Hobbes and Locke did not give this answer. Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau all point to a middling regime, but Rousseau provides a justification for that regime that is not based in specific “natural rights.”

Rousseau goes further than Hobbes or Locke, however, toward the best regime. All three describe a merely legitimate regime; however, Rousseau’s legitimate regime is rare whereas, Hobbes’ and especially Locke’s is common or would be common if only men would take a little time to consult their reason. Rousseau sings his paeans to Citizenship. Hobbes and Locke denigrate military service. Being a citizen in the sense that Rousseau means it has what we call “positive” characteristics. There are “burdens.” Hobbes and especially Locke cover over this need and such burdens. (The reasons for their doing so were good reasons, by the way.)

Unlike Hobbes and Locke, who appear to follow in the “natural law tradition,” Rousseau does not hold up some thing like “nature,” by which all actions are judged good or bad. Instead, he sets down this notion of “right”—right unconnected to any “thing” like a law in the heavens or in nature—only to lay it down again. Any regime that wants to claim to be legitimate must rule by right, which means it must not declare that it rules rightfully because it possesses the most force. If you want to rule by right, then you must obligate people to obey you even when they are able to disobey you. This view of right is a matter of definition, and whatever is by definition needs no “standard in heaven or in nature” insofar as it is merely “in man.” Since man “can change” what he sets down as “right” is not natural, because nature does not change.

Second Part: the General Will

In chapters 5 through 9, Rousseau apparently drops this high demand. He explains what a legitimate government is “even if” one derived what ought to be from what is. The purpose of chapters 1 through 4 has been to show the poverty of what men like “Grotius” (who reminds us of Hobbes) have argued. More importantly, however, Rousseau has established the standard by which “what is” must be judged. You can derive what ought to be from what is, but only if you see truly what is.

So in chapter 5, Rousseau explains that many people think the form of government is the regime or “way of life.” One looks around and sees that peoples have given themselves different forms of government and thereby assumes that since the people have happily done such a thing, that different forms of government are therefore legitimate. Seeing things this way, though, is to mistake what is secondary for what is fundamental. Before the people gave themselves kings or any form of government, they were a people. The fundamental action is the development of this regime, not the form of government. This action must therefore be understood.

The social pact, which is the fundamental action and is therefore the establishment of the regime, is formed out of natural self-interest: the obstacles to self-interest become too great for men to bear in isolation. This self-interest is, then, the cause of the social pact and cannot be alienated through the formation of a people. The social pact cannot both be what it is and undo the reason for its being made.

The meaning of sovereignty is ruling on behalf of one’s self interest and by right. These things tend to get separated in nature, and this separation is reflected in almost all the conventional governments. Most of the time, men rule over others for their self-interest without right. Only where the “general will” rules is there sovereignty. In the general will, the good of the whole and one’s own good meet. Just because this can rarely happen does not make it less true or even less “actual.” The general will is what ought to be, and sometimes it is what is.

“This the transition from the state of nature to the civil state produces a most remarkable change in man by substituting justice for instinct in his conduct, and endowing his actions with the morality they previously lacked. Only then, when the voice of duty succeeds physical impulsion and right succeeds appetite, does man, who until then had looked only to himself, see himself forced to act on other principles, and to consult his reason before listening to his inclinations.” (3.8.1)

That long sentence begins chapter 8 of the 1st book. You see something of an ideal set down, but within it there are already seeds of decline. Because Rousseau declines to go “full Plato,” because he refuses to set down wisdom as the best regime, he is going to fashion a perfect regime made up of imperfect men. Men who are perfectable are by definition imperfect and a regime made up of imperfect men is by necessity off the mark.

The legitimacy of the regime will therefore require legal property (chapter 9). This property will have to have a certain character if the Lawgiver is going to combine property and the general will. Most property is illegitimately held. Real property, or just “property,” is held in a certain way, according to a right proportion. This proportion holds when the good of the community reinforces the good of the legal possessors of the land and vice-versa. Where the good of the whole and the good of the part are inseparable, you find the general will.

Rousseau closes the first book with a general maxim, which proves the validity of my interpretation here.

“the fundamental pact, rather than destroying natural equality, on the contrary substitutes a moral and legitimate equality for whatever physical inequality nature may have placed between men, and that while they may be unequal in force or in genius, they all become equal by convention and by right.” (3.9.6)

Nature’s equality has nothing to do with physical equality, understood as differences in force and genius. All men were equal in nature insofar as all men were equally entitled to pursue their self-interest, though this was done without right. Men could not be blamed, and therefore they were equal, but they could also not expect dutiful obedience, and therefore they dominated others without right. This natural equality is not destroyed. Men can still pursue their self-interest in the legitimate State without blame. But now they can pursue it with right, thanks to the general will. And this pursuit is all the more secure because the social pact brings with it strength that no individual man possessed beforehand.

The conundrum then becomes: is Rousseau’s formulation useful to anyone? Saying there is a magic proportion seems about as useless as saying “wisdom should rule.” Can Rousseau make his abstract formulation useful? And if he can, to whom will it be useful?