interpretation, vol_5-3

7/29/2019 Interpretation, Vol_5-3

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volume 5/3 sp r i n g 1976

page

2 4 7

266

hilail gildin

peter stern

revolution and th e f o r m a t i o n ofpolitical society in th e socialcontract

marx's critique of philosophy2 88 kirk emmert winston churchill on empire and

th e limits of politics30 9 l au re n ce b e rn s political philosophy and th e right

to rebellion

martinus n i j h o f f , th e h a g u e

edited at

queens college of th e c ity u n iv ers ityof new york


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interpretationa journal of political philosophyvolume 5 issue 3

editors

seth g. benardete - hilail gildin - robert horwitz - howard b. white (1912-1974)

consulting editorsJohn hallowell - wilhelm hennis - erich hula - arnaldo momigliano -michael oakeshott - leo strauss (1899-1973) - kenneth w. t hompson

executive editor managing editorhilail gildin ann mcardle

interpretation is a journal devoted to the study of political philosophy.it appears three t imes a year.its editors welcome contributions from all those who takea serious interest in political philosophy regardless of their orientation.

all manuscripts and editorial correspondenceshould be addressed to the executive editor

interpretationbuilding glOl - queens college - flushing, n.y. 11367 - u.s.a.subscription price

fo r institutions and libraries Guilders 42. for individuals Guilders 33.50.forwarding expenses Guilders 9. one guilder = $ 0.385subscription and correspondence in connectiontherewith should be sent to the publisher

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247R E V O L U T I O N A N D THE F O R M A T I O N O F

POLITICAL SO CIETY IN THE SO CIA L CONTRACT*

Hilail Gildin

Great minds are invariably understood by fewer people than theyinfluence. The fate that befell Rousseau's teaching (if fate is the appropriate expression here) furnishes a continuing, though melancholy ,confirmation of this truth. More than any other major political philosopher , Rousseau helped win acceptance for the view that democracy isthe only legitimate form of government. Since Rousseau was convincedthat only a tiny minority of the regimes existing in the world at anyone time would ever be democratic, his view implied that the overwhelming majority of political orders are, and will continue to be,illegitimate. However, this conclusion did not have the revolutionaryimplications fo r h im that it would have for many of our contemporariesbecause he thought that only a tiny minority of regimes ever can bedemocratic or legitimate and he saw no point in encouraging revolutions whose only result, after much suffering, would be the replacementof one illegitimate regime by another. In a word , Rousseau did notbelieve in Progress. H e did not think that the world was becoming evermore hospitable to democratic rule. The work which made him famouswas an attack on the view that intellectual progress, and the diffusionof its results, tend s to be accompanied by moral and social progress. Therevolutionary doctrine that is sometimes associated with his nameresulted from combining his views regarding the democra tic characterof all legitimate government with a belief in Progress that is incompatible with his philosophy. That combination was more explosive thaneither of its ingredients had been. Rousseau's belief that freedom is notthe first of all climates that it is, in fact, the fruit of very few climates was either abandoned or vanished from sight. It was replacedby the revolutionary conviction that, thanks to the progress of thehuman race, there was less and less excuse for enduring the evilsinflicted on men by their illegitimate rulers merely because one was toosqueamish and cowardly to do the ruthless things that would rid menof their rule. The revolut ionary tradition based on this conviction hasat t imes become so powerful that Rousseau's non-adherence to its viewsregarding revolut ionary change has seemed to be a strange aberrationfor which explanations have been given that are no less strange.

Rousseau did not think that a sound political order would come intobeing through the workings of Progress. It is hard to tell from the Social

* The author thanks the Relm Foundation for providing financial supportfo r part of the research for this paper. A version of this paper was presentedat the 1976 Annua l Meeting of the APSA.


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Contract how it would take place because of a curious vacillation in hisremarks on this point. In Book I (Chapter 6), while setting forth thecontent of the social contract, Rousseau speaks as if no more wereneeded to form a legitimate social order than for men at the dawn ofpohtical society to gather together and agree on reasonable conditions for living together.1 He even suggests that this is how politicalorders everywhere arose.2 In Book II (Chapter 6), however, Rousseaudeclares that the task of determining those conditions is utterly beyondthe capaci ty of any such gathering of men , and that their incapacitymakes the intervention of a supremely wise legislator indispensable.3Before one can understand the conflict between these tw o accounts,

one must restore them to the argument of the book of the SocialContract in which they appear. The argument of Book I opens with thefamous words: "Man is born free and everywhere he is in chainsthe next paragraph makes clear, the chains in question are the obligat ions which political society imposes on previously free and autonomousmen when it binds them to one another. No one who lives in a politicalsociety is free to act exactly as he pleases, least of all the despot, whothinks of all of his subjects as slaves. Rousseau affirms that he does notknow how the transition from freedom to the chains of political lifetook place, which should be remembered when reading his laterremarks about that transition,4 nor does he promise to show men howto restore their freedom. Wha t he does claim to determine is how thedeprivation of freedom required by every political society can bemade legitimate : this is the announced theme of this book from itsopening chapter.5Rousseau's discussion of that theme continues in the next chapter.

There we are told why a man, once he has attained maturity, is bynature free of any obligation to obey the commands of another, butwe are also told under what conditions men may properly alienate thisnatural freedom of theirs.6 Self-preservation provides the key to understanding both natural freedom and its ahenation. Nature has so mademen , we are told, that each one has the greatest possible stake in

1 Citations from the Social Contract are by book, chapter, and paragraph.Parenthetical references in the notes following such citations are to the Pleiadeedition of Rousseau's Oeuvres Completes, sometimes cited here as O.C. Thequotations from the Social Contract are based upon the translations by FrederickW atkins (London, 1953), Maurice Cranston (Harmondsworth, 1968), and G. D.Ff. Cole (Everyman).

2 5 (HI, p. 360).3 10 (p . 380).4 For what is hypothetical and what is not in the Discours sur I'origine et les

fondements de I'inigaliti, see Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History (Chicago,I953) P- 367, n. 32. Compare the "hypothetical" discussion of Rousseau 's ownnatural goodness and of the difference between that goodness and the virtue thatrevelation, as distinguished from the "law of nature, or at least its voice,"makespossible, in Dialogues, II (O.C, I, pp. 820ft.).

5 See Strauss, Natural Right and History, p. 255.6 3 (P- 352).


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Political Society in the Social Contract 249preserving himself. Therefore, each man must be allowed to be thejudge of what the best means fo r self-preservation are ; i . e . , eachmust beallowed to be his own master. However, conditions can arise underwhich one finds living under another's command the best means , andso the concern with self-preservation, which justified natural freedomin the first place, now justifies alienating it. Rousseau gives the example of children who have attained maturity, and are no longer underany obligation to continue living with their father and obeying him butwho may find it advantageous to do so, in which case they will "alienatetheir freedom ... for theirutility."e expresses no disapproval of thisalienation: he assumes that such children find in the love and the"means"

of their father recompense for the freedom that they forgo inorder to live with him . H e even displays a momentary willingness toconsider a family of this kind as a paradigm for pohtical society. Theparallelism between the tw o proves to be untenable, however, becausethe passion animating rulers the pleasure of commanding does notcarry with it the guarantees of beneficence that the father's loveaffords his children. In the absence of such guarantees, renouncing one'sfreedom is not a sensible act, according to Rousseau.In the explicit argument of the Social Contract freedom is treatedalmost exclusively in t e rms of self-preservation, however inadequate abasis this may seem to furnish for understanding all that political freedom meant for Rousseau.7 An appeal to the requirements of self-preservation justifies the assertion that men are by nature free. Asimilar appeal justifies the replacement of natural freedom by conventional freedom through the enactment of the social contract. SinceRousseau will later claim that it is very much to one's advantage toexchange natural freedom for conventional freedom,8 one mightwonder why the first chapter of the work opens with the contrastbetween freedom and chains, which presents the loss of natural freedomas a misfortune (of course it would not cease to be one just becausethe chains were legitimate and the loss irreparable). To understandthis, one must remember that for Rousseau natural freedom is notmerely a means of self-preservation. It is also a condition for and an ingredient of happiness. A substitute for natural freedom can be foundconventional freedom which is in many respects superior to what itreplaces as a means of self-preservation. But there appears to be nosubstitute, according to Rousseau, for natural freedom as an ingredientof happiness.9 It is perfectly possible, therefore, for h im both to deploreand to congratulate man on the transition from the state of nature to

7 II, 5, 2 (p . 376) ; III, 9, 4 (pp. 419-20; for the difference between "prosperity" and "riches," see O.C, III, pp. 924, 1004-5).8 II, 4 , 10 (p . 375).9 See his advice to the ichthyophagous people in II , 11, 3 (pp. 392-93).

In limiting our discussion to what Rousseau makes central in the Social Contract,and hence to self-preservation and freedom, as well as to happiness and freedom,we do not mean to minimize the importance of understanding the relation of


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political society, particularly since, according to him, the overwhelmingmajor i ty of men who have reached the point of human development atwhich self-preservation and natural freedom are incompatible are nolonger capable of the kind of happiness that natural freedom makespossible and cannot even be said to desire that happiness.10Having tried to show, chiefly by appealing to considerations of self-

preservation, why man is by nature free, and having paused to refutethe view that naked force can give rise to legitimate government,Rousseau turns to convention or voluntary agreement fo r an explanation of how ruling and being ruled in political society can have alegitimate origin (I 4). Here he speaks only of agreements which giverise to

slaveryor to its political counterpart, depo tism. Th is is surely

in part the result of his abhorrence of slavery or despotism and his

freedom to goodness and to virtue in Rousseau. Nor do we mean to suggest thatRousseau attained full clarity about that relation. In his Discourse on InequalityRousseau describes, in different but adjacent paragraphs, tw o different butadjacent peaks in the human condition, peaks attained during the state ofnature and never equaled since (O.C, III, pp. 170-71). The first peak is a peakin goodness. It occurs during the primitive state of nature, prior to the advent offixed dwellings and of family life, which usher in the following period. In theprimitive state of nature, man is said to have been good and compassionate as aconsequence of being "placed by nature at an equal distance from the stupidityof brutes and the baneful enlightenment of civilman."The second peak, a peakin happiness, occurs during the second period. The developments of the secondperiod give rise to amour-propre. Men become, for the first time, vengeful andcruel. Yet the war of all against all does not break out as yet. Dependence onothermen fo r self-preservation, a consequence of the division of labor, is necessaryto produce that result. Rather than being the scene of the greatest misery,the second period in the state of nature, by "maintaining a just mean betweenthe indolence of the primitive state and the petulant activity of our amour-propre, must have been the happiest and the most durable." Confronted by achoice between a peak in goodness and a peak in happiness, Rousseau unhesitatingly chooses happiness. This parallels the advice he gives the ichthyophagouspeople in the Social Contract: he counsels them to prefer the condition in whichthey are certain to be happier, and to remain savage. See also n. 10 below.10 Discourse on Inequality, II , III, pp. 174-5, 193. See Strauss, NaturalRight and History, pp. 254-55 , 278-79 , 290, and n. 61. The inclusion of a referenceto Social Contract, I, 8, 1 (p. 364) in n. 61 was explained by Strauss in an oralcommunication as follows: the counterfactual character of that paragraph isusually overlooked ; if one becomes aware of it , it supports the contention in thetext. Rousseau's account of the development of the human race in the Discourseon Inequality abstracts from the genesis of religion. He thereby keeps his promiseto "set aside all the facts" recorded in the writings of Moses. As a result, theDiscourse on Inequality does not shed l ight on his suggestion in the SocialContract (IV, 8, 1 [p . 460]) that the first organized societies were theocratic.Furthermore, his argument against the belief in the beneficent moral andpolitical consequences of the intellectual progress of the human race would beall the more powerful if that argument could be made while taking into accountonly the influence of human reason on human affairs. Finally, he repudiates alldevelopments beyond the second period in the state of nature, a state men leftonly " through some baneful accident which fo r the common advantage shouldnever have occurred"(Discourse on Inequality, II [III, p. 171]) , even though heis aware, as he makes clear in his note to this passage, that Christianity is one ofthese later developments (see n. XVI, first and last paragraphs [III, pp. 220-21]). Rousseau could not have expressed his preferences as boldy as he d id hadhe dealt explicitly with the religion of the savages.


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Political Society in th e Social Contract 251desire to demolish the agreements used to defend them. But he thengoes on to declare that every agreement to alienate one's freedom mustbe invalid.

Up to this point , Rousseau has more than once voiced the assumption that a requirement of political society is the replacement offreedom by bonds or the alienation of freedom. He cla ims, moreover ,to have shown that there is no possible origin for these bonds otherthan convention or agreement. Now, however, he declares that allsuch agreements to alienate one's freedom are null and void :To renounce one's freedom is to renounce one's quality as a man, the rights, andeven the duties, of humanity. There can be no possible compensation for anyonewho renounces everything. Such a renunciation is incompatible with the natureof man, and to deprive one's will of all freedom is to deprive one's actions of allmorality. Finally a convention which stipulates absolute authority on the onehand and unlimited obedience on the other, is vain and contradictory. Is it notclear that one is under no obligation whatever to a person from whom one has theright to demand everything and does not this condition alone, without equivalence or exchange, entail the nullity of the act ? For what right can m y slavehave against me, when everything he has belongs to m e, and his right beingmine, this right I have against myself is a meaningless phrase?11

Let us limit ourselves to the last part of the argument in this passage.According to Rousseau, the very notion of a contract implies that, totake the simplest case, each party incurs an obligation to benefit theother in some way, and each party acquires a right to the benefit theother has agreed to confer. In other words, a contract is possible onlybetween individuals each of whom is capable of having rights over theother and obligations to th e other. Now a master, by definition, cannothave any obligations to his slave, nor can the slave, by definition, haveany rights over his master. Therefore the very notion of a master-slaverelationship contradicts the notion of a contract.

Would matters be at all improved if one substituted a somewhatless strict master-slave relationship fo r this one ? Rousseau explores thepossibility in the summary of the Social Contract which appears inBook V of Emile and rejects it less in itself than as a model for the kindof agreement through which a sovereign is created. To understand why ,it is also important to see w hy he devotes so much t ime to discussingslavery agreements. He has already conceded that political societyrequires the alienation of freedom and his argument claims to showthat voluntary agreement is the only legitimate w ay in which suchalienation can take place. Now the most obvious example of an agreement through which one alienates one's freedom is an agreement bywhich one becomes a slave. Rousseau's objections to such agreementshave just been noted, but his objection to mitigated slavery is slightlydifferent: "If there is any reservation, any restriction in the deed of

11 I, 4, 6 (p . 356).


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slavery, we shall then discuss whether this deed does not become a truecontract, in which each of the tw o contracting parties, having in th isrespect no common superior, remains its own judge regarding theconditions of the contract, and is therefore to that extent free andcompetent to break it [maitres de le rompre] as soon as it regards itselfas wronged?"12To the words "common superior"ousseau appends the following

note: "If they [the contracting parties] had one, this common superiorwould be none other than the sovereign, and then the right of s lavery ,founded on the right of sovereignty, would not be its source.overeignty, not slavery, is thus the true t h eme of Rousseau's discussion ofslavery here.An agreement giving rise to mitigated slavery, unlike the ones just

discussed, can be legitimate. However, such an agreement, taken byitself, is obviously too unrehable to be the basis for sovereignty. At thebeginning of the Social Contract, Rousseau states that he wishes to finda rule fo r the management of public affairs that would be both "legitimate and reliable."13 Satisfying both requirements did not, at thattime, appear to present any notable difficulties. In the present context,however, any agreement to alienate one's freedom which is rehableproves illegitimate, while any agreement to do so which is legitimateproves unreliable. The reader who has followed the thread of Rousseau'sreflections on the surrender of natural freedom is now faced with animpasse which calls into question the possibility of ever establishing alegitimate political order.Rousseau sums up his reasons for denying that a contract to alienate

one's freedom can be valid, as follows :Thus, whichever way one regards things, the right of slavery is null and void,not only because it is illegitimate, but because it is absurd and meaningless.These words, slavery and right, are contradictory; they mutually exclude eachother. Whether addressed by a man to a man, or by a man to a people, thisspeech will always be equally senseless: "I make a convention with you entirelyat your expense and entirely to my profit, which I will honor as long as itpleases me, and which you will honor as long as it pleases me."14It is noteworthy that Rousseau omits one possibility in ridiculing thisspeech. He does not say that the speech would be nonsensical if it wereaddressed by a people to a man. This possibility will provide him withan escape from the impasse to which his analysis thus far has led. In thenext chapter he argues that the way in which a people acquiresauthority over its individual members must be examined , and thechapter in which he sets forth his answer to this question is the chapterwhich contains his exposition of the social contract.

12 Emile, V (IV, p. 839, par. 4; cf. 840, par. 5, 841, par. 1).13 I, opening par. (p . 351).14 I, 4 , 14 (p . 358).


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Political Society in the Social Contract 253When discussing the family earlier in the book as we noted above ,Rousseau had indicated that the alienation of freedom was permissible

in cases where it was more conductive to self-preservation than theretention of freedom would be. The difficulty was how to find inpolitical life any guarantee like that afforded by a father's affectionfor his children. Rousseau returns to this difficulty here, and assumesthat human development has reached the point at which naturalfreedom and self-preservation are no longer compatible. Self-preservation, whose requirements justified man's natural freedom, nowdictates the surrender of that freedom.15 Yet since the surrender ismade with a view to self-preservation, the agreement through which itis made must somehow guarantee self-preservation.16 The slaveryagreements repudiated earlier provided no such guarantee preciselybecause they involved the surrender of freedom. Now, however,Rousseau will claim that th ere is one way , but only one , to alienateone's freedom which will enhance the prospects of one's self-preservation the way set out by the social contract.

The heart of the social contract is said to be "the total alienation ofeach individual with all his rights to the entire community": itdemands the alienation of natural freedom no less than did the agreements Rousseau earlier rejected. In contrast to those agreements, however , in the present case the surrender is made to no individual, and noindividual is spared having to make the surrender; i.e., the socialcontract makes men politically equal, where the slavery agreementssought to authorize the most profound political inequality betweenmen. Under the social contract all men acquire rights over each otherand all incur obligations to each other , in conformity with what Rousseau holds to be part of the very notion of a contract;17 thus althoughthe social contract requires that natural freedom be alienated (if itdid not, it would not be reliable),18 it does not violate the very notionof a contract (if it did, it would not be legitimate). It is the "first"contract that is both legitimate and reliable, and it s presence makes itpossible for other legitimate and reliable contracts to be enacted.19

The preceding remarks are intended less to shed hght on the content of the social contract as expounded by Rousseau, which is wellknown, than to point out why he came to believe that no politicalauthority can be legitimate unless it has the origin and the characterprescribed by the social contract. By this standard, very few, if any,governments of his time could justify their claims to the obedience oftheir subjects, and in an earlier version of the Social Contract Rousseauopenly admitted this fact:

is I, 6, 1 (p . 360).is I, 6, 1, 3, 4 (p . 360).17 I, 6, 6, 8 (pp. 360-61).!8 I, 6, 7 (p . 361) ; cf. Emile, V (IV, pp. 841, par. 2).1 I, 2, 2 (p . 352) ; I, 9, I (p . 365).


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There are a thousand ways of assembl ing men, but there is only one way to unitethem. That is w hy I give in this work only one method for the formation ofpolitical societies, although in the multitude of aggregations which presentlygo by that name, perhaps no tw o were formed in the same manner, and not one inaccordance with the manner I establish. But I seek right and reason and am notengaged in a dispute about facts.20

This passage disappears from the definitive version of the SocialContract, however, and in its place we find a passage which, as it were ,extends the benefit of the doubt to every existing regime :The clauses of this contract are so determined by the nature of the act, that theslightest modification would make them vain and ineffect ive ; so that, althoughthey perhaps never been formally set forth, they are everywhere the same, everywhere tacitly admitted and recognized ; until, on the violation of the social pact,each regains his original right and recovers his natural freedom, while losing theconventional freedom is favor of which he renounced it.21

One might attempt to explain away the conflict between these twopassages by observing that, for Rousseau, every government whichpretends to be not only a government of the people but also a government for the people tacitly pays homage to the principles of politicaljustice expounded in the Social Contract. While there are other passagesin Rousseau which must be understood in this way,22 the one justquoted does not lend itself to such an interpretation. Here he distinguishes between an earlier period during which the social contract waseverywhere in force and a later period in which it seems to have beenviolated, at least in some places. Why does the man who announcedthat he did not know how political rule and subjection had arisen nowascribe a legitimate origin to pohtical orders everywhere ?

The manner in which Rousseau describes the enactment of the socialcontract is more favorable to the possibility that most existing regimesare legitimate than are the views he expresses later in the work. As weshall see, he goes on to point out just how difficult it is for a legitimatesocial order to come into being and, as a consequence, how rare suchsocieties are. This is only one of a number of cases in the Social Contractin which Rousseau appears more favorably disposed to the commonpolitical practices of men than his strict doctrine would require or,indeed, would permit: for example, one will find him speaking asthough all forms of government, including hereditary monarchy, arecapable of being legitimate.23 Careful students of the Social Contracthave seen, however, that the chapter devoted to monarchy in Rousseau'sdiscussion of various forms of government24 is not intended to show how

2 I, 5, i (III, p. 297).M 1 ,6, 5 (p . 360).22 Emile, V, IV , (p. 858 ).23 C.S., II, 6, 6 (p . 379).24 See Rober t Derath6 's note to the chapter on monarchy (III, pp. 1479-80,

n. 2 to 408) as well as his article on the subject, cited in that note.


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Political Society in the Social Contract 255hereditarymonarchy can bemade legitimate but rather why this cannotbe done. When one has followed to the end Rousseau's discussion inBook III of the danger that sovereignty will be usurped by governmentand of the measures thatmust be taken to protect the sovereign againstthat danger, one sees clearly that the scope of governmental arrangements which are compatible with his principles is far narrower than onemight at first expect.25 Moreover, there can be no doubt that, accordingto Rousseau's strict doctrine, if the people are kept from exercisingtheir sovereignty , the social contract is violated and the individualregains his natural freedom. Yet Rousseau fails to clearly apply thisprinciple to the subjects of large monarchic states: on the contrary,speaking of Rome, he dates the usurpation of sovereignty not fromCaesar or Augustus, whom he calls "monarchs," but from Tiberius,whom he calls a "despot." Those readers who would prefer to callCaesar or Augustus "tyrants," as Rousseau himself does in his otherwritings, find themselves confrontedwith a distinction between tyrants,who usurp governmental authority but govern in accordance with"law," and "lawless" despots.26 From Rousseau's strict doctrine oflaw it follows, as he remarks (in an aside), that "if one examined thingscarefuUy one would find that very few nations have laws."27 Nevertheless, he frequently chooses to speak of law in a much looser andmore common sense of the term, and as a consequence , the line separating legitimate from illegitimate government is far vaguer than itneed be, given his doctr ines.An eminent thinker has noted that the only wr itin g traditionally

attributed to Aristo tle in which there are oaths in the text is thePolitics, and he argues persuasively for the view that this peculiarityof the Politics is altogether appropriate, given the subject matter ofthe work. It is all the more notable, therefore, that Rousseau's SocialContract should be his least eloquent and impassioned work dealingwith moral and political matters. As soon as it appeared, it acquiredthe reputation of being a most abstract and difficult work. Rousseaufully expected this. He never thought that it would enjoy the popularsuccess ofEmile and Julie. Its abstract character, he tells us elsewhere,28permitted him to treat political issues bold ly . I would suggest that therestraint Rousseau exhibits in the Socia l Contract is caused by hisreluctance to incite men living under illegitimate rulers that is, mostmen to throw off their chains. If the conditions conducive to a justsociety are, of necessity, rare, as he says , illegitimate regimes are anecessary evil for the overwhelming majority of men necessary because the incompatibility between natural freedom and self-preservation forces men to form political societies even when the conditions

25 III, 17 (pp. 433-34). especially the final paragraph, and III, 18 (pp. 434-36).2(5 III, 10, 3 n 9-10; cf. O.C, III, pp. 23, 88, 190, 269, 880.27 III, 15, 8. The passage continueswith thewords, "However thismay be.28 Lettres Sorites de la montagne, VI, III (p . 812).


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favorable to legitimate government are absent.29 Rousseau clearlywishes the management of public affairs entrusted tomen who are law-abiding in his strict sense of the term, but where this is not feasible,where only illegitimate rule is possible, he prefers illegitimate rulerswho are "law"-abiding in the usual sense of the term, if not in his ownsense, to rulers who are utterly lawless and arbitrary. He thinks thatrevolutions against "law"-abiding but illegitimate rulers tend, on thewhole, to replace such rulers with others who , in addition to beingillegitimate, are "law"-less and despotic, a change which he does notregard as an improvement . Rousseau, given his teaching, cannot denysubjects the right to remove their rulers when the te rms of the socialcontract had not been observed, but he obviously did not think that itis always wise fo r men to exercise this right, and he did not wish to beguilty of inciting men to acts which he regarded as unwise. Thisaccounts for his relative tolerance of certain political practices whichhe saw no way to avoid. A t the same time, he is careful to warn societiesfortunate enough to be law-abiding, in the strict sense of the term,against the dangers stemming from those whom they could not avoidemploying to carry out their decisions. Accordingly, his analysis ofgovernment is as much concerned with how to protect the sovereignagainst the usurpation of its authority by those who govern as it iswith determining what kinds of government are compatible with thesovereignty of the people, to use these words in his sense. He makes hispreference for small and free republics clear in the Socia l Contract butdoes not wish to encourage men whose societies cannot be of thischaracter to overthrow the societies in which they do live merelybecause they are not small and free.

In the opening paragraph of the Social Contract, Rousseau announceshis desire to see whether a way to regulate the management of publicaffairs that is both legitimate and reliable can be found. One real izes,in the course of studying Book I, that the words "legitimate" and"reliable" foreshadow the impasse created by the opposition betweenthe requirements of legitimacy and the requirements of reliability inthe establishment of political authority, an impasse to which the socialcontract offers the only solution. The same pattern an analysisleading to an impasse the only solution to which proves to greatlynarrow the range of what he is prepared to regard as politically acceptable reappears in Books II and III. In Book II, the impasse iscreated by the confhct between the thesis that a sovereign people is the

29 Rousseau was accused of contradicting himself in the Discourse on Inequality on the grounds that the denunciation of political life in the body of the D iscourse was incompatible with the praise of Geneva contained in its EpistleDedicatory. Rousseau replied that in the Epist le Dedicatory he had congratulatedhis fatherland for having one of the best governments that can exist, while inthe Discourse he found that there could be very few good governments ; he deniedthat this was an inconsistency requiring an explanation (III, pp. 1385, 235, 186).


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Political Society in th e Social Contract 257only legitimate source of the laws under which it lives and the thesisthat no people possesses the ability to d iscern the most important ofthese laws until after it has lived under them. By the most importantlaws Rousseau has in mind , to begin with, what we would today callthe constitution of a society. As he presents this confhct , it is an important manifestation of the potential opposition between interestand justice, to the prevention of which he also refers in the openingparagraph of the Social Contract.

Book III shows why the institution of a body distinct from thesovereign to carry out the sovereign's decisions is unavoidable , andwhy it would be destructive of sovereignty to attempt to carry out itsown decisions. The same book shows why this distinct body sooner orlater usurps sovereign authority. To protect the sovereign against thisdange r fo r as long as possible , Rousseau requires measures which onlya small society can hope to put into practice, a fact which he franklyacknowledges here.

The analytic pattern of the first three books does not, as far as Ican see, reappear in Book IV , but something akin to it emerges whenone considers the relation of the book as a whole to the conclusion ofthe preceding book. At the end of Book III, Rousseau proposesperiodic assemblies of a certain kind as a remedy to the threat to thesovereign posed by the government. During these assemblies thesovereign would be asked to pronounce on whether the fundamentalpolitical arrangements of the society shall continue to remain ineffect. This suggestion has the effect of making every constitution (inour sense of the term) or the fundamental laws of every society, as wellas every government , provisional. It is not surprising, then, to findthat he devotes the next book to suggestions for reinforcing theconstitution of the state.

Further, each of the first three books ends with a chapter whichsharply exposes the limitations of the chief subject under discussion inthat book. The last chapter in Book I discloses an important limitationupon the justice that is brought into being by the enactment of thesocial contract : a people's claim to its territory cannot be establishedby the social contract, and may well be disputed by other peoples withperfect justice, unless conditions are met which one cannot reasonablyexpect any people to meet.30 The second book, which is devoted to

30 Apart from all other conditions, a people would have to be not the present,but the first, occupant of the territory it inhabits, and even this could notoblige another people to respect its claim if the self-preservation of that otherpeople were at stake. E ls ewhere in the chapter, Rousseau speaks openly of thefact that a people's possession of its territory results from "usurpation" or' 'seizure. "The note with which the chapter ends brings out a fur ther l imitation ofthe social contract : the contract will fail to be feffective unless the parties to itare politically equal, which Rousseau thought they could not be and whichperhaps they could not be in the kind of small city he had in mind if there weregreat inequalities in wealth between them.


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law as the central act of the general will, as well as to what the legislator must do to bring into being a society in which law is th e act of thegeneral will, ends by describing as "most impor tan t of all"a kind of lawwhich never comes up for discussion in the assembly of the people andwhich is never submitted to the people fo r its ratification, but "whichthe great legislator occupies himself with in secret."ousseau is speaking of "manners and morals, of customs, and above all, ofopinieis referring to the spirit and character of a people and to the seeminglyindifferent regulations from which they arise. The most important kindof law is thus not even a law in the Rousseauean sense of the term.31The chapter ending the book devoted to government makes clear that,strictly speaking, every government is provisional.32 Although, asnoted above, the fourth book does not seem to exhibit this pattern,its la st substantive chapter brings out clearly just how much the rightof men to manage their own affairs, which is presupposed in Rousseau'saccount of political authority, depends, for its successful exercise, uponthe convictions of men regarding the divine management of humanaffairs, or upon religion.33

31II, 12, 6 (p . 394).32 III, 18, 7-9 (pp. 435-3)33 The well-known clash (upon which Rousseau lays stress) between the

religion of the Savoyard Vicar and Rousseau's civil religion has a curious counterpart. The Savoya rd Vicar 's declarat ion of Jesus' superiority to Socrates parallelsRousseau 's declaration of Cato's superiority to Socrates (O.C, IV , p. 626; III,p. 255). In both declarations, the humanity of Socrates is contrasted to the divinity of those declared superior to h im : "The virtue of Socrates is that of the wisestof men: but between Caesar and Pompey, Cato appears a god amongmortIn the corresponding passage about Jesus, the Savoyard Vicar says that "if thelife and death of Socrates are those of a wise man [d'une sage], the life and deathof Jesus are those of a God." A third individual whose divinity Rousseau affirmsis himself qua man, i.e., qua Solitary Walker. H is ecstatic sentiment of existence,while it lasts, is said to make him as self-sufficient as God (O .C , I, p. 1047). Arethe peaks described in the fifth Revery (the ecstasy is an experience of one's ownexistence) and in the seventh Revery (the ecstasy is an experience of unity withnature as a whole) different, or are they complementary descript ions of the sameexperience ? If the latter, then the Solitary W alker 's sentiment of existence has anexpansive component lacking in that of the savage. The source of that expansivecomponent is said, at the beginning of Book III ofmile, to be the excess of faculties over needs. If a civilized man could keep his nature intact, at least in essence ,if he could benefi t from the enlargement of his powers made possible by the intellectual progress of the human race without being enslaved by the by-products ofthat progress, he would be "a man of nature enlightened by reason"(O.C, I, pp.8o8ff), and his soul would be as expansive as is humanly possible. (Emile, by contrast, is "natural man living in society.") Cf. Pierre Burgelin, La philosophie deV'existence de J -J '. Rousseau (Paris, 1952) , pp. 149-90; Georges Poulet, "Expansion et concentration chez Rousseau," Les Temps Modernes, February- June 1961,pp. 949ft. For the "force of an expansive soul"as the ultimate root of compassionorpity, seeEmile, IV (O.C, IV , p. 523m). Lack of intelligence, though frequentlyundeserved and always a misfortune, nevertheless often inspires laughter ratherthan pity. That is why some of those exhibiting this lack not only excellent subjects of comedy e.g., Euthydemus but even may be said to help make comedypossible. For an explanation of why Euthydemus is funny rather than the TragicHero he appears to wish he were, see Leo Strauss, "On the Euthydemus," Interpretation, 1 (1970): 1-20.


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ently informed," to t ranscend their private interest at a t ime whenprivate interest has not been t ransformed into public interest : he willdiscuss this question in the sequel.)

In Chapter 4 Rousseau pursues the question of what guarantees theindividual has that there will be no abuse of the sovereign authority atwhose mercy he has placed himself. He offers the security afforded byhis requirement that every act of the general will must be general in itseffect , and by the fact that each member of the assembly will bethinking of that effect before deciding how to cast his vote. This"proves that the equality of right and the notion of justice that itproduces derives from each man's preference for himself and consequently from the nature of

man."35

In the next chapter, Rousseau examines how it can be in anyone'sinterest to put his life at the mercy of an authority which has the rightto dep rive h im of it when it thinks proper. Finally, in Chapter 6, hederives from the preceding discussion a new doctrine of law from whichit follows that every act of the general will must be a law and thatevery law must be an act of the general will. When he turns, in thischapter, from law as law to the definite laws which a people mustenact if they are to establish a working political order the problemsleft unsolved in the discussion of whether the general will can errsuddenly reappear.

Laws, properly speaking, are only the conditions of civil association. The Peoplesubject to laws should be their author; only those associating should regulate theconditions of society : but how will they regulate them ? W ill it be by commonagreement, by a sudden inspiration? Does the body politic have an organ todeclare itswill ? Who will give it the foresight necessary to formu late and publishits acts in advance, and how will it announce them in the hour of need ? How willa blind multitude which often does not know what it wants [veut], because itrarely knows what is good for it , execute for itself so great and difficult anenterprise as a system of legislation ? Of itself the people always wants [veut]the good, but of itself it does not always see it. The general will is always right,but the judgement that guides it is not always enlightened. It [the people]must be made to see objects as they are, sometimes as they should appear toit, [it must be] shown the good road that it seeks, protected from the seductionof private w ills, t imes and places must be brought close to its eyes and theattractions of present and sensible advantages balanced by the dange r of distantand hidden evils. Private individuals see the good that they reject: the publicwants [veut] the good that it does not see. All stand equally in need of guidance :the former must be obliged to bring their wills into conformity with theirreason ; the latter must be taught to know what it wants [veut] . Then from publicenlightenment the union of understanding and will in the social body will result.. . . This is what makes a Legislator necessary.36

If all the benefits men sought from political society were such thatthey could not be enjoyed unless they were shared , there would be no

35 IF 4. 5 (P- 373)-36 II , 6, 10 (p . 380).


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need for Rousseau to raise the question of how to secure the cooperat ion of the more able members of society, as he does in the passagequoted. Yet, although some of the benefits that political society canconfer , such as political freedom, are manifestly incapable of beingenjoyed unless they are shared, not all its benefits are of this kind.The pleasure of commanding , for example, which Rousseau mentionedin Chapter 2 as the compensation which those who rule receive fromtheir exert ions, is lessened by being shared, and the more it is shared,the more it is lessened.37 Political freedom, according to Rousseau,requires the greatest possible denial of that pleasure because it requiresruling to be shared to the greatest possible degree. The question whichhe now raises is why the abler members of society, whose advice isneeded for the deliberations of the assembly, would find it in theirinterest to favor a political order which treats them as equal to thoseless able than themselves.38 Will they not be more likely to act forprivate advantage as Grotius and Barbeyrac allegedly did? It is important to bear in mind that Rousseau is not asking how a free societycan secure the allegiance of its abler members once it is in being.Rather, he asks what will induce men of superior abili ty, without whoseguidance such a society cannot come into being, to help bring it intobeing in the first place.39 When society is first forming, "privateindividuals see the [public] good which they reject; the public wantsthe [pubhc] good which it does not see."

Rousseau has quietly led the reader back to the question of howpohtical societies were first formed, with the difference that whatseemed so easy in Book I now appears to be extraordinarily difficult.To surmount the difficulty, he turns to an individual of extraordinaryability, the legislator. As one might expect from what has gone before,he first asks why the legislator should have any interest in serving thepublic good.40

His answer is as follows: what prompts the legislator to serve thepublic good is the fact that his ambition is too vast to be satisfied withhonors paid only by his own people and only during his lifetime. He desires a glory that will reach beyond his people and his t ime. The legislator is so far above the desire for mere pohtical ascendency that forthe sake of the glory he seeks he will abdicate a throne, as Rousseauclaims Lycurgus did, or will exile himself and starve himself to death,as Plutarch says Lycurgus did after he made the Spartans promise thatthey would make no changes in his laws until his return. The glorysought by the legislator will come from the recognition of the wisdomembodied in his work by those over whom he has no ascendency exceptthe ascendency implied in that recognition. It is because his end tran-

37 I, 2, 3 (p . 352).38 See Strauss, Natura l Right and History, pp. 286-87.39 II, 7, 2 (p . 381).40 II, 7, 1 and n. (p . 381).


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scends the ends pursued in the political arena that he is capable ofsetting its affairs in order. The legislator somehow foreshadows thepolitical philosopher and his possible effect on political life.41 Thelegislator's interest and the common interest are not the same , according to Rousseau, bu t the one cannot be attained without the other.

This discussion raises the question of how Rousseau understands therelation between wisdom and consent in political life and how his understanding differs from that of the classics. The question is a large one,and there is space here for only a few comments. Rousseau tries toreconcile his belief that the people alone can enact laws binding on itsmembers with his recognition of the need for wise guidance, particularly when the political order is being founded : he requires the legislatorto secure the free consent of the people to his proposals, and makes thisconsent itself that which transforms these proposals into law.42 Obviously, then, much depends on the people for whom the legislator isdevising a code , and, it is not surprising to find the chapter on thelegis la tor followed by three chapters on the people.

In these chapters Rousseau will discuss what makes a people suitedto accept sound laws. First, however, he disposes of one possibility:he denies that any people at the dawn of political society can possessenough political understanding to make proper use of its right of consent :"In order for a nascent people to be able to appreciate the soundmaxims of politics and to follow the fundamenta l rules of reason ofState, it would be necessary for the effect to be capable of becoming thecause, [it would be necessary] for the social spirit which must be thework of the founding to preside over the founding itself, and [it wouldbe necessary] for men to be prior to laws what they must become as aresult of them."43

The legislator at the dawn of society must first create a peoplebefore that people can do what Rousseau requires of it, and thiscreation cannot take place in compliance with his principles of politicalright. The legis lators whom he calls "fathers ofnations"ought to winacceptance for the codes they had devised by making those for whomthey were intended believe that the laws were divinely revealed andrepresented the will of the gods. The amazing durability of the laws ofMoses and Mohammed, Rousseau declares, "still bear[s] witness to thegreat men who dictated them."44

Rousseau's analysis of the means that early legislators must employto win acceptance for their suggestions amounts to a withdrawal of his

41 In the chapter on the legislator, Plato is referred to as a political philosopher.In the following chapter, he is referred to as a legislator (II, 8, 1 [p . 385]).42 II, 7, 7 (p . 383).43 II, 7, 9 (p . 384).44 II, 7, 11 (p . 384). See Strauss, Natural Right and History, pp. 287-89 ;these pages will be misunderstood if one overlooks the fact that in them Straussis speaking of the early legislator.


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Political Society in th e Social Contract 263assumption that all regimes had legitimate beginnings, for in thebeginning no such regime could have been born in conformity withRousseau's principles: "A t first men had no other kings than the gods,nor any government other than the theocratic." Political societies inwhich men as men rule, and hence legitimate political societies inpart icular , belong to a later period;45 When Rousseau speaks oflegislators other than fathers of nations, he assumes as a matter ofcourse that they will be drawing up codes for a people that is already inexistence.

Rousseau now turns to the description of a people suited to receive asound code of laws. He advises the legislator to seek a people free of thedefects of an ancient people and of those peculiar to a people in itschildhood. A people in its infancy still lacks the social spirit withoutwhich the legislator cannot establish a good political society.46 An oldpeople, on the other hand, is too set in its ways to be capable ofaccepting or desiring a new code of laws.47 Rousseau's prescription iscurious: the legislator must find a people that "combines the cohesive-ness [consistance] of an old people with the docility of a new one."48

How this combination can be found is by no means clear, however,except in one extraordinary case, mentioned below. The difficulty is notlessened by the fact that while Rousseau mentions examples of peoplessuffering from the defects to be avoided,49 he gives no example of apeople that fulfills his requirements apart, again , from the exceptionnoted below, and from Corsica, which will also prove to be a memberof the extraordinary class.50 The other members of that class form arather impressive list. They are Sparta, Rome, Holland and Switzerland.

The extraordinary class makes its appearance while Rousseau is discussing the reasons why a legislator should avoid attempting to framelaws for an old people. In the course of this discussion, he draws thereader's attention to the fact that there is a strange exception to thisrule, a people which is exceptional because it has the unusual attributeof being at one and the same t ime as docile as a people in its childhood,as vigorous as a people in its youth, and as cohesive as a people in itsold age :

This does not mean that, just as certain diseases throw men's heads into confusion and destroy the memory of the past, violent epochs are not sometimesfound in the lifetim e of States in which revolutions do to peoples what certaincrises do to individuals, in which horror of the past replaces loss of memory , andin which the State, set aflame by civil wars, is reborn so to speak from its ashesand recovers the vigor of youth in emerging from the arms of death. Such was

IV , 8, 1 (p . 460).46 II, 8, 5 (p . 386).47 II, 8, 1-2 (pp. 384-85)-43 II, 10, 5 (p . 391)."9 II, 8, 1, 5 (pp. 385-86).50 II, 10, 6 (p . 391).


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Sparta in the time of Lycurgus, s u c h w as Rome a f t e r the Tarquins, a n d s u c hamong us w e r e Holland an d Switzer land a f t e r the e x p u l s i o n of the t y r a n t s . 5 1

Rousseau declares the kind of revolutionary crisis described in theq u o t e d passage to be extremely infrequent. It ca n only o c c u r once inthe hfetime of a people, a n d only o c c u r among a people w h i c h has n o ty et grown completely a c c u s t o m e d to a fully developed code of p o h t i c a llaw. Even u n d e r these conditions, in o r d e r for anything good to comeof the crisis, it m u s t be followed by a p e r i o d of calm during w h i c h menenjoy "abundance an d peace."hould that calm give way to a s t o r mp r o v o k e d by war, famine, or sedition, the oppor tunity for establishing as o u n d political hfe vanishes. In a p a r a g r a p h that, curiously enough,begins w i t h the very w o r d s of the p a ra g ra p h q u ote d just before, a n dthat ends w i t h a l m o s t the same word, Rousseau declares :This does no t m e a n that many g o v e r n m e n t s have n o t been e s t a b l i s h e d duringthese storms; but then it is these g o v e r n m e n t s w h i c h destroy the State. Usurpersa l w a y s bring a b o u t or choose these times of trouble to ge t destructive lawspassed, u n d e r the c o v e r of p u b l i c fear, w h i c h the p e op le w o u ld n e v e r a d o p t w h e ncalm [de s a n g f r o i d ] . The c hoic e of the m o m e n t for legislation is one of the s u r e s tm a r k s by w h i c h one c an dist inguish the w o r k of the Legislator from that of theT y r a n t .5 2

G iven th e difficulty of meeting all of these conditions, as well asothers m e n t i o n e d by Rousseau, a rejuvenating revolutionary crisisis obviously n o t a model for imitation. However, he did believethat every p o l i t i c a l o r d e r w h i c h deeply interested him an d w h i c h hea d m i r e d has passed through such a crisis : the importance of Rome andof Sparta, as described by Plutarch, is generally recognized, an dSwitzerland an d Holland were for him m o d e r n examples of the successful resistance to tyranny on the p a r t of simple, hard-working, an dfrugal men. (Switzerland a n d Holland also showed how m u c h can beaccomphshed in constructing c o n f e d e r a t i o n s of free states.53) As forCorsica, a t the en d of his discussion of the people, Rousseau mentionsthe Corsicans as the only people in Europe fit for legislation. Corsica'srebelhon a g a i n s t Genoese rule served as the chief contemporary example in the Enlightenment of a successful struggle for political freedom p r i o r to the American Revolution.54 Even the Poland r e p r e s e n t e dby the Confederation of Bar, the Poland to which Rousseau a d d r e s s e dhis Considerations, was said by him to have passed through the kind ofcrisis described in the passage q u o t e d above.55 Thus the supreme imp o r t a n c e for Rousseau of the exceptional class of peoples we have beendiscussing c a n n o t be seriously doubted.

51 II, 8, 3 (p . 385).52 II, 10, 4 (p . 390).53 III, 16, 6 (p . 427).54 Sven Stelling Michaud, Introduction, Projet de constitution pour la Corse,O.C, III, p. cxcix.55 Considi'rations su r le gouvernement de Pologne (O.C, III, pp. 961, 969-70).


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Political Society in the Social Contract 265We may now understand somewhat more clearly why Rousseau

thought that free political societies would always remain an exceptionon earth. However, what did Rousseau think the prospects for freedomwould be in those places, such as Europe, where it could flourish andwhere it had flourished once? His conclusions would surely be influenced by the fact that he saw a general age of revolutions approachingin Europe and by the fact that he expected his teaching to receiverecognition from posterity.56 Beyond such general expectat ions, however , there is no reason to believe that Rousseau thought he coulddiscern the political future of mankind any more than we think we can,nor could he rely on the faith in Progress to show him the things thathe could not see. Now that the behef in Progress is no longer axiomaticin the West, and perhaps not even in the East, it is at least an openquestion whether Rousseau's understanding of freedom and of revolution is not more subtle, powerful and adequate than is that of some ofhis friendly, though condescending , progressivist critics.Rousseau's belief in the democratic character of all legitimate govern

ment has enjoyed great success. Thus we find the most diverse regimesdescribing themselves as democracies on the one hand and beingcritized fo r failing to be "genuinely democratic" on the other. Whatdistinguishes Rousseau's views of "genuine" democracy from thoseone often encounters today is that his beliefs regarding such a democracy were not vague. He presented a clear, incisive, and sober accountof what it would mean for men to live in a "genuine democracy" andof the conditions under which one would be likely to find such a regimeestabhshed. If Rousseau's results appear too narrow to accommodatethe possibilities of relatively decent constitutional rule, one may becompelled to ask whether decent government may not be better accounted for by the political philosophy of the premodern Westerntradition than by the modern principles which Rousseau inherited andradicalized and which he articulated with unsurpassed clarity andforce.57

56 See Strauss, Natural Right and History, pp. 259-60.57 See Leo Strauss, "On the Intention of Rousseau," Social Research, 14

(1947) : 485-87-


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266

MARX 'S CRITIQUE OF PHILOSOPHY

Peter Stern

for Jean

For Marx, philosophy is both an expression of and a cause of man'salienation. It is an expression of alienation because it is necessarilybased on the empirical divorce of man's productive hfe from hisspiritual hfe. Philosophy reflects this divorce as it arbitrarily posits aspiritual world that is totally distinct from the real, empirical world ofmen, thus giving an ontological significance to man's social hmitationswithout realizing that that is what it is doing. Having projected a pureworld of spirit, philosophy then evaluates man from its self-generatedspiritual standpoint, ignoring, minimizing, and even deprecating man'sreal, material productivity and all the relations that derive from it .For Marx, however, the philosopher's spiritual world is a fantasy. It isa product of the philosopher's need to overestimate the power andimportance of thought. Thus the philosopher's entire procedure isgrounded on his mistaken assumption that there is a pure domain ofthought against which everything that actually exists empirically ismeasured and found wanting.

This critique suggests that Marx's argument is directed exclusivelyagainst idealist philosophy and that what he is aiming at is a simplereturn to materialism. This impression, however, is only partially correct.For while Marx demands a recognition of the truth of materialism, heis also quick to point out its limitations. Materialism is insufficient fortw o reasons: first, it ignores the active side of man's productivepowers ; and second, it te nd s to exempt itself f rom its own materialistpremise. Thus Marx 's critique is directed against both materialism andideal ism from an entirely new standpoint, which Marx calls naturalism.Marx's naturalist doctrine is meant to combine the partial truth ofboth idealism and material ism, a truth which is obscured when eitherposition is taken to the exclusion of the other. Thus Marx's naturahsmincorporates idealism's emphasis on man's free spontaneity andmateriahsm's emphasis on the primacy of the material conditions oflife. By preserving the truth of both idealism and material ism, Marxclaims not only to overcome the onesidedness of each , but also toovercome the limitations of all philosophy as such. It is this aim whichrepresents the underlying ground and the real driving force of allMarx's critical endeavors. For Marx, the philosophical standpointitself is deficient and must, therefore, be transcended. Yet this transcendence is no simple abolition or annihilation ; rather, it incorporates


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Marx's Critique of Philosophy 267an d hence preserves the p os itiv e a ch ie ve me nts of philosophy byreahzing them in the actual behavior of m en and the organization oftheir societies. Still, however c om plic a te d an d subtle Marx's conceptionof this t ranscendence may be, the really important point an d thestriking fact is that Marx believes that philosophy as such m u s t beabandoned.Having grasped the limitations of philosophical thought, Marx

launches into a critique of philosophy so filled with contempt an dridicule that even Nietzsche's attacks sometimes seem mild by co mparison. This hostility derives n o t only from Marx's belief that he hasdiscovered the root errors of philosophy but also from his annoyancewith what he takes to be the philosopher's typically haughty andpom pous attitude toward the realm of worldly affairs, that is, therealm of the non-philosophers. Marx relentlessly attacks the philosopher's condescending stance, an d tries to m a k e him appear co mpletely ridiculous. Marx's ow n tone, which unfailingly c onve ys thesense that philosophy is ridiculous and absurd, is as telling as his actualarguments themselves. Thus in the last analysis, what provokes Marx'scontempt is his exasperation with the professional knower's arrogantan d inflated assertions that he possesses supe rior knowledge, for thephilosopher, the man w ho makes the greatest claims to know, remainsfundamentally ignorant concerning himself, his activity, an d the conditions which m a k e his activity possible.

The philosophe r's ignorance is rooted in his misunderstanding of theimportance of history and production. The philosophe r never payssufficient attention to the fact that the development of society an dmen's ideas about society depends, above all, upon the level of development of the productive forces. It is the productive forces which , it isimportant to note, [necessarily expand as history develops, whi c hestablish the horizon in which thinking an d acting ar e possible bec a use they provide the concrete means whereby m en experienceand become a wa re of the degree of their freedom and power , both inrelation to other m en and in relation to nature. Thus because thephilosophe r abstracts from the world of history an d production, hefails to see how he is inextricably a product of both. Moreover, it isonly because philosophers have minimized the importance of th ese twofactors that they feel free to turn away from the realm of human affairstoward a world of pure reason, which is taken to be both independentof empirical reality and the true source of meaning an d guidance. Yetthis ideal world is not a utonom ous. Rather, it is a product of m en wh othink and act only within a specific se t of historical c o n di ti o ns w h ic hdepend upon the level of development of the productive forces an dwhich evolve independent of men's will. Thus it is the autonomy of theproductive forces which ultimately accounts for the limitations ofphilosophical thought, fo r regardless of how philosophers interpret theworld, it continues to evolve in its ow n way according to its ow n set of


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laws. Thus, interestingly enough, like the philosopher, Marx alsobelieves in an autonomous world , but for Marx it is not the world ofpure ideas but the world of man's material production.

Seen in this respect, the philosopher's work is no different from anyother kind of work, for the "production of ideas, of conceptions ofconsciousness is directly interwoven with the material activity and thematerial relationships of men. Having discovered the truesignificance of production, Marx claims to overcome the central illusionof philosophy, namely , that thought can be d ivorced from its social,economic , and historical context. Marx's new interpretation of thoughtcorrects this mistake, for it is based on the assumption that "conceiving,thinking, and the intellectual relationships of men appear as the directresult of their material behavior."2 This is so because man is inextricably embedded , in all essential respects , within the materialconditions of life ; thus his ideas are always ideas about his needs andthe conditions which will satisfy his needs. Because man is essentially acreature of need, thought remains circumscribed by the reality of needsand the possibilities of satisfying them.

The relationship between man's thought and his empirical conditionsis summarized most succinctly in the following formulation in theGerman Ideology: "Consciousness does not determine life but life determines consciousness."3 The difference between these tw o conceptionsis as follows: "In the first view, the starting point is consciousnesstaken as the living individual ; in the second, it is the real individualsthemselves as they exist in real life, and consciousness is consideredonly as their consciousness."4

This somewhat awkward passage is again meant to stress the importance of man's needs. Here, however, a more general reason for itsimportance is given: man is a being whose primary concern is hfe;hence the reality of life possesses a significance which can never besurpassed. Only after this elementary fact is given its proper recognition does the significance of another aspect of man's existence arise,namely , that man also possesses consciousness. Consciousness is thusbut one aspect of a being whose most basic condition is life. Consciousness , therefore, is never wholly free; it is always "burdened"5 with theprior necessity of maintaining life. Thus, to say that consciousnessdetermines life requires, in effect, a total abstraction from life, forconsciousness then becomes th e sole defining characteristic of man.The true recognition of the reality of life necessarily implies that life is

1 Karl Marx, "The German Ideology," Writings of th e Young Marx onPhilosophy and Society, ed. Loyd D. Easton and Kurt H. Gudda t (Garden CityN.Y., 1967), p. 414.2 Ibid.3 Ibid., p. 415.4 Ibid.5 Ibid., p. 421.


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Marx's Critique of Philosophy 26 9the overriding reali ty that determines man's condition. Thus whatcontrols consciousness and reveals its ontological limitation is hfe,the "actual life process of men"6 as they produce together to sustainthis process. This recognition then becomes, in turn, the true foundation for philosophy.

According to Marx, the immediate cause of the split between consciousness and life is the division of labor. In fact, the division of laborarises only as the separation between mental and material laborbecomes definitive. Once this divis ion has been established, consciousness divorces itself from its roots in material reality and comes tointerpret itself as being independent of all empirical factors. In doingthis, it unconsciously inverts the true relations between thought andreality: pure thought becomes the true world , and the real worldbecomes the world of mere appearances. W ith the division of labor,"consciousness can really boast of being something other than consciousness of existing practice, of really representing something withoutrepresenting something real."7

Because of philosophy's tendency to abstract from empirical reality,Marx equates philosophy with religion. For both posit an ideal realmwhich is the source of everything that appears empirically, includingthose things which are actually done by man. Since this realm is understood to be beyond man's control, it becomes an object of worshipwhich necessarily degrades man, fo r he is forced to construe theresults of his own activity as a product of a higher being who is bothunknown and autonomous. Thus man becomes enslaved by his ownactivity: he attributes everything of value to thought or to God andnothing to himself.

In the section of the Holy Family called "The Mystery of SpeculativeConstruction," Marx parodies the rehgious way in which philosophyinevitably interprets everyday life. To illustrate his point, he constructswhat he takes to be a typically philosophical analysis of a familiarobject of daily experience, in this case, a piece of fruit.

This philosopher beg in s h is analysis by forming the idea "the fruit"from the variety of fruits that he habitually comes in contact with.For the philosopher, the essential thing about these different fruits isthat they are all regarded as being merely the phenomenal forms of theidea "the fruit," which, in contrast to the idea, have no real reality."The actual fruits," says Marx, "are taken to be only apparent fruitswhose true essence is the 'Substance,' 'the fruit.'"8

After having constructed the idea "the fruit," the philosopher thentries to explain how the variety of actual fruits can appear as productsof a single abstract idea. The philosopher solves this dilemma by inter-

Ibid., p. 415.7 Ibid., p. 423.8 "The Holy

Family," in ibid., p. 370.


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preting the Idea as a "self-differentiated, dynamic"9 m o v e m e n t whichg e n e r a t e s from itself, as an inner process, the full diversity of allp a r t i c u l a r fruits. Thus the ideal fruit is conceived as containing thetotality of all a c t u a l fruits. To make this process more plausible, ithelps if we r e g a r d the idea as undergoing a c o n t i n u a l process of" i n c a r n a t i o n " 1 0 in each individual fruit. A miracle is thus c r e a t e d : allreal, actual, naturally produced, an d naturally existing fruits a p p e a r asthe p r o d u c t of "an u n r e a l creat ure of the understanding, 'the fruit.' " ^Each fruit m a n i f e s t s itself only as '"the fruit' posits itself as p e a r asapple";12 consequently, "in the apple , 'the fruit' gives itself an appleyexistence, in the pear, a peary existence."13

The u p s h o t of this s p e c u l a t i v e procedure, an d the really seriousp o i n t that Marx m e a n s to make here, is that by regarding the wholeof the e m p i r i c a l w o r l d as being essentially p r o d u c t s of the Idea,philosophy e n d o w s man's actually existing world w i t h a m y s t i c a l quality because he is forced to "construe as absolutely necessary an d universal"14 all that is merely a c c i d e n t a l an d transient, thereby producing"the m o s t u n r e a s o n a b l e an d u n n a t u r a l subservience to the object."15In o t h e r words, the ironic c o n s e q u e n c e of the p h i l o s o p h e r ' s method isthat a l t h o u g h he s t a r t s w i t h the premise that thought is independent ofe m p i r i c a l reality, he necessarily ends his s p e c u l a t i o n totally dependenton this reality because he is fo rced to e x p l a i n everything empirical asan inevitable r e s u l t of the Idea, w i t h the consequence that he isincapable of imagining that the world could be otherwise. In this way ,the p h i l o s o p h e r helps preserve the s t a t u s quo ; by explaining the worldas a p r o d u c t of thought, he becomes its unconscious apologist a n ds p o k e s m a n .

Nevertheless, despite the philosopher's fundamental errors and deceptions, he still may serve a u sefu l function, for, as a n alien ated exp r e s s i o n of the r e a l world , he unconsciously reflects cert ai n truthsa b o u t the world , albeit in a confused an d misleading way, since hegrounds his insights n ot on m a n ' s activity but on the activity of adivine, transcendental subject. Thus, if the p h i l o s o p h e r ' s w o r k istaken o ut of its a b s t r a c t form an d translated back into the languageof m a n ' s r e a l m a t e r i a l interests, his insights ca n be salvaged. Marxsays of Hegel, fo r instance, that he "very often given an actual presentation, a present at i on of the matter itself, w i t h i n his s p e c u l a t i v epresentation."16 Marx goes on to say that Hegel is so mystifying because the r e a d e r takes the speculative account for the true account:

9 Ibid., P- 370.i Ibid. P- 371-11 Ibid. . P- 372.12 Ibid. . P- 371-13 Ibid.14 Ibid. P- 374-15 Ibid.is Ibid.

.P- 373-


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Marx's Critique of Philosophy 271that is, he attributes the quality of being r e a l to Hegel's speculat ive,a b s t r a c t Subject and regards the a c t u a l subject , namely, man , assomething unreal. Philosophical problems can be resolved, therefore,simply by discarding the philosopher's initial speculative assumptionsw h i c h assert the primacy of some ideal subj ect, thus obscuring thought'strue origin an d referent, empirical reality.

This transition from speculation to empiricism is at the same timethe transition from error to knowledge, from philosophy to science. Inthe German Ideology, Marx describes this transition: "Where speculation ends , namely in a c t u a l life, there real positive science begins as therepresent at i on of the pract i cal activity and p r a c t i c a l process of thedevelopment of men. Phrases a b o u t consciousness cease an d r e a lknowledge takes their place. W ith the description of reality, indep e n d e n t philosophy loses its medium of existence."17

Marx goes on to offer several examples of how a philosophicalp ro b lem is resolved by turning to empirical reality. In his discussion ofthe controversy over w h e t h e r the relationship of m an to n a t u r e is oneof harmony or discord, he says that this theoretical p ro b lem "collapsesw h e n we u n d e r s t a n d the celebrated unity of m a n a nd n atu re has alwaysexisted in varying forms in every epoch according to the lesser org r e a t e r development of industry just like the 'struggle' of m an w ithn a t u r e r i g h t up to the development of his p r o d u c t i v e forces on acorresponding basis."18 Yet philosophy mistakenly speaks "of the antithesis of m an an d n a t u r e as if these were tw o separate 'things' an dm a n did n o t always have before him a historical n a t u r e an d a n a t u r a lhistory. . .

Another instance of how a theoretical problem is resolved by lookingto social p r a c t i c e occurs in one of Marx's discussions in the GermanIdeology of the problem of alienation. This problem, w h i c h is "sobaffling to German t h e o r e t i c i a n s , " 2 0 can be easily solved simply byabolishing p r i v a t e property, fo r since the institution of pri vat e propertyis the primary cause of man's alienation, once pri vat e property isabolished, alienation will disappear. In o t h e r words , a l i e n a t i o n willcease to baffle German philosophers for the simple reason that menwill no longer be alienated.

Thus for Marx m a n ' s theoretical p e r p l e x i t i e s arise only on thebasis of an e m p i r i c a l si t uat i on w h i c h fails to fully realize man'sessential being. The p h i l o s o p h e r ' s theoretical problems merely reflectthe n o n - p h i l o s o p h e r ' s pract i cal problems. A so lu tio n to the p r a c t i c a lproblem necessarily resolves the theoretical p ro b lem as well. Thec r u c i a l p r e m i s e w h i c h forms the basis for Marx's empi r ic i sm, therefore,is n o t only that philosophy is abstract, bu t also that all m a n ' s

17 "The German Ideology," p. 415.18 Ibid., p. 436-i Ibid., p. 4 3 7 .2 Ibid., p. 426.


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practical problems ca n be solved. It is important to underscore thispoint, for the significance of this premise and the justification fo rMarx's turn to empiricism is very revealing and is generally overlooked. His point that al l man's practical proble m s can be solved isstartling in its simplicity, and it s radicalness, no doubt, is what accountsfor its being generally ignored. Yet its role in the overall import ofMarx's thought is decisive, for it highlights the Promethean spirit thatanimates al l Marx's work, and it indicates, as well , the general limitat ions of his thr ought. For the idea that man can perfectly control hisworldly environment is not only altogether fantastic, it is also n o t at allempirical, for the validity of this thesis ca n never be established fromobservation. It can only e me rge on the basis of speculation, whichMarx has already thoroughly discredited.

In any event, fo r Marx, the discovery of the root errors of philosophyleads to the abolition of philosophy. According to Marx, philosophyc ome s to an en d for three reasons: first, because it deals only with itsow n self-created world of illusion ; second , because on the other hand,as a purely theoretical study of man, philosophy has achieved its goal ofabsolute knowledge; an d third, because once having gained thisknowledge, philosophy finds its true realization in practice.

Philosophy c ome s to an end , therefore, for three contradictoryreasons. On the on e hand, Marx emphasizes that philosophy comes toan en d because it is fundamentally incapable of arriving at the truth,and, on the other hand, he emphasizes that philosophy c ome s to an en dbecause, indeed, it has grasped the truth. This contradiction is ne ve rreally resolved by Marx, yet it is of great importance, for, like hisassertion that al l proble m s ca n be solved, it again underscores theinherent lim ita tions of Marx's critique. The problem is always thatin order to deny that philosophy can arrive at absolute truth, on efirst needs an absolute philosophy that can prove such a denial. Thefull scope of this problem emerges only whe n what is at issue is not thetruth of any on e philosophy but the truth of philosophy as such. Whatdis tinguishes M arx 's critique in this regard from other such radicalchallenges is precisely that he denies that philosophy ca n gain thetruth, and yet claims that he is himself in possession of that truth.

Marx does attempt at least a partial resolution of this dilemma byarguing that the true realization of philosophy is found not in theoret ica l knowledge but in social practice. By acknowledging the successan d yet, at the same time, the limits of pure theory, and, conversely, byrecognizing the importance of man's practical activities an d the trueextent of his species powers , philosophy ca n be incorporated into practice and can become reconciled with itself and the worl d. Still, despitethis resolution, which in part preserves the importance of philosophy,the crucial point re m a ins : philosophy as traditionally understood mustbe abohshed.

Thus the main thrust of Marx's critique never c ha nge s : philosophy is


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Marx's Critique of Philosophy 273limited because it deals w i t h knowledge divorced from its roots in p r a ctice. The most a philosopher c an do, therefore, is to try to produce ac o r r e c t awareness of existing conditions ; he c a n n ev e r actually changethem. This, says Marx, "goes as far as a theorist possibly can go w i t hou t ceasing to be a theorist a n d philosopher."21 Because of the scopean d centrahty of m a n ' s p r o d u c t i v e powers , knowledge fo r its own sake ,w h i c h is the raison d'etre of philosophy, can n e v e r be man's u l t i m a t eaim.The final reason why philo sophy comes to an end, therefore, is

that knowledge c a n n o t be the ultimate goal of man, for the knowledgem an gains in theory m u s t be used to change the world in practice.Wha t underlies w h a t we have called Marx's empiricism is his belief thatthe full truth a b o u t man must become completely manifest in the r e a lw o r l d of everyday life. Because m a n ' s essence ultimately coincidesw i t h his existence, w ha t m an 's essence is will no longer be a m a t t e rfor speculation: it will become clear to all. A legitimate need fors p e c u l a t i o n exists only as long as m a n 's n atu re is is n o t empiricallyknown. It w as the e a r h e r a b s e n c e of empirical fulfillment that p r o v o k e dm a n ' s w o n d e r an d desire to know. Thus in the final c o m m u n i s tsociety, where man's true being will for the first t ime make its p h e nomenal appearance, p r a c t i c e becomes the mode by w h i c h m a n ' s true essence is r e v e a l e d . Marx says, for example, that "communism is for usn o t a state of affairs still to be established, n ot an ideal to w h i c h realitywill have to a d j u s t . We call c o m m u n i s m the real movement w h i c habolis hes the p r e s e n t state of affairs."22This is spelled o ut further in the Economic and Philosophic Manu

scripts where it is s t a t e d that "It (communism) is the genuine resolution of the a n t a g o n i s m between m an and m a n ; it is the true resolutionof the conflict between e x i s t e n c e an d essence, objectification an d

self-

affirmation, freedom and necessity, individual and species. It is theriddle of history solved an d knows itself as this solution."23All this lies behind Marx's famous last thesis in his Theses on

Feuerbach: "The philosophers have only interpreted the world invarious ways; the p o i n t is to change it."24 And yet, the irony of theoriginal p a r a d o x of Marx's critique of philosophy a n d his resolutionof the s p h t between theory an d practice remains, for Marx's e m p i r i c i s mnecessarily depends u p o n the p ri or p hilo so ph ic al a s s u m p t i o n thatm a n ' s e x i s t e n c e will c o r r e s p o n d to his essence, since the realm ofimmediate e x p e r i e n c e does n ot automatically r e v e a l this. Marx believed that the errors of a b s t r a c t i o n could be overcome by turning toe m p i r i c a l reality, that w h i c h truly an d unambiguously is. But sincee m p i r i c a l reality does n ot immediately disclose its own meaning, man

21 Ibid., p. 4 3 6 -22 Ibid., p. 426.32 "Economic a n d Philosophic Manuscripts (1844)," in ibid., p. 304.24 "Theses on

Feuerbach,"in ibid., p. 401.


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needs theory or theoretical assumptions to grasp this meaning. Inother words , a simple return to empiricism is impossible. Marx himselfadmits as much in the first manuscript of the Economic and PhilosophicM anuscr ip ts . There he makes the point that theory must grasp thetrue inner development of reality because this development is notimmediately given. But having made this admission, he then minimizesor dismisses its significance because he is certain that he is in possessionof the true philosophical method. It was on the basis of this belief, and ,moreover, on the basis of the belief that empirical reality would, byitself, disclose the full truth about man that he said that he had settledhis accounts with his philosophical conscience and had therefore turnedto his scientific study of capitalism.

II

Marx developed this critique of philosophy in his study of Hegel,the Young Hegelians, Feuerbach, and the bourgeois political economists. His thought, in part, is meant to be a synthesis of all of them,seeing through their limitations and preserving their positive contribut ions. This aim highlights one of the striking facts about Marx'swork namely, that although he remained fundamentally opposed tothese thinkers, he nevertheless gained important insights from themwhich he more or less freely acknowledged. It has been said that Marx'sachievement lies more in his capacity to bring together ideas that werealready current than in any discovery of wholly new ideas. While it isdif ficult to make a final judgment on this matter since the principleof synthesis, which is doubtless themost important thing, does seem tobe entirely new it is certainly clear that Marx was deeply indebted tothe thinkers he opposed, and this is particularly true in the field ofphilosophy. There, the two most important influences on Marx'sthinking were Hegel and Feuerbach, and we will now turn to Marx'scritique of their thought, which concentrates, by definition, on theirlimitations, but which also brings out certain positive contributions aswell.

According to Marx, all the mistakes of Hegelian philosophy arerooted in the fact that Hegel begins his philosophy with an abstract ion and thus can only end or conclude with a greater one. By definingman in te rms of spirit, Hegel abstracts from the importance of man'spractical activity and his natural environment, thereby misinterpretingman, his essential activity, the nature of the objective wor ld , and theaffirmation man gains in relation to th is world.

Hegel's initial error, then, is that he conceives man primarily asself-consciousness. The only self which Hegel recognizes , therefore,is an abstract self totally divorced from all real determinate aspects ofactual life, and the only activity that he recognizes is the activity of


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Marx's Critique of Philosophy 275thinking, fo r thinking is the most important act that consciousnessperforms since it establishes the greatest certainty of reality throughthe possibility of acquiring absolute knowledge: "The way in whichconsciousness is and the way in which something is for it is knowing.Knowing is its only act. Hence something comes to exist for consciousness in so far as consciousness knows that something."25

But although Hegel mistakenly defines man in te rms of self-consciousness, thereby falsely elevating speculative thought over allother forms of experience, he still remains illuminating, for he understands that man is alienated and that he can develop himself onlythrough a process of ahenation. The insight that man is alienated is oneof the three most important ideas that Marx acknowledges as havinglearned from Hegel (the other two being the notion of negat ion, whichin part accounts for man's alienation, and the concept of man's self-development through history) . Yet Marx fundamentally revises Hegel'sunderstanding of alienation. For Hegel, man is alienated because allman's actual concrete, sensual relations are opposed to thought . Allcontradictions that Hegel perceives revolve around the "contradictionbetween abstract thinking and sensuous actuality."26 Thus for Hegel,the point is not that man is ahenated in his actual relations becausethey are not as they ought to be ; rather, man's alienation arises as thewhole domain of actuality itself exists in opposition to thought . Because Hegel understands man only in te rms of self-consciousness, henever sees that ahenation arises out of the contradictions withinactuahty itself. Thus although Hegel is profound in recognizing thatman is alienated, he errs in his understanding of what that alienationultimately consists of.

Hegel not only misunderstands what man is ; he also misunderstandsthe nature of the external world in which man lives. Hegel interp

interpretation, vol_5-3

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