Rawls J. Lectures on the History of Political Philosophy

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of historical and social change. Then to have a social theory is to have,

among other things, a theory of these units of deliberation and action; and

any such theory must attribute to them certain original principles which

specify how they act given various social conditions.

Thus, what is really at stake in these disputes about an original hu-

man nature are the prospects of fundamental social change and the wis-

dom of adopting this or that means to it, given our present historical and

social situation. Unless we are to act in the dark, we must be able to explain

how a well-regulated free and humane society will operate, what it might

look like; and why it will be stable and feasible, given a certain system of

education when the suitable background obtains. Also, can we reach such a

society from where we are without the use of means that cause psychologi-

cal characteristics to come to dominate in us which themselves make such a

society impossible?

In Emile Rousseau discusses the psychological theory which he thinks

makes a well-regulated society both possible and stable. It requires that all

coercive authority, public or otherwise, is to be based on principles persons

can give to themselves as free moral persons, and which exclude personal

dependence.

Rousseau: Appendix B

Comments on Figure 5:

1. Leaving aside 1.1 and 4.9 (ﬁrst and last chapters of the Social

Contract), each book falls into equal parts with the same number of

chapters.

2. It is not until 3.10–3.18 (in 2nd part of Part II) that it becomes clear

that the Sovereign must be an assembly of the people and that it must meet

at ﬁxed and periodic intervals (cf. 3.13.1).

List of Rousseau’s Works

1750 Discours sur les sciences et les arts (“First Discourse”)

(written 1749)

1752 Le Devin de Village (opera)

1755 Discours sur l’origine de l’inégalité (“Second Discourse”)

“Economie Politique” (article in Diderot’s Encyclopédie)

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1756 “Lettre sur la Providence” (reply to Voltaire’s “Poème sur le désastre

de Lisbonne”)

1758 Lettre à M. d’Alembert sur les spectacles

1761 La Nouvelle Héloïse

1762 Writing of four biographical letters to Malesherbes

Emile

Contrat Social

“Lettre à Christophe de Beaumont” (reply to the Archbishop of

Paris on Emile)

1764 Lettres écrites de la montagne (reply to J. R. Tronchin’s Lettres

écrites de la campagne)

1765 Projet de constitution pour la Corse

1766 Confessions (1st part—completed on return to France) published

1781

1772 Considérations sur le gouvernement de Pologne

1772–76 Dialogues: Rousseau juge de Jean-Jacques

1776–78 Les Rêveries du promeneur solitaire

Bibliogr aphy

Cassirer, Ernst, The Question of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, trans. Peter Gay

(New York: Columbia University Press, 1954).

Cohen, Joshua, “Reﬂections on Rousseau: Autonomy and Democracy,”

Philosophy and Public Affairs, Summer 1986.

Cranston, Maurice, Introduction to his translation of the Social Contract

(Penguin, 1968), pp. 9–25 (critical), pp. 25–43 (biographical); The Early

Life and Works of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 1712–1754 (New York: Penguin,

1983).

Dent, N. J. H., Rousseau (Oxford: Blackwell, 1988); and A Rousseau Dictio-

nary (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992).

Gay, Peter, The Enlightenment: An Interpretation, 2 vols. (Knopf, 1969); on

Rousseau, pp. 529–552 (re La Nouvelle Héloïse, pp. 240f).

Gildin, Hilail, Rousseau’s Social Contract (Chicago, 1983).

Green, F. C., Jean-Jacques Rousseau: A Study of His Life and Writings (Cam-

bridge, 1955).

Grimsley, Ronald, The Philosophy of Rousseau (Oxford, 1973).

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Lovejoy, Arthur O., Essays in the History of Ideas (Johns Hopkins, 1948).

Contains “The Supposed Primitivism of Rousseau’s Discourse on In-

equality.”

Masters, Roger, Rousseau (Princeton, 1968).

Miller, James, Rousseau: Dreamer of Democracy (Yale, 1984).

Neuhouser, Frederick, “Freedom, Dependence, and the General Will,”

Philosophical Review, July 1993.

Shklar, J. N., Men and Citizens (Cambridge UP, 1969).

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The Social Contract: Assumptions and the General Will (I)

§1. Introduction

1. In the last lecture, we tried to get a sense of the questions and prob-

lems that moved Rousseau in writing the Social Contract. I said that his con-

cerns are broader than those of Hobbes and Locke: Hobbes was concerned

with overcoming the problem of divisive civil war, Locke with the justiﬁca-

tion of resistance to the Crown within a mixed constitution. Rousseau is a

critic of culture and civilization: in the Second Discourse he diagnoses what

he sees as the deep-rooted evils of society and depicts the vices and miseries

it arouses in its members. He hopes to explain why these evils and vices

come about, and to describe in the Social Contract the basic framework of a

political and social world in which they would not be present.

The Social Contract sketches the principles of political right that must be

realized in institutions if we are to have a just and workable, stable and rea-

sonably happy society. I suggested that Rousseau’s saying that human na-

ture is good, and that it is through social institutions that we become bad,

comes to these two propositions:

First, social institutions and conditions of social life exercise a predomi-

nant inﬂuence over which human propensities develop and express them-

selves over time. Some propensities are good, some are bad; and which

ones are encouraged and manifest themselves depends on social conditions.

Second, there exists at least one possible and reasonably workable scheme

of political institutions that both satisﬁes the principles of political right and

meets the requirements for stability and human happiness. Thus, our na-

ture is good in that it allows such a social world.

2. Consider once more the opening paragraph of the introduction to

Book I of the Social Contract: “I want to inquire whether there can be a le-

gitimate and reliable rule of administration in the civil order, taking men as

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they are and laws as they can be. I shall try always to reconcile in this re-

search what right permits with what interest prescribes, so that justice and

utility are not at variance.” That Rousseau views his reasoning as realistic

and as aimed at what is possible is shown by his saying he means to take hu-

man beings as they are and laws as they can be. To ensure both stability and

happiness, a certain ﬁt must be achieved between what right permits and

interest prescribes. Otherwise the just and the useful will clash and a stable

and legitimate regime is not possible.

Note that there is an ambiguity in Rousseau’s saying he means to take

human beings as they are. Surely he doesn’t mean people as he sees them

now, with all the vices and habits of a corrupt civilization (as described in

the Second Discourse). Rather, he means human beings as they are according

to the basic principles and propensities of human nature. These principles

and propensities are those by reference to which we can account for the

kinds of virtues and vices, aims and aspirations, ﬁnal ends and desires—in

short, the kind of character—people have under different social conditions.

These principles and propensities include such things as the capacity for

free will (to identify valid reasons and to act in the light of them) and per-

fectibility (the potentiality for self-improvement through the historical de-

velopment of our faculties through culture). Basic psychological aspects of

our nature also include amour de soi and amour-propre, with this last under-

stood on the wide view, following Kant.

3. In discussing any political conception with its conception of right and

justice there are four questions we must distinguish: namely,

(1) What does the conception say are the reasonable or true principles

of political right and justice; and how is the correctness of these principles

established?

(2) What workable and practicable political and social institutions most

effectively realize these principles and keep society stable over time?

(3) In what ways do people learn principles of right and acquire the mo-

tivation to act from them and to afﬁrm the political conception to which

they belong?

(4) How might a society realizing these principles of right and justice

come about; and how has it come about in some actual cases, if there

are any?

Now, I shall interpret the idea of the social compact as addressed to the

ﬁrst two questions. In discussing it I begin from a hypothetical ongoing

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steady state in which the society of the social compact is fully realized and

in equilibrium. Social institutions and laws may change from time to time,

but its basic structure remains right and just. We then ask the ﬁrst question:

what are the principles of right in this society? The answer, in a phrase, is:

they must express the terms of the social compact. We shall explore this

phrase later.

We then ask the second question: what political and social institutions

most effectively realize these principles and keep society stable over time?

The answer to this is: certain general aspects of the basic structure of politi-

cal society necessary to meet the terms of the social compact. An example

is how the basic structure achieves three basic aspects of equality, to wit:

how it upholds an equal standing and respect for all citizens; how it realizes

the rule of law as applying to all and coming from all; and how it secures a

sufﬁciently equal material equality.

We must say what these things mean.

The other two questions—the third about moral psychology, the fourth

about historical origins—I put aside for the next lecture.

§2. The Social Compact

1. Let’s turn to the idea of the social compact, which, as Rousseau puts

it, is the act whereby people become a people (SC, 1:5.2). Later I connect it

with the idea of the general will (and its various companion ideas, such as

the common good and the common interest), and with the ideas of sover-

eignty and fundamental political laws. But before doing this, note that in

Chapters 2–5 of Book I of On the Social Contract Rousseau argues from

cases, much as Locke does, that political authority must be founded on a so-

cial compact. In parallel fashion, he argues that political right must be based

on convention, and that neither paternal authority, nor right of the stron-

gest, nor the right of the victor in war can sufﬁce for political authority. As

the heading of Chapter 5 says, “it is always necessary to go back to a ﬁrst

convention”—a social compact.

Implicit in these arguments by cases is the thought that all persons be-

ing, as Locke said, equal kings (Second Treatise, ¶123), we are bound to a po-

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1. Frederick Neuhouser in his “Freedom, Dependence, and the General Will” cites

these three aspects of equality. See pp. 386–391.

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litical authority only if it has arisen, or could appropriately arise, from our

consent as free and equal, and as reasonable and rational. Each alternative

basis of authority, when examined, turns out to depend upon our lacking

one or more of the three conditions essential for binding consent: that is,

we lack either the ability, or the opportunity, or the proper will that binding

consent requires. For example, as Rousseau explains in the Social Contract:

(a) Minors before the age of reason are not yet fully reasonable and ra-

tional, so parents or trustees must act in their behalf until they come of age

(SC, 1:2.1f).

(b) Defeated subjects of a victor in war lack the opportunity to give

their free consent; the signs of consent, even if given, in those circum-

stances are forced and cannot bind. Self-preservation moves them to obey,

and they can again do as they please when the victor loses power. It is ab-

surd to think right begins and ceases as force does (SC, 1:3).

them” (SC, 1:2.8), and so they lack both the ability and the will to give their

free consent. But people are not slaves by nature: it is subjection to force

that makes a man a slave, and it is the lack of will (the cowardice) resulting

from slavery that holds the slave in bondage (SC, 1:4).

2. Now to our main topic: the social compact as Rousseau states it in

SC, 1:6. This compact speciﬁes the terms of social cooperation to be re-

ﬂected in political and social institutions. I present Rousseau’s account of

the social compact as making four assumptions.

These are implicit in how

he lays out the compact’s general features and the conditions on which it

rests.

First Assumption: those cooperating aim to advance their fundamental

interests—their reasonable and rational good as they see it. Two of these

interests connect with the love of self in both of its proper natural forms,

amour de soi and amour-propre.

As amour de soi the love of self not only takes an interest in the means

of well-being of various kinds, but also includes the interest in developing

and exercising the two potentialities that we humans have in the state of

nature that other animals do not have. One of these is the capacity to

have a free will and thus the capacity to act in the light of valid reasons

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2. These assumptions draw on Joshua Cohen, “Reﬂections on Rousseau: Autonomy

and Democracy,” Philosophy and Public Affairs, Summer 1986, pp. 276–279.

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(SD, 113f ); the other is the capacity of perfectibility and self-improvement

through the development of our faculties and through our participation in

culture as it develops over time (SD, 114f ).

To these we could add our capacity for intellectual thought (not simply

images) (SD, 119–126); our capacity for the moral attitudes and emotions

(SD, 134–137); and our capacity for identiﬁcation with others (pity and

compassion as appropriate to the circumstances) (SD, 131f ).

To recall what I said in the last lecture, the love of self, as amour-propre

in its natural proper form, is the need we have to be recognized by others as

having a secure standing, or status, as an equal member of our social group.

This standing means that on the basis of our needs and wants we are

viewed by others as entitled to make claims that they will recognize as im-

posing limits on their conduct, provided, of course, our claims meet certain

conditions of reciprocity. Moved by this natural proper form of amour-

propre, we are ready to grant the same standing to others in return, and

hence to honor the limits that their needs and claims impose on us.

3. Second Assumption: the persons cooperating must advance their in-

terests under the conditions of social interdependence with others. Here

Rousseau supposes that people have reached the point historically where

social cooperation in the form of political and social institutions is both

necessary and mutually advantageous. Social interdependence is now part

of our condition (SC, 1:6.1).

But this dependence must not to be mistaken for personal dependence

on the will of others. This form of dependence, Rousseau thinks, as we

know from the Second Discourse, is largely responsible for the development

of unnatural, or perverted, amour-propre as it is displayed in the will to dom-

inate and lord it over others, and in the other vices of civilization.

This second assumption deserves note: Rousseau never thinks that we

can be independent of other human beings. He takes for granted that we

are always bound to society in some form, and cannot live without it. He

makes it equally clear both in the Second Discourse and in the Social Contract

that it would not be good for us not to be in society: it is only in some ap-

propriate social form that our nature can come to full expression and fru-

ition (SC, 1:8.1). The social compact does not make us independent of soci-

ety. Rather it will make us completely dependent on society as a whole, as a

corporate body. We are independent of all other particular citizens as indi-

viduals, but we are dependent entirely on the City (polis), as he says (SC,

2:12.3).

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It is not merely that a life outside of society is not feasible for us; or that

we cannot return to the stage of primitive human beings before society

came about—to that of a lazy, indolent, and harmless brute. It is rather that

that life is not appropriate to our nature as having free will and being per-

fectible, and much else (SD, 102). Voltaire said that when he read the Second

Discourse he was tempted to walk on all fours. A pleasant witticism, but he

should have read the book more carefully.

4. Third Assumption: all persons have an equal capacity for and interest

in their freedom, that is, a capacity both for having a free will and for acting

in the light of valid reasons, as well as an interest in acting on their own

judgments as to what they think is best in the light of the particular aims

and interests that most move them. In short, we have both an equal capac-

ity for judging what best advances our good as we see it, and an equal de-

sire to act on this judgment. This assumption makes explicit what we said

above about what falls under amour de soi.

Fourth Assumption: all persons have both an equal capacity for a politi-

cal sense of justice and an interest in acting accordingly. This sense of jus-

tice is viewed as a capacity to understand, to apply, and to act from the prin-

ciples of the social compact. This follows from the third assumption above,

given what Rousseau says in SC, 1:8.1, about the passage from the state of

nature to a civil state producing “a remarkable change in man, by substitut-

ing justice for instinct in his behavior and giving his actions the morality

they previously lacked.”

From what we said under the Second Assumption about social interde-

pendence, clearly Rousseau is not thinking of the social compact as being

made in a state of nature, or even in a state of early society. It is partly for

this reason that we take the compact to address only the ﬁrst two questions

distinguished above in §1.3.

5. With these four assumptions, the fundamental problem becomes, as

Rousseau puts it (SC, 1:6.4):

(i) How to “ﬁnd a form of association that defends and protects the per-

son and goods of each associate with all the common force.”

And yet at the same time in this form of association:

(ii) “. . . each one, uniting with all, nevertheless obeys only himself and

remains as free as before.”

This is the problem to which the social contract is to be the solution.

The problem is how, then, without sacriﬁcing our freedom, to unite

with others to secure the fulﬁllment of our fundamental interests, and to

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guarantee the conditions for the development and exercise of our capacities

(SC, 1:8.1). Rousseau answers the problem roughly as follows: given the

fact of social interdependence, and the necessity for and the possibility of

mutually advantageous social cooperation, the form of association is to be

such that it would be reasonable and rational for equal persons, moved by

both forms of love of self, to agree to it.

Given all the preceding assumptions, Rousseau thinks that the articles

of the social compact are: “So completely determined by the nature of the

act [the conditions and point of the social contract] that the slightest modi-

ﬁcation would render them [those articles] null and void” (SC, 1:6.5).

I think Rousseau means by this that once we state clearly the problem

of the social compact, it is also clear what the general political and social

form of association must be. Since he thinks the articles of the social com-

pact are everywhere the same, and everywhere tacitly admitted and recog-

nized, he must also think that the problem of the social compact is under-

stood by our common human reason.

Rousseau says further that the articles of association when rightly un-

derstood reduce to a single clause: “the total alienation of each associate,

with all his rights, to the whole community” (SC, 1:6.6).

6. On this statement, Rousseau makes three comments:

First (SC, 1:6.6): he says we give ourselves to society as a whole abso-

lutely (without qualiﬁcation), and the conditions to which we commit our-

selves are the same for all. For this reason “no one has an interest in making

[those conditions] burdensome for the others.” Though we are committed

absolutely to the articles agreed to, the scope of those articles is not all-

encompassing: they do not involve an all-inclusive regulation of social life.

Our love of self (in both its forms) prevents this, as does our interest in our

freedom to advance our particular ends as we judge best, all the while being

personally independent, in the sense of not being dependent on any partic-

ular person. Thus the general laws specifying the social compact must or-

der restrictions on civil freedom as needed to advance the common good so

as to preserve a proper scope for individual liberty (SC, 1:6.4).

In SC, 1:8.2, Rousseau mentions three forms of freedom: natural, civil,

and moral, in that order. Natural freedom, the right to anything we want

and can get, limited only by the force of the individual, we lose by the so-

cial compact. In return we gain “civil freedom and the proprietorship of ev-

erything he [man] possesses,” which is limited only by the general will. And

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