Formative Essay- Jurisprudence.

Rousseau, one of the most important democratic thinkers of all time, believed that ‘man is
born free; and everywhere he is in chains’1; that although man is free, he is also enslaved. He
believed that in order for man to truly become free, to obtain some sense of perfect freedom,
he must transform himself to get from this condition of ‘what is the case’ to the condition of ‘
what ought to be the case’, from the descriptive to the normative state, where individuals sacr
ifice their individual freedom for the common good to form a society, and that common good
is expressed by the general will, which is maintained/protected by law. This is how Rousseau
introduces his theory of the social contract.
He begins in the state of nature, where men are neither bad nor good. They are not necessa
rily prone to evil. They are in the state of nature and they acquire natural freedom. This natur
al freedom has no normative feature to it and no rights come with it; it is neither good nor bad
. With that natural freedom you follow your own will, your own interest and that is what mak
es you free: you are self-governing. However, there comes a point where that is no longer eno
ugh in the state of nature, where he says: ‘I suppose men to have reached the point at which t
he obstacles in the way of their preservation in the state of nature show their power of resista
nce to be greater than the resources at the disposal of each individual for his maintenance in t
hat state’2. Rousseau believes, therefore, that men can actually gain more than this natural fre
edom, a type of freedom that has a sort of value to it, a type of freedom where the individual i
s moving from plain self-interest to something that is collective and communal. However, if
men were truly to obtain this intrinsic, this generally innert freedom, this normative freedom,
then men would have the duty to enter into a society where it becomes possible to acquire thi
s normative freedom. This normative freedom is seen as a moral freedom, and from the word
moral we see that it requires a relation between human beings for it to exist; without human r
elations there will be no moral freedom. Therefore men must transform themselves, change f
or the common good, no longer looking after their general interest but at the common interest
in order to truly acquire this innert normative freedom.
With this however, arises a potential conflict. If individuals are to acquire this normative f
reedom by transforming themselves for the common good, how will they be free in a society
with each other? How can people be in a society if they should follow their own wills to be fr
ee when clearly that is not how society functions? That is where Rousseau’s social contract ar
ises. Rousseau believes that if people enter into a society by forming a social contract, it will
be a total delegation of everyone’s power to everyone else. In this way, people are not actuall
y giving up their own will and therefore their own power, infact they are receiving back as m
uch power if not more than they originally had as every individual is in the same position as t
he other where no one is above the other. In this way, Rousseau establishes that sovereignty i
s indivisible and cannot be represented. It is indivisible because it lies within the people and i
f it were divided, there will no longer be a single people. Moreover, sovereignty cannot be re

1
Jean Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract, Book I Chapter 1.

2
Roussea, The Social Contract, Book I Chapter 6.
presented because the will of the people cannot be delegated to others and still be seen as the
will of those single people. If one individual rules over you or represents you, they are actuall
y making decisions for you, and in that logical sense you are not self-governing and therefore
not free. Therefore, in order for this kind of sovereignty to stand, the people in society must b
e driven by the common interest, i.e. what benefits the society as a whole, and that is achieve
d through the general will. The general will is a collective decision guided by the common go
od, i.e., a decision which every citizen takes not for his/her own interests, but for the interest
of all. Therefore the general will is not the will of all but the will that represents all. The form
er is a simple aggregation of individual preferences (the sum of what everyone would like to
do or decide). Therefore, a society is free only if it is governed by its own general will.
In order to maintain that freedom and ensure that its governed by its general will, a society
must be autonomous. A society must give to itself laws and commit to them, and that is how
we determine that law is the leading moral agent for the realisation of self-government. There
fore law helps establish a self-governing society where it creates its own rules and follows the
m, and accordingly follow its own will and not the will of someone else. However, how is thi
s actually carried out? Rousseau states that you design law in a way that is geared towards the
common interest, and that is expressed by the general will. In order for the laws established b
y society to be ones established by the general will, those laws have to be general and abstract
. Laws are general when they are directed to all members of the community, and they are abst
ract when they are directed to every instantiation of an action. They cannot directly target one
person or one specific course of action. Therefore it is only through the generality and the uni
versality of the law that you actually realise a democratic system; it is only through this instru
ment that the general will can really govern democratically because it is the general will of so
ciety. That’s why law is the main device for democratic government; if you don’t have these t
ype of laws you don’t have a democratic government.
Therefore, Rousseau believed that to truly acquire a genuine normative freedom, man mus
t enter into a society where he sacrifices his individual interest for the common good, and thr
ough the general will, all the individual freedom that was given up will be compensated and
more when protected/ensured by the law. That is how Rousseau relates the common good, the
general will, and the law in his theory of the social contract.
References:

Rousseau, J. (1968). The Social Contract. Baltimore, MD.: Penguin Books.