Rousseau

Flashcards reviewing the key concepts from a lecture on Jean-Jacques Rousseau's political philosophy, focusing on his social contract theory, critique of Enlightenment, and concept of the general will.

Who was Jean Jacques Rousseau?

Intellectual "father" of the French Revolution and a major contract theorist.

What is Rousseau's famous quote from The Social Contract?

Man is born free, and yet we see him everywhere in chains.

What was the Age of Enlightenment?

A period from Locke to the 19th century where the 'light of reason' supposedly illuminated human affairs.

Who were the philosophes?

The leading cultural, scientific, and philosophical thinkers of Enlightenment France.

What was the Encyclopedie?

A multi-volume work aiming at encompassing all knowledge, founded by Diderot.

What are the basic sources of Rousseau's social and political thought?

The Discourse on Political Economy, First and Second Discourses, and The Social Contract.

What was Emile?

A work on education that led to public burning of his books and threats of arrest.

What was the essence of Rousseau's personal problems that related to his political theory?

The inconsistency between his behavior and his beliefs.

According to Rousseau, how would people behave if they were not everywhere in chains in European society?

They would not behave as they do.

According to Rousseau's Second Discourse, what attributes to the loss of freedom?

Inequality produced by the emergence of private property.

According to Rousseau, how did human beings begin to behave in civilized society?

Calculating their own self-interest rather than thinking first of their fellows.

What did Rousseau claim in his First Discourse regarding the sciences, letters, and arts?

The sciences, letters, and arts spread garlands of flowers over the iron chains with which men are burdened.

What political conclusions does Rousseau draw from his analysis of Enlightenment civilization?

European society and polity must be reconstituted such that political liberty and inner freedom are returned to 'the people.'

What Lockean idea does Rousseau disagree with.

That property is the source of rights and liberties.

What is unique about Rousseau's political analysis regarding contract theories?

Combines elements of Hobbes's and Locke's theories of contract in a way that challenges both.

What do people in the state of nature possess according to Rousseau, Hobbes, and Locke?

Absolute liberty and equality.

With whom does Rousseau agree in claiming that humans in the state of nature lack social capacity, and what else does he say about them?

Human beings lack any social capacity and are utterly amoral.

What does Rousseau argue is an invention of civilization?

Language.

What does Rousseau not conclude about the state of nature, despite agreeing with Hobbes that people are innately asocial individuals?

A state of war.

According to Rousseau, what inclines people to peace in the state of nature?

Feeling.

What did Rousseau argue that Hobbes did not notice about 'savage man'?

Hobbes did not notice that savage man tempers the ardor he has for his own well-being by an innate repugnance to see his fellow man suffer.

What does Rousseau call the innate repugnance to see his fellow man suffer, the only natural virtue that human beings possess?

Pity.

According to Rousseau, what is the fundamental flaw in both Hobbes's and Locke's conceptions of the state of nature?

They had read into it civilized man and civilized conditions.

According to Rousseau, what mistakes did Locke and Hobbes make in analyzing the state of nature?

Locke imposes the civilized capacity to reason upon natural man; Hobbes imposes the passions produced by civilization.

According to Rousseau, when the contract is made, what is the point?

The strength of each individual is insufficient to overcome the resistance of the obstacles to his preservation.

According to Rousseau, what is the result of the act of contracting?

The passing from the state of nature to the civil state produces in man a very remarkable change, by substituting justice for instinct in his conduct, and giving to his actions a moral character which they lacked before.

According to Rousseau, what does the act of contracting transform.

The act of contracting transforms what are little more than dumb animals into human beings by 'substituting justice for instinct.'

What does Rousseau mean in his theory of the contractual act metaphorically

Language and reason are acquired in society and all our moral rules are social products.

According to Rousseau, when can people be genuinely free and happy?

Human beings can be genuinely free and happy only when human nature has been socially structured such that reason is made moral.

According to Rousseau, how should liberty be enhanced given that enhancing liberty requires a purpose.

Enhancement of liberty, both political and personal, is the whole intent of the contract.

What does Rousseau concede about the sovereign power?

Unless the sovereign power is absolute in all spheres, society would disintegrate into an individualistic state of nature.

What is Rousseau's greatest claim to fame as a political thinker?

His analysis of the contract resolves the apparent contradiction between the liberty of the individual and the requirements of social order.

What solution between individual liberty and the requirements of social order does Rousseau not find acceptable to death?

The Socratic solution.

Why does Rousseau not find the Socratic Solution acceptable?

Death may be an appropriate means to overcome the contradiction for the philosopher, but not for the average person.

According to Rousseau, like Hobbes, what must the act of contracting involve.

The total alienation of each associate and all his rights.

In political terms, what does Rousseau's analysis point to?

The legislative power must belong to the entire community of citizens, and each citizen must have an equal voice in the legislative process.

According to Rousseau, what should that one create a form of association?

Every person, while uniting himself with all, shall obey only himself and remain as free as before.

What is Rousseau's reading of the contract correct?

The political results that follow the correct reading of the contract.

What does Rousseau say about the citizen should refuse to obey the general will?

He shall be compelled to it by the whole body, and this only forces him to be free.

What is the obvious objection to Rousseau's line of reasoning about being forced to be free?

That to be forced to be free is a contradiction in terms.

What is Rousseau's major contribution to Western political thought?

The concept of the general will.

What is the term general will for Rousseau

The sovereign power.

According to Rousseau what does he try to endeavor?

To unite what right permits with what interest prescribes, that justice and utility may not be separated.

What does patriotism combine according to Rousseau?

Combining 'the force of egoism with all the beauty of virtue!'

What is the danger that Rousseau suggests in a community of citizens supporting laws?

They may come to support laws that reflect their own narrow or short-term self-interest, what Rousseau calls their private will, rather than those that reflect the public interest or general will.

According to Rousseau, what is the result of patriotism?

What makes the sovereign work, what makes it give expression to the general will, is the patriotism of the citizenry.

What is the central idea of Rousseau's Sovereign?

What makes the sovereign work, what makes it give expression to the general will, is the patriotism of the citizenry.

What requirement does a small egalitarian require?

A small egalitarian state requires but very few laws.

What does Rousseau suggest is the role of the legislative assembly.

Is the maintenance of the social treaty.

According to Rousseau what is the role of government.

Has a tendency to usurp the prerogatives of the lawmaking body.

According to Rousseau, what are the people of England once a new election is over.

They are again in chains and are nothing.

Although it alludes to the sovereign being absolute, what will not exceed.

It neither will, nor can, exceed the bounds of general conventions.

Limited values held by society can be characterized as.

Absolute.

According to Rousseau what danger exists.

There the very real danger does exist that the sovereign power will exceed the bounds of general conventions.

How does the sovereign assembly need to make laws to express the general will.

Reaching simple majority.

General Will

Those in a position to express a

What sort of will threat does the government pose?

A group will that stands as a constant threat to the general will.

What exactness does the founder of a state needs to strike.

The exact point where the force and the will of government can be combined in the manner most advantageous to the state.

What did Rousseau make a great point in recognizing?

There has been a distinction to which some thinkers (Hobbes obviously) have been confounded between government and sovereignty.

According to Rousseau what can not alienate which will.

The power may well be transmitted but not the will .

What efforts does sovereignty and government make?

Just as the private will continually acts against the general will, so the government makes an unremitted effort against the Sovereign until the social contract is broken

According to Rousseau, what institution was established?

To preserve morality by preventing the opinions of men from being corrupted.

Regarding the variety of institutions that Rousseau supports, they are.

Established the Roman Origin

What did Rousseau suggest to employ in The Government of Poland?

The federal priciple to create a condition of smallness and simplicity within a larger nation-state that otherwise would be much too extensive to allow for the expression of the general will.

What did Rousseau what out of his theory?

That it would expose the fallacies of Enlightenment civilization and the inadequacy of modem political values.

According to Rousseau what is flawed in the modem state organized on Hobbesian or Lochean premises?

They lack any genuine ethical basis and, as such, the citizens have no inner reason or self-imposed duty to obey the law.

What affirmation is The General Will

Is a reaffirmation of the classical belief in the unity of ethics and politics.