POT2002 Rousseau

Main Question of Discourse on the Origin of Inequality

What is the origin of Inequality among men?

2 parts of Discourse on teh Origin of Inequality

1) negative critique = stripping away all social assumptions

• state of nature - before political society

• purpose = trying to understand how political power arises and how inequality comes to be … same as Locke

2) outlining the origin and development of social inequality from this natural state

What is Rousseau’s critique of Locke’s state of nature?

says that Locke did not start at the beginning and that Locke described the social (civilized) man rather than the savage (original) one

Rousseau’s State of Nature

• human beings are solitary, no complex thought, no language

• much more atomistic approach than Locke

• no “morality” understood as a system of general rules and associated punishments - this would not come until society

• but, people are also not naturally evil.

• 3 characteristics that define human beings: amour de soi, compassion, perfectibility

Rousseau’s 3 characteristics that define human beings in the state of nature

1) amour de soi = healthy love of self

• self respect and intuitive concern for self preservation

• contrast with amour propre = egocentrism or vanity

  • egocentrism is artificial, borne in society, leads individuals to value themselves above anyone else

2) compassion/ “pity”

• natural when confronted with human suffering

3) perfectibility

• the desire for improving one’s condition

• positive side = perfectibility leads to improvement in material wellbeing overall

• negative side = the move from isolated independence to social independence leads to external comparison

  • value becomes attached to public esteem

  • in the state of nature, there were natural inequalities (strength, beauty, intelligence) but no social consequences because there was no interaction

    • this leads to inequalities

What does Rousseau think happens to our sense of self?

• it becomes externalized

• people live lives based on fraud and deceit

• opinion of themselves is inseperable from what others think of them

• "“civilized” human beings spend their lives constantly working at things they hate until death

Private property becomes the means of ….?

keeping score

zero-sum mentality = one person’s winning means the other must lose

argues that men become wicked - but they are naturally good in the beginning

First Social Contract

fraudulent!

• comes at the end of the discourses on the origin of inequality

• social inequalities are locked in through a fradulent social contract where the rich trick the poor

  • described as universally beneficial: but the impacts are profoundly unequal.

  • the poor have amour propre that they are certain one day they will also be rich, and when they become rich, they will want these kinds of laws too.

• rousseau describes this first social contract with: “they all ran to chain themselves”

How does Rousseau view history?

linear, no going back to the state of nature

The Second Social Contract

• universal consent

  • where we leave the state of nature, create poltiical society, and become “a people”

  • the nature of agreement is: we all agree to engage in directly making the laws, and to be bound to the laws we make

  • committment is absolute - a total alientation of self and rights to the whole community

• once we have entered civil society, we must abide by the general will

  • everybody participates in making the law

  • assumes there is an objective common interest

  • we thinking

  • no representatives (unlike Locke)

6 prerequisites to the General Will

1) universal direct participation in which the people alone retain sovereignty

• retain sovereignty = no representation

2) no representation

3) no partial associations

• ex: single issue groups

4) rough economic equality in society is required, and should be enforced by law

• the poor and the rich can not live in fundamentally different societies

5) no “natural rights” carry over from the state of nature into political societies

• all rights are socially constructed, and the community decides where they begin and end

• big disagreement with Locke

6) only under the preceding conditions can the general will be determined, and then it is done by majority vote.

• people on losing side have to accept that they were wrong

accumulation creates ….

alienation

Does Rousseau value the public sphere or the private sphere?

public sphere

Does Rousseau view politics as natural or artificial?

natural

• twist on it from Plato - needs direct participation from everyone rather than just the gold souled

Purpose of politics

to realize and apply the good for the entire community

• requires poltiical participation of all in ascertaining it, wtih no poltiical representation

view on economic inequality

economic inequality creates amour propre and is fatal to the formulation of the general will

• this must be regulated through legislation to create a rough degree of economic equality

• everyone must be living under the same set of conditions - as opposed to the rich living in one world, and the poor living in another