Rousseau (UNFINISHED atm)

State of nature

• Cobban: Rousseau’s state as a means to develop individual moral personality and secure liberty

• Humans are free, uncorrupted, morally neutral, but become enslaved and unequal in society.

• COHEN: Humans are “naturally good” but society “depraves him and makes him miserable.”

• The introduction of private property and vanity (need for external validation) corrupts man.

The issue Rousseau tries to solve

• How to reconcile need for collective political authority with the individual freedom of the state of nature - ensuring that people obey only themselves while still being governed.

• Paradox: “man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.”

• “Find a form of association which will defend and protect” the common good “while uniting himself with all, may still obey himself alone, and remain as free as before.”

The solution

• Hypothetical agreement where everyone gives themselves to the authority of the sovereign (the people as a collective), therefore self-legislating through the “general will,” which aims for the common good.

Successes of the social contract

COHEN: Conceptual (in principle, not in practice) success in “finding a form of association that protects the person and goods of each person without demanding from them a morally unacceptable sacrifice of autonomy.”