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On the general w ll and
the road to tyranny
Rousseau and
the Rights
of Man
Robert V. Andelson
S O CONFUSED and self-contradictory seem
Rousseau’s ideas on human rights that it
may be seriously questioned w he ther they
contain an y kind of unifying locus or can
be reduced to systematic form at all. In-
tellectual source of both the Jacobins and
Hegel, equally conde mn ed by Burke an d
Bentham, the works of this exasperating
thinker constitute a kind of grab-bag in
which can be found just about whatever
suits one’s fancy ogeth er with its op-
posite At present, howev er, the prevail-
ing acade mic fashion is to discover ord er
in the m idst of chaos, and num ero us
scholars profess to find some sort
of
underlying unity beneath his paradoxes.’
And it must not be forgot ten that
Rousseau himself claimed consistency for
his writings, asserting, in both his major
autobiographical works, the fundamental
co he renc e of his ideas.2
In the last analysis, however, it is hard
not to concur with the judgment of He nri
Piiyre: “Rousseau is rife with contradic-
tions, and the most ingenious men of
learning hav e not succeeded in con-
vincing us of the unity of his t h ~ u g h t . ” ~
For one thing, they are by no means
agreed as to wherein that unity lies. For
exam ple, Rousseau is see n as a pioneer in-
dividualist by Rosenkranz4 and as the
Father of State Socialism by D u g ~ i t . ~is
Calvinist connections a re stressed by Lan-
son6 an d his affinities with Catholicism by
Masson.’ Irving Babbitt views him as
a
Modern Age
romanticist,* and Ernst Cassirer, as a ra-
tionalist.9 According to Kingsley Martin,
Rousseau began a s an anarchist and e nd-
ed a s a tota1itarian;lO acco rding to C.E.
Vaughan, he began a s a follower of Locke,
shifted to Plato, and ended under the rul-
ing influence of M ontesquieu.ll Lanson ex-
plains the varying emphases of Rousseau’s
different works by interpreting his early
Discourses
as protests against all hitherto
existing societies;
Emile
and the
Nouvelle
Hkloise
as guides to the reform of the in-
dividual in th e spheres of pe rsonal morali-
ty, family relations, and education; and
th e later political writings a s adumb rations
of
th e kind of society in which the good
man can properly live.’*
Yet it
is not mere-
ly
between
but
within
his works that baf-
fling contradictions abound. In the
Social
Contract,
which Ritchie calls “the great
political treatise of his most m atu re and
sound est period,”I3 individualism a nd col-
lectivism, prudentialism and heroism, ra-
tionalism and functionalism ll appea r
to be nega ted by the affirmation of ea ch ,
dissolved into a raging ferment over
which broods the spirit of th e gen era l will,
amorphous, enigmatic, and ineffable.l4
It
is
in part precisely because of all his
inconsistencies and obscuri t ies that
Rousseau is,
par excellence,
the charac-
teristic representative
of
what may be
term ed th e “radical-humanist’’ view of
human rights
.e.,
the view that deduces
rights from an uncritical veneration of
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man
qua
man; its ground b eing a rom antic
concep t of man,
its
end , freedom, and its
regulating principle, equality. Radical-
humanism is an empty abstraction that
resolves itself into so m e ot he r position
whenever a serious attempt is made to
give
i t
content.
It
is always on the v erg e of
going in one of se veral directions, and
what make Rousseau especially signifi-
cant is
the
fact that all of these direc tions
are strongly represented in his philos-
ophy. There have, it is true, been “pure”
radical-humanists m en like Con dorce t
whose thought is fairly unambiguous
an d free of contradiction. But these m en
can scarcely be regarded as original
creative theorists of th e first ord er ; th ey
were able to ma intain a degree of form al
consistency in their ideas because they
operated on a relatively superficial level.
An examinat ion of Rousseau’s view
of
man reveals affinities both with the hedo-
nistic utilitarians and with the ancient
classical thinkers. In opposition to the an-
cients, he does not see man as a political
animal by nature. The mental compass of
the “natural man” is
so
restricted that in
this respect he is hardly to be distin-
guished from the brute. Yet he differs
from other animals in that he has two
unique potentialities: freedom and perfec-
tibility. By freedom, Rousseau means the
consciousness of altern atives an d th e
liberty to really choose among them in-
stead of being guided by m er e impulse. By
perfectibility, he unde rstands the capa city
for psychological and moral growth.’5 But
freedo m, instead of being regard ed a s th e
condition of such growth, is seen ra ther as
its object.16 “Man is by na tu re good” o
the degree in which this nature is not ab-
sorbed in sensual instincts but lifts itself
“spontaneously and without outside help
to th e idea of freedom.”I7 This is where
Rousseau stands farthest from the classical
tradition, which never views freedom as
an e nd in itself, but only as instrum ental to
th e cultivation of rea son, i.e., to the
realization of humanity’s distinctive and
predeterminate goal. Cobban, Chapman,
Cassirer, Levine, and others18 ha ve at-
tempted, in varying degree, to make a
Kantian rationalist of Rousseau,lg and
it
is
perfectly true that he is far from the ab-
solute irrationalist that popular imagina-
tion, on the strength of a few well-known
passages, pictures him as being. He does
not reject reason but only its perverted
use; he would en list it in the serv ice of v ir-
tue. Despite all this, however, the fact re-
mains th at R ousseau is less sang uine abo ut
man’s intellectual endowm ent th an about
his innate moral capacity, an d certainly he
does not make reason either the essence
or the en d of hu man existence.
Cobban tells us th at virtue, in Rousseau’s
sen se of the word, may b e defined as “the
ab senc e of moral conflict betw een the
desires of the individual, or w ha t he need s
to render him happy, and the laws im-
posed on him by his envjronment.”*OThis
is brought out in the
Emile
where the
system of m ora l education consists basi-
cally of teach ing children “ from the first to
confine their wishes within the limits of
their powers
so
tha t they will scarcely
feel
the want of whatever is not in their
power.”21 Schinz, as a m at te r of fact, goes
so
far as to interpret the “Profession of
Faith of a Savoya rd Vicar” as an expres -
sion of pragmatic religiousness, an enun-
ciation of a do ctrine intended to prom ote
man’s temporal happinesszz;and although
Cassirer n o doubt rightly criticizes this as a
misplaced emphasis, he admits that “this
interpretation undoubtedly characterizes
a certain element in Rousseau’s funda-
m ental c o n c e p t i ~ n . ” ~ ~
Having conceded the existence of this
elem ent, howev er, we must not lose sight
of th e fact that Rousseau’s utilitarianism
was strongly qualified by classical in-
fluences, espec ially of Plato and P lutarch.
From them he derived the ideal of moral
education a s th e primary function of th e
st at e and of po litical participation a s a
necessary requisite for complete human
developm ent. This is related to a c oncept
of
man quite a t varian ce with that of t he
utilitarians. For according to Rousseau,
the nurture and exercise of moral poten-
tialities constitute not only the highest
happiness for m an , but also and m ore im-
portantly, his proper good. And this can
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take
place fully only in society. Ov er an d
asainst the above-cited passage from the
Emile,
another must be placed: “Speak the
truth a nd do th e right; the only thing th at
really matters is to do one’s duty in this
world.”z4Yet “one’s duty” consists simply
of
moral autonomy he recov ery of tha t
natural goodness vitiated by the tyranny
of destructive habits engendered by ad-
verse social influences. This is how Wright
interprets the “return to nature”:
We can give up pride. We can cease
from all comparison with other
men
and simply go about our destiny. We
can renoun ce a host of imaginary
needs and hold fast to the true things
needful; cast away a world of illusion
and rediscover our own self. We ca n be
meek, and inherit our soul. In a word,
we can return t o nature. That is all the
fam ous p hra se m e a n ~ . ~ 5
Thus R ousseau’s idea of duty
is
not real-
ly a teleological concept, since it does not
essentially relate to any referent beyond
th e self. This is not to s ay , of course, that
Rousseau rejects God; but however much
du ty, for him, may accord w ith th e will of
God,
its
criterion lies elsewhere, in the
fulfillment of the self. And this fulfillment
is seen a s the a chieve ment of a radical
au tono my , not as the pursuit of functional
goals in a cosmic setting. This is what
places Rousseau among the moderns, in
spite of his reversion to cer tain asp ects of
th e classical tradition. For in classical an d
medieval thought, a s D ’En trke s remarks,
“It is not from the individual that we are
asked to start, but from the Cosmos, from
th e notion of a world well ord ered and
graded , of which na tural law is th e expres-
sion.”26 n this connection it is significant
th at th e first dra ft of th e
Social Contract
contained a cha pte r intended to refute the
theory of natural law.27
Two ruling themes characterize Rous-
seau’s thought: the state of na tur e and th e
general will. Both these themes are
marked by ambiguity, and their relation-
ship to on e an oth er, although of crucial
imp ortance to an unders tanding of his
writings,
is
oftentimes so recondite as to
be virtually impenetrable. In his
Discourse
on the Origin of Inequality Among Men,
the st ate of nature is represented a s an
idyllic (even if hypothetical) epoch, in
which the savage “breathes only peace
and liberty,” living “within himself,” in
almost perfect equality with his fellows.
Yet th e sta te of n ature
is
lacking in both
moral and specifically human content.
The c iv i l s ta te “produces a very
remarkable change in man, by sub-
stituting justice for instinct in his conduc t,
and giving his actions the morality they
formerly la cke d .. Instead of a stupid
and unimaginable animal, it made him a n
intelligent being and a man.”28 Never-
theless, Rousseau, while accepting the
unavoidable necessity of society, rejected,
as was stat ed ea rlier, the classical concep-
tion of man as an inherently social entity.
His ans wer to the qu estion of th e good life
“ta kes on this form: the good
life
consists
in the closest approx imation to the state of
nature which is possible on the level of
h ~ m a n i t y . ” ~ g
Perhaps the most striking paradox in
Rousseau’s thinking is
the way he con-
ceives of th e relationship be tween the in-
dividual and society. On the one ha nd, the
natural m an is innocent an d good; on the
other , he is a stupid and limited animal.
On t he on e h and , society is the corrupting
influence; on the o th er , it is only in society
that h is mora l potentiality can develop. By
shifting “original sin” from the individual
to society, Rousseau doubtless felt that he
was p reservin g man’s free will. But actual-
ly, acc ord ing to his theory of p sychology,
th e sinful proclivities a re in th e individual
al l along- they merely cannot be
hatche d apa rt fro m a conscious relation to
othe rs. In sp ite of th e baneful effec ts of
civilization upon
the
individual, Rousseau
disclaims any desire to regress to bar-
barism: “Human nature does not turn
back. Once man has left it,
h e
can never
return to the time of innoce nce and equali-
Society, being necessary to man in
his present stage, is in that sense
“natural,”31 ut it is natural only insofar as
it
preserves man’s primal potentiality for
self-determination. The
Social Contract
Modern Age
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addresse s itself to th e problem of how this
is to be achieved, but
its
solution can h ard-
ly be viewed as an unqualified success.
If one were to compress into a single
sent en ce those passages of t he
Social Con-
tract
most pertinent t o our topic, th e result
would probably rea d somew hat a s follows:
Man has the right to be compelled to
abdicate his inherent individual liber-
ties, so as to acquire genuine freedom
in order that he might, through the ex
ercise of mora l will, fulfill his destiny a s
a human being.
For we are told, to begin with, that “the
social order is
a
sacred right which
is
t he
basis of all other rights.”32 We a r e the n
given to understand that this order con-
sists of “t he total alienation
of
each
associate, together with all his rights, to
th e whole ~ o m m u n i t y , ” ~ ~n d t h a t
“whoe ver refuses to obey the gen era l will
shall be compelled to do
so
by the whole
body. This means nothing less than that
he will be forced to be free.”34Finally, this
ord er gives his actions “th e morality th ey
had formerly lacked. ” 35 Lest this
method of interpretation be dismissed as
arbitrary, we must protest that it is no
more so than an y othe r. All interpretation
is necessarily selective, and a mode of
selection th at records th e original author’s
paradoxes is, in fact, more faithful to his
thought than is a mo de th at ignores his in-
consistencies, or seeks to harm onize the m
by means of some interpretative key not
inherent in the text itself. When Cassirer
reads Kan tian catego ries in to R o u ~ s e a u , ~ ~
when Hoffding says that
it
was the “op-
position of the absolute an d th e relative
that Rousseau meant by the opposition
of na tu re and c i ~ i l i z a t io n , ”~ ~hen Chap-
man understands the
moi commun
to
refer to “the reality of man’s moral
p ~ t e n t i a l i t i e s , ” ~ ~hey are indulging in an
intellectual gam e of speculation whic h,
however shrewdly and skillfully played,
remains, in the final analysis, speculation.
Rousseau’s social teaching is not merely
paradoxical; it is pragmatically absurd. It
is, in fact, a monstrous perversion of
Luther’s doctrine of th e freedom of t h e
Christian m an, who is at the sa m e time th e
“se rvant of all” an d the “m ost fr ee lord of
There is important truth in the idea
tha t real freedom involves disciplined sub-
mission to a goal outside oneself, but this
must occur in such a way that that goal
is
personally appropriated and made the
vo lun tary ob ject of one’s will. This is to
say , such submission to be moral m ust be,
as Rousseau rightly understood, “obe-
dience to a law which we prescribe to
o u r s e l ~ e s . ” ~ ~ut this kind of o bedie nce
cannot be forced.
As
Sabine aptly puts it,
“forcing a man to be free is a euphemism
for making him blindly obedient to the
mass o r the strongest party.’I4*Rousseau’s
dan ger ou s verbal jugglery was godfather
to a long and vicious semantic tradition
passing from Robespierre and Hegel
through Hitler an d Stalin tradition in
which tyranny is baptized with the name
of liberty. To him, more than to a ny oth er ,
belong s th e dubious distinction of having
invented “New speak,” for Big Brother’s
sinister slogan, “Freedom is Slavery,”42
s
nothing but an aphoristic echo from the
Social Contract.
I f
I
may be permitted to repeat some
observations made by m e in ano the r con-
text:
Kant understood that man is inwardly
free only as he submits to moral law.
The self-mastery whereby the will
fulfills itself through obedience to the
command of duty he denominated
“positive freedom.” But he apprehend-
ed that politics
is
fitly concerned only
with “neg ative freedom” eciprocal
freedom from external constraint. In
this he displayed a perspicuity superior
alike to that of his direct philosophical
successors an d to that of his progenitor,
Rousseau. T he burden of Isaiah Berlin’s
great inaugural address at Oxford, as
also of Ta lmon’s monum ental stud ies,
is
very largely to remind us that the at-
tempt to make “positive freedom” the
immediate responsibility of th e sta te is
fraught with consequences which
reduce all freedom to a
There is but one sense in which
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Rousseau w as right abo ut “forcing peo-
ple to be free .” Freedom is an unal-
ienable trust. Nobody has the right to
opt fo r an y form of se rvitude th at
is
likely to extend beyond the one who
does the opting.44
“Each
of
us,” proclaims Rousseau, “p uts
the person and all his power in common
under the supreme direction of the
gene ral will, and, in our co rporate capaci-
ty, we receive each mem ber a s an indivisi-
ble part of the whole.”45 “Each man , in
giving himself to all, gives himself
to
nobody; and as there is no associate ove r
which he does not acquire the sam e right
a s he yields others ove r himself, he gains
an equivalent for everything he loses, and
an increase of force for th e pre serv ation of
wh at he Sir Ernest Barker has ad-
mirab ly exposed the fallacy of such
reasoning:
The paradox conceals a paralogism. I
surrend er all myself nd
1
surrender
it
all to 999 others as well as myself;
I
only receive a fraction of the sove reig n-
ty of the community; and ultimately 1
must reflect that if I am the thousandth
part of
a
tyrant, I am also the whole of a
slave. Leviathan is still Leviath an, ev en
when he
is
~ o r p o r a t e . ~ ’
T he gene ral will, according to Rousseau, is
the ultimate, absolute and final authority,
a n oracle which cann ot err.48 Yet
nowhere are we given a definite and
unambiguous statement as to how it can
b e discerned.
Rousseau admits that the people may
not know its own will,49and he provides
for this contingency, at least to his own
satisfaction, by postulating a legisla-
to r a sort of medium wh o is able to
intuit that which is hidden to the
But alas Who is to intuit th e iden-
tity of th e legislator? This
is
the perennial
problem of authoritarian po litical theo ry,
an d Rousseau can scarcely be said to hav e
solved it. When the Jacobin spokesman
flatly informed the Convention that “Our
will is the general will,” his words were
pregnant with the guillotine. The two
Napoleons, Mussolini, Hitler, PCron, and
Stalin ll ma de th e sa m e ominous claim
and w ere equally ruthless in enforcing it.
Yet
th e con cep t of the legislator by no
means exhausts the totalitarian implica-
tions of Rousseau’s social teaching.
Omit the legislator altogether: the re-
sult is still there. Imagine Rousseau a
perfect democrat: his perfect democ-
racy is still a multiple autocrat. He
leaves no safeguard against the omni-
potence of the souuerain. It is signi-
ficant that the
Social Contract
ends
with t he suggestion of religious per-
secution . Rousseau was
so
far
from believing in les droits de l’homme
that he went to the other extreme.
e
was so convinced that it was enough
for the individual to enjoy political
righ ts (as a frac tion of the collectivity)
tha t he forgot the necessity
of
his enjoy-
ing th e rights of “civil and religious
liberty.”51
The sub tle imagination of Leo Strauss
se es in th e very emptiness of Rousseau’s
doctrine of t he sta te of na ture th e clue to
the riddle of his political ethic. A ccording
to this ingenious theory, Rousseau
represents the reductio ad absurdum of
the radical-humanist tradition, attributing
to man the natural right to a freedom
which has no object outside itself and no
validation apart from its connection with
the individual.
The notion th at the good life consists in
the r etu rn on the level of humanity to
th e sta te of natu re, Le., to a state which
completely lacks all human traits,
necessarily leads to the consequence
that the individual claims such an
ultimate fre edom from society as lacks
any definite human content. But this
fun dam enta l defect of th e state of
na tur e as a goal of human aspiration
made that state the ideal vehicle of
freedom . The notion of a retu rn to
th e sta te of natu re o n the level of
human ity was t he ideal basis for claim-
ing a freedom from society which is not
a freedom for something. It was the
Modern Age
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ideal basis for an ap peal from society t o
something indefinite an d indefinable, t o
an ultimate sanctity of th e individual a s
individual, unredeemed and unjus-
tified. Every freedom which is free -
dom for something, every freedom
which is justified by reference to
something higher than th e individual o r
than man
as
mere man, necessarily
restricts freedom.
52
What Rousseau attempted was a logical
impossibility: to “graft the notion
of
un-
conditional duties an d of n on m erc en ary
virtue onto the Hobbesian notion of the
primacy of freedom o r of rights.”53 H e
agreed with Hobbes that duties are
derivative from rights and that there is no
natural law .which ante dat es th e human
will. But he departed from H obbes in seek -
ing the basic right in something more
distinctively human than self-preser-
vation, an impulse that man shares with
brutes.
If
morality or humanity were to be
understood adequately, they had to be
traced t o a right or a freedom which is
radically and specifically human.
Hobbes had implicitly admitted the ex-
istence of such a freedom. For he had
implicitly admitted that if the tradi-
tional dualism of substances,
of
mind
and body, is abandoned, science cann ot
be possible excep t
if
meaning, order or
truth originates solely
in
man’s creative
action, or if m an has the free dom
of
a
creator. W hat Hobbes ha d, in fact,
suggested
in
regard to science was ap-
plied by R ousseau to m orality.54
‘Ernst Cassirer,
The Question o f Jean-Jacques
Rousseau,
trans. with introduction by Peter Cay
N e w
Y o r k ,
1 9 5 4 ) ; J o h n W . C h a p m a n ,
Rousseau-Totalitarian or Liberal?
New York,
1956); Alfred Cobban,
Rousseau and the Modern
State
London , 1934); Lester
G.
Crocker,
Rousseau’s
“Social Contract,
” Cleveland, 1968); Stephen Ellen-
burg,
Rousseau’s Social Philosophy:
An
Interpreta-
tion from Within
Ithaca, N.Y., 1976); Charles
William Hendel, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Moralist
These ideas are so suggestive that we
must be permitted to carry Strauss’s
theory a st ep beyond his own ventu re by
relating its implications to the concept of
th e hegem ony of the gen eral will.
Remembering tha t Rousseau’s thoug ht is
gea red to the two antipodal foci of uncon-
ditional duties and nonmercenary virtue
on t he on e hand, and primacy of freedom
on the other,
is
not the general will that
element in his philosophy which satisfies
abstractly the demands of both? In its in-
sistence upon unquestioning obedience
it
calls forth sentim ents of hero ic loyalty,
while at th e sa m e time its very elusiveness
renders it the creation of its subject. The
total itarianism of the general will is as
void of content as is the anarchy of the
sta te of nature, yet the creative freedom
elicited by its vacuity is informed by vir-
tuous commitment to a non-prudential
goal, the vagueness of which permits the
individual to remain radically indep enden t
by identifying himself absolutely with it.
If
indeed (which is by no m ean s certain)
Rousseau’s political ethic is to be r ega rded
as anything but an ill-assorted pof-pourri
of rhetorical extravagances, this inter-
pretation may conceivably help us to get
at the underlying structure and meaning
of th e whole rovided that w e ar e will-
ing to ignore the law of pa rsimo ny Even
supposing that
we
have succeeded,
however, in absolving Rousseau to some
deg ree from th e charg e of reckless incon-
sistency, it needs to b e rem arked that he is
only vindicated on
a
strictly formal an d ar-
tificial level. In practice, historically, the
doctrin e of the general will ha s eve r been
a n ignis fa tuus leading m en to tyranny .
London, 1929); Harold HBffding,
Jean-Jacques
Rousseau and His Philosophy,
trans. William
Richards and
eo
E. Saidla New Hav en, 1930);
Gustave Lanson,
Histoire de la littkrature franfaise,
22nd ed . Paris, 1930); Roger D. Masters,
The
Political Philosophy
of
Rousseau
Princeton,
N . J .
1968); and Ernest Hunter Wright,
The Meaning o f
Rousseau
London, 1929).
Confessions,
Livre IX.
Rousseau juge de J eanilacques,
Troisieme Dialogue.
3“The Influence of Eighteenth Century Ideas on the
354
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French Revolution,” in Herman Ausubel, ed., The
Making ofModern Europe (New York, 1951). I 482.
‘Karl Rosenkranz, Diderofs Leben und Werke (Leip-
zig, 1866), I I 75. 5Lbon Duguit, Rousseau Kanf et
Hegel 1918),p. 6. Quoted by Cobban, p. 42. 6Lanson,
pp.
788 f .
7Pierre-Maurice Masson, La Riligion de
Rousseau (Paris,
1916).
passim. 8Rousseau and
Romanficism (Boston,
1919).
Tassirer , p.
82
and
passim. laFrench Liberal Thoughf
in
the Eighfeenfh
Cenfury (London,
1929),
p.
196.
”The Polifical
Wrifings
o
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Cambridge,
1915),
I
77-81.
1Z“L‘Unit6de la Pensbe de Jean-
Jacq ues Rousseau,” reviewed b y Pe ter Gay in h is in-
troduction to Cassirer, pp. 18-19. I3David G. Ritchie,
Nafural Rights (London, 1894), p. 51. I4For in-
dividualism, s ee The Social Contract in Frederick
Watkins, trans. an d ed., Rousseau-Polifical Writings
(Edinburgh, 1953), p. 31; Leo Strauss, Natural Righf
and Hisfory (Chicago,
1953),
p.
298.
For co llectivism,
se e Watkins, pp. 17-18; Strauss, p. 286; George H.
Sabine,History OfPolifical Theory (New York, 1950),
pp.
587, 588-91.
For prudentialism, see W atkins, p.
31;
Strauss, pp.
266-76, 282-84.
For heroism, see
Watkins, p.
20;
Strauss, pp.
277-98.
For rationalism,
se e W atkins, p.
3;
Strauss, pp.
279-81, 293-94.
For
functionalism, see W atkins, p.
20;
an d the editor’s in-
troduction to The Social Contract in lnfroducfion o
Contemporary Civilizafion
in
the West 2 vols. (New
York, 1946), I 954. l5See Rousse au, A Discourse
on
the Origin
of
Inequality in The Social Contracf and
Discourses trans.
G.
D.
H
Cole (Everyman’s Libra ry;
London, 1947), pp. 157 f . 169 f . For a good sum ma ry
of
Rousseau‘s theo ry of human nature, see Chap-
man, Part 1 %ee The Social Contract in Cole’s
translation, p. 16. I7Cassirer, pp. 104 f . This involves
a partial misunderstanding of Rousseau. For him, the
pyrpose of the sta te is to provide just suc h help. Se e
Emile p.
437.
Iscobban, p.
223;
Chapman, pp.
113-15;
Cassirer, p.
82
and passim;Sir Ernest Barker,
lntroducfion
lo
Social Contracf: Essays by Locke
’
Hume and Rousseau (New York, 1948), p. xxxii;
Wright, p. 32; Andrew Levine, The Politics of
Aufonomy:A
Kantian
Reading
of
Rousseau “Social
Confract”(Amherst, Mass., 1976). IgRobert Dkrathb
criticizes Cassirer for overstating his case in this co n-
nection. See Le Rationalisme de
J. J.
Rousseau
(Paris,
1948). p. 188. z°Cobban, p. 135. 21Emile rans., Bar-
bara Foxley (New York,
1948),
p.
35.
zZA. Sch inz, La
Pens
de
J.-J.
Rousseau (Paris,
1929),
pp.
446, 506,
and elsewhere. Cited in Cassirer, p.
11;.
231bid.
24Emile .
257.
Z5Wright, p.
20 f.
26A. P. D’Entrirves,
Nafural Law (London,
1951),
pp.
45-46.
ZTBarker, pp.
xxix f . 28The Social Contract Bk.
I
chap. vii, in
Watkins, p. 20. 29Strauss,p. 282. 3aRousseauuge de
Jean-Jacques Troisiirme Dialogue. Cited in Cassirer,
p. 74. 31Hendel, I 134. 32The Social Contract and
Discourses (Cole’s translation), p. 3. 33/bid. p. 12.
34/bid. . 15. 35/bid.Ta ss i r e r , pp. 56-59, 126. 37Hoff-
ding, p.
103.
T h a p m a n , p.
28.
39Martin Lu ther, A
Treafise
on
Christian Liberty (Philadelphia, 1947). p.
5. 4aThe Social Contract and Discourses (Cole’s
translation), p. 16. “Sabine, p. 591. 4ZGeorgeOrwell,
Ninefeen Eighty-four (New York,
1954),
p.
23.
43Robert
V.
Andelson, lmputed Rights (Athens,
Ga.
1971).
p.
81.
Th e work s alluded to ar e Isaiah Berlin,
Two
Concepts of Liberty (London,
1958).
and J.L.
Talmon, The Origins
of
Totalitarian Democracy and
Political Messionism (New York,
1960).
44Andelson,
p. 114. 4SThe ocial Confruct and Discourses (Cole’s
translation), p. 13. .461bid. . 12. The concept o the
general will was anticipated
i?
Marsilius
of
Padua’s
Defensor Pacis 1324). See D’Entrirves, p. 75. For a
contemporary interpretation of the concept, see the
philosophy of the Dutch juristic theorist, H. Krabbe,
reviewed in Charles Grove Haines, The Revival of
Nafural Law Concepts (Cambridge, Mass., 1930), pp.
274-77. 47Barker,pp. xxxiv-v. “The Social Confract
Bk.
I
chap.
6.
49TheSocial Confract and Discourses
(Cole’s translation), pp.
22-23, 30-3 1 .
501bid. pp.
32-35.
51B arker, p. xxxviii. %Strauss, pp.
293 f .
53/bid. p.
280.
541bid.
81.
Modern
Age
55