a politic of things. delueze course on rousseau(cc)

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A POLITICS OF THINGS

DELEUZE’S COURSE ON ROUSSEAU

Course by G. Deleuze – Sorbonne 1959-1960

Manuscript from the library of the Ecole Normale Supérieure de St.-Cloud.

Serie C1, No. 12167

Translated and edited by Arjen Kleinherenbrink

Center for Contemporary European Philosophy

Radboud University Nijmegen



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CONTENTS

Translator’s introduction 3

Translation 10

Edited Translation 37

1 - Three conceptions of the state of nature 37

2 - The New Heloise: virtue, objectivity, hierarchical stages 37

2.1 - First stage: the original goodness of the soul 432.2 - Second stage: natural goodness or love of virtue 43

2.3 - Third stage: virtue itself 45

2.4 - Fourth stage: wisdom 45

3 - The Social Contract and Emile are parallels 46

4 - The state of nature 47

5 - The meaning of ‘nature’ in Rousseau 50

6 - Is the state of nature a reality or a fiction? 53

7 - The unity of Rousseau’s works (I) 53

8 - How does one leave the state of nature? 55

8.1 - From state of nature to savage state 55

8.2 - The advent of morality and freedom 56

8.3 - Mystification, wickedness, and alienation 58

8.4 - How to leave? 61

9 - The unity of Rousseau’s works (II) 62

10 - The social contract 63

10.1 - The sovereign is irreducible 65

10.2 - How is the sovereign indivisible? 65

10.3 - What is the positive character of the Contract? 66

10.4 - Obligation, totality, instantaneity 67

10.5 - Why does the sovereign constitute a general will? 69

10.6 - What does the general will want? 70

10.7 - The idea of the civil law in Rousseau 73



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TRANSLATOR’S INTRODUCTION

In 1959-1960, Deleuze dedicated a year of coursework to Jean Jacques Rousseau, a thinker

we are not used to rank among Deleuze’s famous ‘minor’ philosophical heroes. Indeed, it

would be easy to dismiss Rousseau as too romantic, too aristocratic, and too much of a State

thinker in order to have any profound connection with Deleuze. However, the course’s typed

summary of twenty-seven pages, never published but available at several places online 1,

suggests otherwise. The document is a surprising encounter between Deleuze and Rousseau,

one in which Deleuze explicitly transforms Rousseau into a thinker of genesis, virtuality, and

actuality, each a key concept in Deleuze’s own thought. This connection or transformation

disappears (or is rendered implicit) in the single essay Deleuze published on Rousseau in

19622, as does much of the internal structure Deleuze discerns in Rousseau, which makes the

course summary a unique source to turn to. We will shortly return to how this Deleuze-

Rousseau encounter might be relevant for those interested in Deleuze as well as those reading

Rousseau, but first we turn to the question of what Rousseau becomes in Deleuze’s hands.

Deleuze tells us that all of Rousseau’s work concerns a single problem, which is not

that of freedom, but rather that of reconciling virtue with the interest of society (p.3), which is

the same as resolving the tension between the human individual and the species (p.18).

Rousseau’s entire oeuvre is read as a single effort to solve this problem, which exists at

different levels. Regarding The New Heloise, the problem involves four different stages. First,

original goodness of the soul. It is a state of reliance of things, of each being whole onto

oneself and one with the sentiment of existence. It is a state in which no wickedness is

possible, but, as we will learn later, this state must be thought as a virtual point of departure of

a genesis of actual states. Second, the natural goodness of the soul. This is the point at which

1 Most notably at http://www.webdeleuze.com/php/sommaire.html.

2 Desert Islands, pp. 52-55.



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relations between people give rise to wickedness. The original goodness subsists and there

emerges a love of virtue, a desire to retain goodness despite the situation. This results, thirdly,

in an attempt to make virtue the interest in being wicked. Deleuze here mentions the

‘materialism of the wise man’, consisting in a use of things and situations to allow human

beings to change. The fourth and final stage is that of wisdom, of a restoration in which one

discovers the ease of existence, and is liberation from the reliance of things in favor of an

emptiness. This ‘reverie’, even though it is the final stage, is heavily implied to still remain

insufficient, a point confirmed at a later moment 3.

Deleuze next asserts that these four stages are also found in the Emile and the Social

Contract , which he insists must be read as a diptych: ‘there is a relation of essential

succession between the Contract and the Emile. The contract presupposes the educated,

formed, private man’ (p.8). We start with a pre-social state of nature, characterized by

dispersion and a complete absence of society. Hence, individuals are identical to the species

as a whole, because nobody is trying to distinguish him- or herself as an individual with

regards to others. Since wickedness only arises at the societal level, this state is not beyond,

but before good and evil. In addition, Deleuze-Rousseau tells us that this state is never actual:

‘the state of nature must be understood as a genetic element, heavy with potential, with

virtualities’ (p.10). The state of nature is never a fact of observation, but more of a

transcendental condition for actual society.

The second stage is that of ‘natural man’ or ‘private man’, whose development is

governed by ‘natural law’ (which is precisely the process of virtualities becoming actual,

Deleuze tells us). This second stage refers to Emile’s domestic education of nature and of

things, engendering consciousness, reason, society, and sociability. As with The New Heloise,

3 ‘the actual situations that incarnate this reverie are always ambiguous. They turn out badly: either we behave

poorly, or we end up the odd man out, or both’. Desert Islands, p. 53.



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we also find a genesis of vice. This leads to the third stage, simultaneously the advent of the

corrupting social state and that of moral man. Property and inequality lead to a deceiving

agreement with which the rich subjugate the poor, but nevertheless there also emerges a

certain morality and sense of justice, again as a result of the virtual aspect of an earlier stage:

‘the law of nature permits formation in a corrupted society’ (p.12).

The fourth and final stage is that of the Social Contract. This contract presupposes the

formed, private man of Emile, because it is through a return to the second stage that we can

get from the third to the fourth stage. Privately, an act of moral will must restore the

subjective unity between individual and moral species, after which a political act must follow

to realize the objective unity. The Contract actualizes freedom, which is already present in the

state of nature, without us being conscious of it. When the people, as a whole, engender their

total alienation into the Sovereign to become subject, everything is instantaneously restored to

them: being simultaneously individual subjects and members of the sovereign, everybody

rules themselves through the general will.

There is a surprising end to Deleuze’s treatment of Rousseau. He reminds us that the

Sovereign only has the law itself as its object, in a purely formal sense. In other words, after

the completion of the fourth stage, we know how to legislate, but we do not know what to do.

One more thing must be added, and this is precisely the relation with things or with concrete

situations which confront the people: ‘to determine a law, the general will does not suffice.

The formal determination of the will must be joined to the content of objective circumstances

of a given society’ (p.26). Deleuze sees the figure of the legislator as referring to this

‘injection’ of material circumstances: ‘without the legislator, the general will formally know

what it wants. But it needs him to be determined materially. A good law must not consider

particular persons – formal aspect – and adapt itself to concrete situations – material aspect –‘

(p.27).



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What are the remarkable aspects of this manuscript? First, of course, how Rousseau is

staged. There has always been a debate on the nature of Rousseau’s thought: is it a single

system?; is it riddled with paradoxes or merely acknowledging tensions?4; is it a positive

program or a meditation on an ideal and its failure?; and so on. Deleuze remains unequivocal:

Rousseau is a thinker of genesis, of the actualization of virtual potential, and as such, all his

work can neatly be arranged on a single genetic line. Rousseau’s considerations of (civil)

religion are casually ignored, and the well-known problems surrounding the legislator and

educator (where does he come from?; who is his teacher?; how did he remain unaffected by

our miseries?) are dissolved. Though it remains highly doubtful that Rousseau based all his

writing on a single, rigid structure of four stages and their dynamic interactions, it is

nonetheless fascinating to see how very plausible Deleuze manages to make this idea.

Regarding Deleuze himself, I would argue that even though Rousseau is barely present

in later works5, this manuscript still shows us a surprising way in which Deleuze himself

could be read. In general, Deleuze’s political philosophy is interpreted as one with an almost

exclusive focus on resistance, escape, locality, and minoritarian gestures. It is always the war

machine versus the state, the nomads versus the royals, and the moleculars versus the molars.

If there is such a thing as a ‘Deleuzian political theory’, it is predominantly presumed to be a

4 Recall the well-known critique of Edmund Burke: ‘[Rousseau has] a tendency to paradox, which is always the

bane of solid learning […] has prevented a great deal of the good effects which might be expected from such a

genius [as Rousseau]’ (1963: 89).

5 Rousseau re-appears in the Postulates of Linguistics in A Thousand Plateaus, once in relation to the order-word

(p.81), once in relation to voice and music (p.96). Yet more interesting is the sudden statement in Anti-Oedipus

that ‘the unconscious is Rousseauistic, being man-nature’ (p.112).



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manual of how to escape ‘the system’ for as long as possible 6. Yet the Rousseau manuscript

spells out an alternative. Here, genesis, virtuality, and actuality are placed in the service of the

construction of a just and good society. From the actual situation of inequality, one returns to

the virtual conditions which have engendered it. A discovery is made, namely that ‘natural

goodness’, the ‘before good and evil’, has always subsisted, which provides the opportunity

for a new actualization (a counter-actualization, a reterritorialization). Only this time, the

result is formal. Not an actual distribution of power and prestige in a hierarchy, but an empty

method which allows us to focus on things. In other words, the people henceforth decide to

focus on that which truly unites them, which can only be those situations in which they find

themselves (not abstract ideas determined in advance). Such a society would not cling to the

past, but instead open up the present to the future. Justice would be synonymous with

jurisprudence. It would forego all teleology (a projection of the past into the future) in favor

of pragmatism and constructivism. It would, as much as possible, abandon all transcendent

overcoding in order to become capable of acting according to immanent criteria concerning

the things (machines, assemblages) that present themselves in a situation. It is obvious that

much of this is highly compatible with both the letter and spirit of Deleuze’s thought.

Moreover, Eugene Holland, in his guide to Anti-Oedipus (1999), has already suggested that

the entire book alludes to a possible fourth society (after the savages, the despots, and the

capitalists) which can be created. Recently, Joe Hughes (2012) has convincingly argued that a

return to Deleuze’s Hume reveals a positive political program centering on a specific way of

constructing institutions. Thirdly, Ronald Bogue’s writings on the notion of ‘a people to

come’ also insist that even though this concept finds its origin in art, it ultimately designates

6 One notable exception is the work of Paul Patton (f.i. 2000), who has always seen Deleuze as a thinker relevant

to positive, large-scale politics concerning the construction of societal infrastructure itself, rather than merely a

philosopher who tells us to find the interstices in this infrastructure.



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the real possibility of concrete realization at a societal level7. So this is perhaps where the

greatest value of this manuscript lies: the possibility of mobilizing all the well-known

Deleuzian concepts in order to think the construction a society at its largest scales, rather than

to merely evade it at the local level. We could then perhaps conclude that even though

Deleuze has ‘strictly no political program to propose’8, this would only amount to a refusal of

determining a prior content and hierarchy. Yet what, one wonders, would a society look like

when based on Deleuzian principles with regards to its formal method ? In this regard, it is

particularly interesting to consider the possibility of a Deleuzian variant of the ‘redeeming’

movement in his interpretation of Rousseau: from a corrupted collectivity (molar, royal,

State), one returns to a private, individual level (deterritorialization, line of flight), a

movement which must be completed by a return to a societal level after the collectivity has

learnt something about its own nature, allowing it to construct a better world

(reterritorialization, counter-actualization, people to come). At the very least, it would clearly

be a society that strives to abandon, as much as possible, all idealisms, all a prioris, all

burdens inherited from the past, precisely in order to engage all the better with the real,

material circumstances in which we find ourselves. No longer a politics of abstract ideas, but

instead a true politics of things.

Two translations

The French document has been converted to two English versions. The first is a literal

transcription of the French text into English, including, to a significant degree, the physical

positions of words on the pages. However, at several points the manuscript is little more than

7 ‘The goal […] is to break the continuities of received stories and deterministic histories, and at the same time to

fashion images that are free of the entangling associations of conventional narratives and open to unspecified

elaboration in the construction of a new mode of collective agency’ (2006: 221, emphasis added).

8 Anti-Oedipus, p. 379.



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quick notes or single words. Possible rhizomatic advantages notwithstanding, this led to the

decision to also create an edited version of the text which would read as a single, unbroken

article (this has obvious risks and possible disadvantages, and the reader should primarily

refer to the literal transcript).

A note on terminology

Amour de soi has been translated as ‘self-love’; Amour propre as ‘pride’; and convention as

agreement. ‘Power’ translates pouvoir , unless mentioned otherwise in parentheses.

Sources

Burke, E. (1963) [1759]. Review of Rousseau’s Letter to d’Alembert. In: Edmund Burke:

Selected Writings and Speeches. Ed. P.J. Stanlis. Garden City

Deleuze, G. & Guattari, F. (1983) [1972]. Anti-Oedipus. Trans. By R. Hurley, M. Seem &H.R. Lane. University of Minnesota Press.

Deleuze, G. & Guattari, F. (1987) [1980]. A Thousand Plateaus. Trans. By B. Massumi.

University of Minnesota Press.

Deleuze, G. (2004) [2002]. Desert Islands and Other Texts 1953-1974. Trans. by M.

Taormina. Semiotext(e).

Holland, E. (1999). Deleuze and Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus: Introduction to Schizoanalysis.

Routledge.

Hughes, J. (2012). Philosophy after Deleuze. Continuum.

Patton, P. (2000). Deleuze & the Political. Routledge.



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TRANSLATION

COURSE OF MR. DELEUZE – Sor bonne 1959- 1960

ROUSSEAU

2 possi bl e concept i ons of t he St ate of nature.

1) Anci ent concept i on = st at us nat ur ae. Thi s cont i nues i nt o the Mi ddl e Ages ( Pl at o,

Ar i st ot l e, St oi c, Ci cer o, St . Thomas) . Rel at ed t o nat ur al r i ght . Al ways def i ned i n an

or der of per f ecti ons. Fi nal i zed mot i on. Nat ur al r i ght = conf or mi t y wi t h Nat ur e. I t s

soci abi l i t y and soci et y ar e nat ur al l y par t of and def i ned i n t he or der of per f ecti ons. A

state of nat ure i s never evoked as a preci vi l or pre-pol i t i cal state (cf . Ari stotl e.

Ci cer o’ s De Fi ni bus) .

The soci al probl em i s not t hat of t he est abl i shment of a soci et y wi t h a cont r act or

anot her t hi ng. I deal l y, peopl e search for t he best gover nment , whi ch i s t hat of t he wi se.

I n f act , t he wi se no l onger have the desi r e t o govern men, and men do not want t he wi se.

What i s needed i s a government t hat r epl aces t he wi se. Whence t he probl emof t he best

r egi me. ( Pl ato = t he l aws. The nomos i s necessary as a r eal subst i t ut e f or wi sdom) .

Thi s concept i on cont i nues i nt o moder n pol i t i cal phi l osophy, not wi t h t he phi l osopher s, but

wi t h t he t heol ogi ans and t he l awyer s.

2) New meani ng wi t h Hobbes

- The st at e of nature i s def i ned as a mechani sm of f orces. That whi ch i s natural i s no

l onger t he or der of perf ect i ons, but r i ght underst ood as a system of power : r i ght

becomes absol ut e. React i on agai nst t he Ar i st ot el i an t r adi t i on: man i s not a soci abl e

ani mal . The st at e of nat ur e l et s ever yone j udge: abol i t i on of t he pr i vi l ege of t he

wi se.

- Soci et y i s t heref ore j usti f i abl e f roman ori gi n whi ch bot h af f i r ms i t sel f i n nat ure

and marks t he ext r eme l i mi t of t hat whi ch i s natur al .

The conf l i ct s between i ndi vi dual s automat i cal l y (mécaniquement) l ead t o i nt ernal

conf l i ct s i n t he i ndi vi dual ( between ambi t i on and t he f ear of a vi ol ent death).

Soci ety appear s as the onl y means to overcome t hese contr adi ct i ons t hrough a speci f i c

act = t he cont ract .

- How does Rousseau accept and t r ansf orm t hese t erms? Wi t h Hobbes, he r ecogni zes t hat

soci abi l i t y i s not nat ur al . However , he opposes t he not i on of cont r adi ct i ons whi ch

f or ce man to exi t t he stat e of nature.

I n what consi st s t he cont r act ?

Legal def i ni t i on of cont r act as a r el at i on bet ween t wo par t i es

- I t endows each par t y wi t h r i ght s and dut i es, r el ati ve t o each ot her , f or a

det ermi ned t i me.

- I t i s vol untary.

- I t i s not bi ndi ng f or t hi rd part i es.

The not i on of t he soci al cont r act r ecast s t hi s def i ni t i on: i ndet er mi nate t i me, appl yi ng t o

thi rd part i es…



DELEUZE – ROUSSEAU 2

But t he aut hors who have used t hi s t er m i nsi st on i t s vol unt ar y aspect = pol i t i cal phi l osophy

as phi l osophy of t he wi l l .

Who are t he par t i es to t he cont r act? Subj ect s and soverei gns? That i s t he poi nt of vi ew of t he

l awyer s. I f so, who wi l l j udge whet her t he cont r act i s obser ved wel l ? The sour ce of power wi l l

be doubl e: a t hi r d par t y i s needed t o j udge. Yet t hi s t hi r d par t y wi l l be t he soverei gn

( obj ecti on by Hobbes, whi ch we agai n f i nd i n Rousseau) .

HOBBES: t he cont r actual r el ati on i s onl y est abl i shed between those who wi l l become subj ects .

We need to concei ve of a seri es of cont r acts of ever yone wi t h ever yone, by whi ch ever yone

est abl i shes hi msel f as subj ect of a t hi r d part y whi ch does not ent er i nt o t he cont r act .

( moder n type: cont r act wi t h sti pul at i on for ot her s. Exampl e: l i f e i nsur ance) .

ROUSSEAU t akes up Hobbes’ cr i t i que agai nst t he f i r st expl i cati on, but r ej ects Hobbes’

sol ut i on.

What i s t he obl i gat i on t hat r esul t s f r om t he cont r act?

The probl em of a f i nal i t y of t he cont r act ,

f i nal i t y whi ch must be recogni zed i n the pr oduct of t he cont r act .

Commonpl ace i n pol i t i cal phi l osophy of t he 18t h cent ur y. Di scover y of a man- ci t i zen dual i t y

whi ch di d not exi st i n the anci ent worl d. Man was capabl e of “vi r t ue”. The modern f act i s t he

dual i t y: man has become pr i vat e man and ci t i zen.

I n f act , pr i vat e man i s i ncapabl e of bei ng a ci t i zen, and “vi r t ue” as det ermi nati on of t he

ci t i zen i s i mpossi bl e. I t onl y resi des i n pri vate vi rt ue.

MONTESQUI EU: “We have gai ned i n humani t y, but we have l ost i n vi r t ue”. ( Carnet s) .

The r easons: - i deol ogi cal = r el i gi on – Chr i st i ani t y

- economi cal = devel opment of proper t y i ncome

ROUSSEAU: Di scourse on the Ar t s and Sci ences: “Anci ent pol i t i cs spoke onl y of honor and

vi r t ue; our s speaks onl y of commerce and money.

Di f f erence i n nature bet ween the most vi r t uous ci t i zens of Geneva and the l east ones among the

Romans.

HEGEL part i ci pat es i n thi s pessi mi sm of pol i t i cal phi l osophy: we ar e not capabl e of democr acy,

whi ch i s never t hel ess t he best r egi me.

Cf . begi nni ng of Emi l e: 2 t ypes of educat i on: f or mat i on of t he ci t i zen and for mati on of

pr i vat e man: a choi ce must be made.

The ci t i zen i s posed i n t he ci t y as a f r ee ci t i zen, and r equest s f r eedom f r om soci et y. Man,

i nsof ar as he i s pr i vat e, r equest s secur i t y f r omt he ci t y, whi ch i s t he same as t he guar ant eeof hi s propert i es.

How does t he contr act r espond here?

I exchange my natural f r eedom ( ent i r el y or i n par t ) and I r ecei ve secur i t y f r om t he soverei gn.

Wi t h Hobbes, t he onl y f r eedom of t he cont r act i s a cer t ai n secur i t y. However , cer t ai n r i ght s

r emai n i nal i enabl e: t he r i ght t o r esi st whoever want s t o ki l l me.

SPI NOZA even r et ai ns f r eedomi n t he ci vi l st at e: I do not cont ent mysel f




wi t h si mpl e necessi t y. Preserved i n t he modern worl d t hi s new f r eedomwi l l be t he f r eedomof

t hought .

ROUSSEAU connect s f r eedom t o i nal i enabl e ri ght s: t he r i ght t o make l aws. HEGEL reproaches

Rousseau f or havi ng f orgot t en that we ar e no l onger ci t i zens. Thi s i s per haps t r ue f or t he

Soci al Cont r act , but i t i s f al se f or Rousseau’ s oeuvre as a whol e.

3) Thi r d t ype of concept i on t hat sur f aces i n t he mi ddl e of t he 18t h cent ur y: ut i l i t ar i an and

posi t i vi st . Agai nst Thomi st t heol ogy, anci ent metaphysi cs: t he not i on of cont r act i s

met aphysi cal ( HUME, BENTHAM) .

Two arguments wi t h HUME:

- Compl ete negat i on of a stat e of nat ur e, whi ch i s not a stat e of r i ght , but of needs,

one that cannot be def i ned but negati vel y.

- Soci et y does not have as i t s ori gi n a cont r act whi ch i s al ways an act of l i mi t at i on of

nat ural r i ghts.

Now, t he consti t ut i ve act of soci et y i s essent i al l y posi t i ve.For HUME i t r evol ves ar ound agr eement ( f or exampl e: t he har mony of r owers) .

The dest i nat i on of t hi s agreement f or BENTHAM: secur i t y.

For t he proponents of t he cont r act , Spi noza, Rousseau, and Kant demand f r eedom.

THE NEWHELOI SE

Rousseau’ s proj ect , even though he was concer ned wi t h pol i t i cal i nst i t ut i ons: wr i t i ng a book

of whi ch t he t heme obsesses hi m and f or whi ch he has the t i t l e “Sensi t i ve Moral i t y, or The

Wi se Man’ s Mater i al i sm”. The i deas of t hi s unf i ni shed book are r etr i eved i n “The New Hel oi se”.

Hypothesi s of BURGELI N: i n the heroes of “The New Hel oi se”, i l l ust r ati on of t he myt h of t he

Phaedr us. Sai nt Preux: t he bl ack hor se. J ul i e: t he hear t .

Wol mar: t he noûs.

For Rousseau, J ul i e and Sai nt Preux ar e made f or each other , because t hey both l ove vi r t ue.

Ther e i s conf l i ct , because t he obj ect i ve si t uat i on precl udes t hi s woul d- be vi r t uous l ove.

J ul i e l i ves t he conf l i ct : she l oses vi r t ue, but t he l ove of vi r t ue r emai ns i n her. She wr i t es

t o Sai nt - Pr eux:

“I keep my l ove f or you; t he l ove of vi r t ue i s f or Wol mar and I obey my parent s”. Yet , a

r evel ati on on t he day of t he marr i age: “Our di ver se si t uati ons change and they deter mi ne,

despi t e our sel ves, t he af f ecti ons of our hear t s”. Not e l et t er 20 par t 3.

Now, i n cer t ai n obj ect i ve si t uat i ons, we cannot but be wi cked. How t o r econci l e vi r t ue and t hei nt er est of soci et y? “We shal l be vi ci ous and wi cked as l ong as we shal l have an i nt erest i n

bei ng so”. Want i ng t o change onesel f st r i kes Rousseau as ri di cul ous.

Our soul i s def i ned i n i t s r el at i ons wi t h obj ects.

The wi l l can change t he si t uat i on by i nter veni ng as obj ect i ve el ement of t he si t uat i on i t sel f .

J ul i e deci des t hat i f Wol mar di es,




she wi l l not mar r y Sai nt - Preux.

Pr i vat e t r ansposi t i on of a f amous i dea i n pol i t i cal phi l osophy: est abl i shi ng si t uat i ons such

t hat peopl e can no l onger be wi cked: HUME: pr obl emof pol i t i cal phi l osophy: f i ndi ng obj ect i ve

si t uat i ons whi ch r econci l e j ust i ce and i nt er est .

Maki ng t he str ong wi l l i nt er vene i n pr i vat e l i f e as an obj ecti ve el ement of t he si t uat i on.

Concept i on of Wol mar: subj ecti on of t he physi cal bei ng t o t hi ngs:

t her apeut i c for J ul i e and Sai nt - Pr eux.

I n par t I V, Sai nt - Pr eux returns when J ul i e i s mar r i ed and has t wo chi l dr en. I t i s

Wol mar who asks Sai nt- Preux t o come: hi s i dea: obser vi ng peopl e, experi ment i ng on t hem. He

want s t o heal J ul i e, who has acqui r ed vi r t ue, but has not f orgot t en her si n. Let t er 12: t he

t her apy of t he Gr ove: ( pl ace wher e Sai nt- Preux had embraced J ul i e and wher e she has never been

abl e t o return) .

“J ul i e, f ear t hi s r ef uge no l onger, i t has been prof aned”, t hat i s t o say, di ssoci al i zed.

Let t er 18: Wol mar l eaves J ul i e and Sai nt- Preux at t he pl ace wher e Sai nt - Preux had once been

exi l ed duri ng t hei r l ove.

Wol mar’ s pl an. They l ove each other i n the past . J ul i e i s no l onger t he same, because she has

become vi r t uous. But Sai nt- Preux does not know t hi s. “Take away the memory, and he wi l l no

l onger have t he l ove” … The er r or t hat abuses hi m and the pr obl em i s a conf usi on of t i mes”.

Sai nt - Pr eux i s f i xat ed.

( I t i s t he psychoanal yt i c f i xat i on) .

- To make hi m consci ous of t he f i xat i on; t hat t he J ul i e he l oves i s no l onger t he

pr esent J ul i e. I t i s a t r eat ment by means of becomi ng consci ous. But Wol mar t hi nks

t hat i t i s t oo dangerous, t he becomi ng consci ous does not heal . Because he woul d be

capabl e of l ovi ng t he cur r ent J ul i e.

- I t i s bet t er t o make hi m l ose t he memory of t he t i mes whi ch he must f orget “by def t l y

subst i t ut i ng other i deas for t hose whi ch are dear t o hi m”. Execut i on of subst i t ut i on.

“I cover t he past of t he pr esent ”. I t i nvol ves subst i t ut i ng f or t he l ove f or J ul i e as

a young gi r l , a f r i endshi p f or t he woman, and thi s i n a cont i nuous manner. I t i s t he

t r ansf er of psychoanal yst s.

I t i nvol ves changi ng t he si t uat i on i n order t o become vi r t uous. The wi se man i s

he who put s det ermi ni sm i n the servi ce of vi r t ue. The si t uati on can be changed by t he

wi l l : i t i s J ul i e’ s met hod. Wol mar pref ers t o operate wi t hi n t he si t uat i on i t sel f , t o

execut e a t r ansf er ( i t i s t he mat er i al i sm of t he wi se man) .

Rousseau has a concepti on of t he hi erar chy of st ages of t he “beaut i f ul soul ”.

Four st ages whi ch can be di f f erent :

1. The or i gi nal goodness of t he soul

2. The natural goodness or l ove of vi r t ue

3. Vi r t ue i t sel f

4. Wi sdom




1. The or i gi nal goodness .

I t i s t he goodness of t he soul i n t he stat e of nat ur e. Af f i r mati on of t hi s goodness whi ch

i s never separated f r oma det ermi ni st i c af f i r mat i on. These ar e the si t uat i ons whi ch det ermi ne

our af f ecti ons. The soul i s f i rst of al l a f acul t y of f eel i ng, not of r eason. That whi ch

appear s at f i r st i s a “r el i ance on t hi ngs” whi ch i s nat ur al . Thi s af f i r mat i on ent ai l s that of

or i gi nal goodness, because i n the st at e of nat ur e, al l af f ecti ons are good, t hat i s t o say

appropri at e t o t he obj ect ( put di f f erent l y, i t i s the nat ural i st t ranscri pt i on of t he

concept i on: r eal i t y = perf ecti on) .

I n thi s goodness, everyone i s a whol e ont o onesel f . Each i s one wi t h the sent i ment of

exi st ence. However , t her e i s a natural di ver si t y of soul s due to t he di f f erence of f undament al

f acul t i es .

The soul of J ul i e: ener gy, l azy wi t h r egards t o a change of st at e, i nt er i or

sens ibi l i t y .

Sai nt - Preux: i nt eri or sensi bi l i ty. Feebl e soul .

Wol mar: l i t t l e sensi bi l i t y, col d soul , t aste f or r eason.

Cl ai r e: i mpul si ve. “The cr azy one”.

Each soul nonet hel ess has an ori gi nal goodness. There i s no possi bl e wi ckedness at t hi s l evel ,

because t he i nt ui t i ons do not per mi t i t . I n f uncti on of i t s t ype, each soul has i t s pl ace i n

t he order of nat ur e.

2. Natural goodness

Probl emof t he genesi s of wi ckedness. Wi t h soci ety comes a r adi cal change of s i t uat i on

whi ch r enders vi ce possi bl e. Wi t h soci ety, new r el ati ons whi ch pr event us f r ombei ng good and

whi ch devel op an i nter est i n bei ng wi cked i n us.

These new r el at i ons: i t i s t he r el at i on of mast er - sl ave.I n t he st at e of nat ur e, r el at i on of each f or hi msel f wi t h t hi ngs. Soci et y i nst al l s a r el at i on

of r el i ance of one on the ot her , ever yone bei ng t aken as a par t and no l onger as a whol e. A

r el at i on whi ch st ar t s f r om i nf ancy. The badl y rai sed chi l d does what he want s t o other s. “I n

cr eat i ng a r i ght t o be obeyed, chi l dr en l eave t he stat e of nat ur e al most f r om bi r t h”. New

Hel oi se 3 par t 5.

The goal of Emile: t o recover an educat i on t hat wi l l ent ai l a r el i ance on t hi ngs and not on

wi l l s. Chi l dr en must f eel t hei r i mpot ence wi t h r egar d t o t hi ngs.

Wi t h soci ety, ever yone i s al ways sl ave and mast er of someone.

I t i s t hi s art i f i ci al r el at i on whi ch engender s vi ce, because we ther eby have an i nt er est i n

bei ng wi cked.Our or i gi nal goodness subsi st s. Nat ur al goodness i s or i gi nal goodness i nsofar as i t subsi st s

under t hese new r el ati ons.

- Ther e are degr ees: f or cer t ai n soul s, or i gi nal goodness i s ef f aced by t he mul t i t ude of

soci al rel at i ons (i n t hi s sense, l ovi ng sol i t ude i s a cri t eri on of goodness).

- Ther e are i nter medi ar i es. The good soul sel ect s i t s soci al r el at i ons, i t di st r ust s

t hem. But i t can be caught s hort by t he si t uat i on and react agai nst i t s own goodness,

dr i ven by deter mi ni sm ( t hat ’ s t he case f or me, says Rousseau) .




The l ove of vi r t ue i s t o want t o r et ai n i t s goodness despi t e t he si t uat i on. Thi s natural

goodness i s not vi r t ue, but t he l ove of vi r t ue.

I t i s t he pr obl em of t he New Hel oi se. J ul i e i s ver y good, her f at her as wel l . Yet by vi r t ue of

t hei r obj ecti ve soci al si t uat i ons, she cannot l ove Sai nt - Pr eux wi t hout bei ng at f aul t . Nor can

Sai nt - Preux l ove her. What r emai ns t hemi s t he l ove of vi r t ue.

The moral probl em: how t o l eave t hi s st at e: l ovi ng vi r t ue and doi ng t he cont r ary, dr i ven by

t he si t uat i on?

3. Vi r t ue

I t i s t he ef f or t t o make t he l ove of vi r t ue out wei gh t he i nt er est i n bei ng wi cked.

Vi r t ue i s a means t o real i ze the l ove of vi r t ue. Cf . l et t er t o Sophi e “goodness i s l ost by the

exer t i on of a mul t i t ude of ar t i f i ci al r el at i ons. Unt i l t hen I had been good … I become

vi rt uous”.

But Rousseau doubt s t he ef f i cacy of vi r t ue as st r uggl e. He does not doubt t he st r uggl e between

t he l ove of vi r t ue and t he i nt er est, but i t s out come. Vi r t ue i s “al ways a st ate of war”.

-

The st r uggl e can be a pl at oni c f l i ght ( J ul i e) or a st oi c one ( Edouard) , a del i cat est r uggl e, because t he enemy t o conquer can be r eason i t sel f .

- J ul i e has anot her met hod, af t er her mar r i age. No l onger t he di r ect st r uggl e, but

t r ansf ormati on of t he si t uati on t hrough the wi l l . So, one must r emove wi ckedness

i ndi r ect l y. Even i n t hi s case, Rousseau r emai ns skept i cal . The wi l l i nt ervenes i n t he

si t uat i on, but what guar ant ees t hat t he change i s def i ni t i ve? I n a sense, J ul i e f ai l s.

Er r or of st oi ci sm and of Chr i st i ani t y: t hey exagger at e dut i es and vi r t ue.

“Wi sdomi s t o di smi ss t he di f f i cul t y of our dut i es … happy i s t he one who i s not

pl aced i n the necessi t y of bei ng vi r t uous as one cont ent s onesel f wi t h bei ng a good

man”

( Let t er of J anuar y 1764 t o Carondel et ) .

Vi r t ue i s a st r uggl e, i n a cont ext whi ch a si t uat i on demands. Wi sdom est abl i shes si t uat i ons i n

whi ch vi r t ue i s needl ess. Wi sdom l eads onl y to the r estorat i on, of whi ch Rousseau dr eamt , of

t he uni t y of vi r t ue and i nt er est wi t hi n us.

Wi sdom i s not separabl e f r omenj oyment (jouissance) .

Wi sdompresent s i t sel f f i r st of al l under t he aspect of Wol mar ’ s met hod.

He no l onger r el i es on t he wi l l t o change t he si t uat i on, but on a sel ect i on car r i ed out i n t he

si t uat i on i t sel f . Sel ecti on of t i mes and pl aces.

of t i mes: cover t he past by the pr esent;

of pl aces: r ender f ami l i ar t hat whi ch was sacr ed.

“True happi ness consi st s i n sayi ng t hat I amwhol l y where I am”.




I n t he “Reveri es”, Rousseau i nsi st s on t he sent i ment of exi st ence. Our mi sf ort une i s t hat we

ant i ci pate the f ut ur e i n r ecal l i ng t he past, t hat we ar e not l i vi ng t he pr esent “whi ch al ways

endur es wi t hout mar ki ng i t s dur at i on i n the l east , wi t hout sent i ment of successi on”.

Sent i ment of exi st ence: pur e pr esent whi ch passes ( assi mi l at ed to Et er ni t y, t o the di vi ne

st at e, because “one i s suf f i ci ent ont o onesel f , l i ke God”) .

Wol mar want s t o sel ect t he el ement s of t he present . Ti me must be l i ved as passage, i t i s at

t hat moment t hat t he subst i t ut i on i s made.

Method of sel ect i on whi ch r esul t s i n t he Rever i es.

At t hi s l evel , i t i s no l onger a sel ecti on of obj ects whi ch popul at e ti me, but t i me whi ch i s

st r i pped of al l successi on of obj ects.

The ease of exi st i ng i s t hus di scovered.

At t he begi nni ng, he had to use our dependence wi t h regar d t o thi ngs.

At t he end of hi s l i f e, Rousseau af f i r ms t hat one must l i ber at e onesel f f r om t hi s r el i ance.

And establ i sh an empt i ness.

I n the mat er i al i sm of t he wi se man, i t comes down to usi ng the det er mi ni sm of si t uat i ons i n

order t o di sengage. Wol mar cont r ol s t he obj ects . But i s t hat good method? ( cf . t he end of The

New Hel oi se) .

I n the Rêver i es, Rousseau har dl y bel i eves t hat i t i s suf f i ci ent t o change si t uat i ons i n or der

t o be happy. He t here subst i t utes i t f or t he r everi e whi ch per mi t s a coi nci dence wi t h t he pur e

passage of t i me when obj ects no l onger hol d sway over us.

Book 9. Conf essi ons ( Pl ei ad P. 400- 401, 408- 409) : Rousseau here t akes up anew t he t hemes f r om

hi s book “Sensi t i ve Mor al i t y”.

The “Cont r act ” i s t he paral l el on t he pl ane of t he ci t i zen, of t he Emi l e on t he pr i vat e pl ane

( t he educat or , t he l egi sl at or ar e par al l el s. Mythi cal bei ngs, because, says Rousseau, t hey ar e

too f ul l of vi rt ues to be real ) . Ther e i s a r el at i on of essent i al successi on between the Cont r act and the Emi l e. The cont r act

presupposes t he educat ed, f ormed, pri vate man.

I n the Emi l e, Rousseau speci f i es t hat t here ar e three educat i ons:

- An educati on of natur e “i nt ernal devel opment of our f acul t i es and organs”;

- An educat i on of men: “t he use we ar e taught t o make of t hi s devel opment ” of

nat ur e;

- An educat i on of t hi ngs.

Over t he cour se of t he Emi l e, t hese educati ons ar e r educed t o t wo:

- Domest i c or nat ural educati on- Publ i c educat i on concerni ng r el at i ons of men among each other , each man bei ng

a part .

The f i r st consi ders man as a whol e, so i t i s an educat i on of natural man. I t pl aces hi m i n

r el at i on wi t h t hi ngs and hi s sembl ances, each f or mi ng a whol e f or i t sel f .

The second consi ders man as ci t i zen, part i n r el at i on wi t h ot her part s.

These t wo educat i ons ar e cont r adi ct ory. I n act ual soci et y, we want both at t he same t i me and

ar r i ve at not hi ng. “Nei t her man, nor




ci t i zen”. Thei r di f f er ences i n ki nd must be r eal i zed. Rousseau says: t her e i s no l onger publ i c

educat i on. We must t heref or e take the r oad of pr i vat e educat i on and sti ck wi t h i t . Af t er t hat ,

i t can be asked whether t he rest orat i on of a publ i c educati on i s possi bl e. Whence: t he

Cont r act presupposes t he Emi l e.

THE STATE OF NATURE

I t i s a pre-soci al , pre- pol i t i cal , pre-c i vi l s tate.

Not a new i dea ( Cf . HOBBES) . Why does i t appear as pre- soci al ? I t i s a st ate of equal i t y and

of i ndependence ( Cf . Di scour se on I nequal i t y). Yet Rousseau does not l ocat e i t s or i gi nal i t y

t her e: he def i nes i t by di sper si on. ( Not e 2 of t he Di scour se: Rousseau cont est s Locke’ s

posi t i on on t he quest i on of t he mar i t al r el at i onshi p i n t he st at e of nat ur e. For Locke, i t i s

a nat ur al r el at i onshi p unt i l chi l dr en t ake car e of t hei r own busi ness. For Rousseau, Locke

pr esupposes t hat whi ch i s i n quest i on, whi ch i s t o say co- habi t ati on of man wi t h woman i n the

st at e of nat ur e. Now, t he St at e of nat ur e i s t hat of f or t ui t ous encount er s. Thi s i sol at i on

permi t s Rousseau to expl ai n the Stat e of natur e as a st ate of equal i t y and i ndependence.

Anal yt i c consequence.

I n what sense i s al l t hi s par t of HOBBES?

I n an Ar i st ot el i an and Thomi st per specti ve, t he nat ur al or der i s l i ke t he or der of

perf ect i ons. Soci abi l i t y i s part of t he nat ur al order . For HOBBES, i t no l onger concer ns an

order of per f ect i ons, but a mechani sm of f orces: needs and desi r es. Whence t hat natur al r i ght

i s real i zi ng one’ s desi r es i nsof ar as i t i s wi t hi n one’ s power . Ri ght , not dut y, i s pr i mar y

and nat ur al .

Thi s poi nt of vi ew excl udes al l dependence.

Whence a r eact i on agai nst t he Ar i st otel i an t r adi t i on: man i s no l onger a soci abl e ani mal . Ther e i s equal i t y i n t he r espect i ve compensat i on of i nequal i t y of f or ces: t he most st r ong

al ways f i ndi ng a str onger one than hi msel f , and the l east st r ong capabl e of bei ng suf f i ci ent l y

str ong t o ki l l t he str ongest.

Does t hi s suf f i ce to concl ude that t he st at e of nat ur e does not i mpl y soci al l i f e? For HOBBES

soci al l i f e i mpl i es an aut hor i t y, a r el i ance on r espect f or a power .

The st at e of nature excl udes soci et y as t he ci vi l st at e, but does i t excl ude soci abi l i t y whi ch

permi t s a natur al soci ety as an ensembl e of r el ati ons bet ween i ndependent i ndi vi dual s

( GROTI US). Soci abi l i t y woul d have deri ved f r oman i dent i t y i n natur e between men as r easonabl e

bei ngs. “The stat e of nature and a soci al l i f e ar e not t wo opposed thi ngs”. Puf f endor f . But

t hi s concept i on presupposes t hat one gr ant s hi msel f r eason r i ght away. Now, f or HOBBES, t her ei s a genesi s of r eason.

Rousseau al so demands, agai nst Hobbes, a genesi s of compl ex passi ons f or whi ch Hobbes appeal s

t o the st ate of natur e. Accor di ng to Rousseau, Hobbesi an Man “abuses” cert ai n f acul t i es whi ch

must be pr oduced hi st ori cal l y.




I n changi ng t he pl ane on whi ch t he pr obl emi s posed, Rousseau escapes these di f f i cul t i es of

Hobbes. I f we accept t he thesi s of di sper si on, t hen no l onger a pr obl em of t hi s t ype: each

f or m of soci et y i s necessar i l y excl uded f r om t he st at e of nat ur e.

Wi t h HOBBES, need i s what bri ngs cl oser, wi t h ROUSSEAU, i t separates. I n t he “Essay on t he

ori gi n of l anguages”, wi t hout doubt cont emporaneous t o the Di scour se, t he natur al ef f ect of

needs wi l l be t o separat e men. “The st ate of war r ei gned everywhere, but al l t he l and was at

peace”. Possi bl e wars i n f ort ui t ous encount ers , but t hose di d not t ake pl ace. “Not a Gol den

Age because men were uni t ed, but because t hey were separ at ed”.

I n the Di scourse: Nature does not bot her wi t h br i ngi ng men cl oser t hrough mutual needs. She

does not pr epar e men f or soci al l i f e.

St oi c gr ound of Rousseau: needs separ ate. Need i s defi ned as a sel f - suf f i ci ency. Nat ur al l y, i t

i s l i mi t ed by physi cal necessi t y, i t does not exceed t he f or ces of t hat whi ch experi ences i t .

Our needs are pr oport i onate t o our f orces and our f orces t o our needs: r eci pr ocal r egul ati on

(c f . Emi l e I I ) .

The st at e of nature i s t hus a bal ance between power and desi r e. Wi t h HOBBES: j us i n omni a.

Per haps, says Rousseau, but because everyone onl y desi r es t hat whi ch i s wi t hi n reach:

unl i mi t ed r i ght of man to al l t hat he can at t empt and t hat he can reach. Thi s r i ght i s i n fact

l i mi t ed i n the st at e of nat ur e. Rousseau compares t hi s st at e of nat ur e wi t h at araxi a.

“Everyone i s a whol e ont o onesel f ".

Gr ound of natur al r i ght: sel f - l ove moderat ed by compassi on: bal ance.

Meani ng of “nat ure” wi t h ROUSSEAU.

Nat ur al : f i r st of al l pr i mi t i ve or ori gi nal . “Man i n t he st at e of nat ur e” or “pri mi t i ve man”.

Not soci abl e.

2nd sense: i n the “Prof essi on of f ai t h”: “man i s soci abl e by nat ur e or at l east made to

become so”.

Love i n t he st at e of nat ur e i s a smal l t hi ng, compar ed t o the l ove J ul i e – Sai nt - Preux. “Our

soul s ar e made f or each ot her , i t i s nat ur e whi ch want s i t ”I I I 11.

“I f l ove rei gns, natur e has al r eady chosen … sacred l aw of nat ure” whi ch cannot be vi ol ated

wi t h i mpuni t y.

The f ami l i al sent i ment has need of a habi t , of a devel opment whi ch f orms l i ke a second nature.

That whi ch i s natural i s no l onger t he pr i mi t i ve, but i t i s a devel opment made f r om t he or i gi n

and f ol l owi ng di rect i ons vi rt ual l y cont ai ned i n t he ori gi n.

Probl emof “nat ural l aw” wi t h Rousseau. I t of t en does not concern a l aw t hat woul d r ei gn i n

t he st ate of natur e, but a l aw t hat governs t he devel opment of “nat ur al man”, t hat i s t o say

of man i nsof ar as he i s presupposed to be subj ected to a l aw of devel opment of vi r t ual i t i esi nscr i bed i n t he or i gi nal state.

The “domest i c or natural ” educat i on of Emi l e i ncl udes t he educat i on of nature ( i nt ernal

devel opment of our f acul t i es and our organs) and t he educati on of t hi ngs ( t he acqui si t i on,

engendered by experi ence, of obj ects whi ch af f ect us) .




Natural man i s t hus man i nsof ar as he f orms hi msel f and i s educat ed. The Emi l e i s concei ved as

l eadi ng f r omman i n t he st ate of natur e t o natur al man.

Consci ousness, r eason ar e oft en cal l ed “nat ur al ” wi t h Rousseau, l i ke soci ety and soci abi l i t y.

Cf . Lett er t o Ch. De Beaumont : geneal ogy of vi ces and genesi s of r eason. Compl etel y nat ur al as

i t may be, r eason demands a devel opment st art i ng i n the st ate of nat ure. I n the Geneva

manuscr i pt , t here i s a chapt er on t he st ate of natur e whi ch di sappear s i n t he Cont r act.

Because t hi s chapt er r i sks mi ngl i ng di f f erent pr obl ems: t he Cont r a ct pr esupposes nat ur al man.

The probl em of t he Contr act i s t hat of t he passage of man t o ci t i zen and not natural man as

pri vate man.

Noti on of perf ecti bi l i t y: t he st ate of natur e must be under st ood as a geneti c el ement , heavy

wi t h pot ent i al , wi t h vi r t ual i t i es. Thi s genet i c l i ne i s al t ered by t he genesi s of vi ce: i s i t

acci dent or necessi t y?

I n order t o f i nd t he charact eri st i cs of man i n t he st ate of natur e, Rousseau empl oys an

anal yti c and r egr essi ve met hod, st art i ng f r om nat ur al man. Necessi t y of f i ndi ng a pr i nci pl e:

what t o def i ne? The st ate of nat ure cannot be def i ned as an actual state of t he facul t i es, but

as a vi r t ual and geneti c st ate. Thus sel f - l ove and compassi on are a st ate of passi on as l ong

as t hei r vi r t ual i t i es ar e not devel oped. Cf . Emi l e I V: compassi on i s l aden wi t h a vi r t ual

soci abi l i t y, and sel f - l ove wi t h l ove f or ot her s. The anal yti c met hod cannot l ead to def i ni ng

t he st at e of nat ur e wi t hout a dynami c pr i nci pl e: r egr essi on of t he act ual t o t he vi r t ual . The

anal yt i c method of Rousseau’ s predecessor s does not suf f i ce.

The New Hel oi se: “Nat ure i s a book i n whi ch one must l earn t o r ead”. I t i s not enough t o

anal yze i f one does not know how t o deci pher . Everyt hi ng whi ch i s act ual and f ormed i s

exteri or t o t he st at e of nat ur e.

Bef ore Rousseau, t her e i s t al k of a savage and a ci vi l i zed man.

The genesi s i s preci sel y t he act ual i zat i on of vi r t ual i t i es of t he st at e of nature. Ther e i s no

spont aneous passage.

I n t he Di scour se:- A f acul t y does not devel op i t sel f i f i t does not r espond to a need or an

i nterest

- A need never appears i f i t i s not det ermi ned by a si t uat i on

The st at e of man must t hus be def i ned:

- By obj ecti ve ci r cumst ances

- By needs t hat t hese det ermi ne

- By subj ecti ve f acul t i es necessar y f or t he sat i sf acti on of t hese needs.

Exampl e: speech pr esupposes t he soci al cont r act .

For Rousseau, hi s pr edecessor s have di sr egarded t he order of causes i n posi t i ng, f r omt he

st art , t hese f ormed f acul t i es i n order t o deduce si t uati ons ( f or exampl e, man speaks, so he

l i ves i n soci ety) .




Now, f or Rousseau, t he f acul t i es have a genesi s, and i f man had f ul l y f ormed f acul t i es he

woul d not be i n need of usi ng t hem.

He cr i t i ci zes HOBBES, who makes t he st ate of nat ure a st ate of war . Because man i n the st ate

of natur e cannot be i n a st ate of war. One must proceed as f ol l ows: bei ng gi ven a f acul t y of

aggr essi on, what i nt er est does i t pr esuppose, and what si t uati on does thi s i nt erest

presuppose?

- The l egal or obj ect i ve probl em: war i s not j ust any vi ol ence. I t i s def i ned by a

r el at i on bet ween st ates and a cer t ai n dur ati on, by i t s goal , whi ch i s t o obt ai n

r eparat i ons f or supposed damage by means of f orce. War t hus presupposes pr opert y. “I t

i s t he rel ati on of t hi ngs and not of men whi ch consti t ut es war”. The stat e of war t hus

pr esupposes soci ety.

- The subj ect i ve probl em of i nt er est : pr i de as human i nt er est whi ch al so presupposes t he

soci al st ate. Cf . Anti - Dühr i ng: ENGELS here prai ses Rousseau f or havi ng empl oyed a

di al ect i c met hod i n t he Di scour se. I n f act , i n r el at i on t o Dühr i ng, ENGELS f i ndshi msel f i n the same si t uat i on as Rousseau bef ore HOBBES. What does Robi nson use i n

or der t o ensl ave Fri day? I n or der t o ensl ave, a soci al cont r act const i t ut ed on

pr oduct i ve f orces and r el ati ons of product i on i s needed: t he masters of Ameri ca

ensl ave t hei r sl aves i n cot t on.

I s t he state of nat ure a real i t y or a f i cti on ?

• I t i s per haps doubt f ul whether t hi s probl em has t he i mport ance that some accor d to i t .

Kant ’ s rol e i n di st i ngui shi ng f oundat i on and or i gi n.

• For Rousseau’ s predecessor s, t he st ate of nat ur e i s at t he same t i me f oundati on and

or i gi n. FromHOBBES, t he state of nat ur e i s consi der ed as a pr e- soci al l i f e. I n a sense

t he st at e of nat ur e i s f i cti t i ous, because humani t y i s never f ound ent i r el y ther e. Yet i t

i s r eal i n cert ai n si t uat i ons. For Hobbes, ci vi l war i s one of t hose si t uat i ons.

• For Rousseau: t hr ee t ext s i n t he “Di scour se” “we start by excl udi ng al l t he f acts…” “That

whi ch r ef l ect i on t eaches us, observat i on conf i r ms”. “The pr esupposi t i on of a stat e of

nat ur e”. “A stat e whi ch has per haps never exi st ed, whi ch wi l l pr obabl y never exi st ”.

- I t i s not a fact of obser vat i on: nei t her i nf ancy, nor t he savage state ar e the

st at e of nat ur e.

- Cont ext of ci t at i ons: t he “f acts” are t he facts as at t est ed t o by sacred t exts:

man cr eated wi t h hi s f acul t i es.

- The st ate of nat ure i s never posed probl emat i cal l y. What happens bet ween the

st at e of nature and t he act ual st at e, al l t he i nt er medi ar i es, i s posed as

hypot het i cal . But t he two ends are gi ven as r eal .

The st at e of nature i s r eal as poi nt of depar t ure of a movement f r om whi ch man t akes

shape.

Si nce t her e i s genesi s st ar t i ng fr omt he stat e of nature, how does thi s genesi s work?




The Di scourse proposes one. The Essay on t he or i gi n of l anguages and t he hi st or y of

mores, other s. But t he poi nt of vi ew i s t he same. Emi l e makes t he genesi s f r omt he

poi nt of vi ew of t he chi l d.

THE UNI TY OF ROUSSEAU’ S OEUVRE

Cassi r er : Soci et y of phi l osophy, Febr uar y 1932.

Kant i an t hesi s proposi ng a uni t y around t he concept of f r eedom.

Kant : “Conj ectur es on the begi nni ngs of human hi st ory”.

The Contr act does not want t o be a possi bl e r ef or m of soci et y.

I n t he Di scour se, t her e i s an agr eement whi ch, i n i t s pr i nci pl e, i s mysti f yi ng, i t gener at es

t he corr upt i ng soci al state. Thi s mysti f i cat i on i s gl ar i ng (se fait criante) : soci al

ameni t i es. A reorgani zat i on of soci et y cannot suf f i ce si nce i t i s t ai nt ed i n i t s pri nci pl e.

( compl et el y cont r ar y to t he Encycl opédi st es) .

I s a ref or m of soci et y possi bl e? Accor di ng t o Rousseau, i t i s under cer t ai n condi t i ons, up to

a cert ai n poi nt . But t oday we ar e t oo deep i nto the agr eement . We can no l onger make a cl ean

sl at e. I t pr esupposes moreover a l egi sl at or who arr i ved f r om out si de

( Cr et ans, Lacedaemoni ans, Romans f or exampl e) .

I n cer t ai n st at es, man i s ci t i zen bef ore al l el se. That i s no l onger possi bl e now. And t he

cont r act exi st s because t he agreement can no l onger be changed. I t i s an err or t o rel ate t he

cont r act t o a st ate of nat ure f r omwhi ch i t woul d have pr oceeded. I t must be r el ated t o

natur al man, t hat i s t o say man f ormed accordi ng to t he l aw of natur e. Thi s i s t he case f or

Emi l e af t er hi s compl eted educati on, owner and husband: pri vat e man, j ust, vi r t uous. The

educat i on has st opped bei ng publ i c, we cannot r eturn t o bef ore the agr eement .

The cor r espondence of Rousseau wi t h Tr onchi n l eads hi m t o see t he di f f er ence between pr i vat e

man and t he ci t i zen. I t i s when Emi l e i s f ormed i n pr i vat e t hat t he pol i t i cal pr obl em i s posed

t o hi m.

Such men, do t hey not est abl i sh a new soci al order ?

No genesi s passes f r oman ant eri or st age t o t he soci al cont r act . But i t i s t hr ough a ki nd of

t r ansmut ati on t hat pr i vat e men f ound another soci al order .

Natur al man must be rel ated to hi s own geneti c l i ne. Al l t hat can be done i s t o pr event t he

chi l d, t hrough domesti c educat i on, f romput t i ng i t sel f i n corr upt i ng si t uat i ons.

The genet i c l i ne whi ch r esponds t o hi st or y: f r om t he st at e of nature t o t he cor r upti ng soci al

state.

The second l i ne i s t hat of pedagogy: t he l aw of nature permi t s f or mat i on i n a cor r upt ed

soci ety, a man of nat ur e as pri vat e.

The t hi r d l i ne, non- genet i c: natural man cr eat es a cor r espondi ng soci al or der wi t h hi s wi l l .




How does one l eave the st ate of nat ure ?

- For HOBBES f or exampl e, t here i s a f undament al di sequi l i br i um i n the st at e of nat ur e –

unl i vabl e – whi ch r enders l eavi ng i t necessary. Thi s exi t i s made possi bl e by t he natural

l aw: t hi s means presupposes a mi ni mal devel opment of r eason: t hi s wi l l be bett er i f

ever yone abst ai ns f r omeveryt hi ng t hat can t ur n to i t s di sadvant age.

- Wi t h ROUSSEAU, t he state of nat ur e i s f ul l sel f - suf f i ci ency, wi t hout cont r adi cti on. The

human speci es i s consi dered as an ani mal speci es. The i ndi vi dual i s not hi ng but one wi t h

i t s speci es: i dent i t y between i ndi vi dual and t he gener i c bei ng, because t he i ndi vi dual i s

a whol e f or i tsel f .

That whi ch engender s t he exi t f r om t he st at e of nature: a mul t i pl i ci t y of “s t r ange”,

“f or t ui t ous”, “mi l d” causes. So i t i s t hr ough a mechani sm, but t her e i s never t hel ess a

“hi dden pl an of nature”, man goes to r eal i ze hi s f i nal goal .

For t hi s, an obj ect i ve si t uat i on i s needed, i n each st age of humani t y’ s devel opment . I f i t

changes, new i nterest s and needs appear i n man.

I n l eavi ng t he state of nat ur e, one fal l s i nt o the savage st at e.

Si t uati on: t wo new f acts: morphol ogi cal causes

cl i mati c causes whi ch act

onl y i n rel ati on wi t h demogr aphi c causes

Peopl e mul t i pl y, t hey i ncr easi ngl y encounter one another and t hey seek out t he most f avorabl e

regi ons.

New i nt erest s and needs: one st i l l st ays, f r omt he poi nt of vi ew of man consi dered as ani mal

speci es, physi cal . He i s al ways def i ned by hi s r el at i on wi t h thi ngs and hi s dependency wi t h

r espect t o t hem. Yet whi l e man i s mai nl y passi ve i n t he st ate of nat ure, hi s physi cal bei ng

now becomes act i ve: generi c act i vi t y of t he uni quel y physi cal i ndi vi dual : “How many i nvent i ons

whi ch di e wi t h thei r i nvent or ”.

- Two new i nt erests : someti mes, i n cer t ai n si t uat i ons, an i nt er est i n cooper ati ng, somet i mes,

i n others , i n r i val i ng.

Exampl e: t he deer hunter ( cooper at i on) who sees a hare pass by

(sol i tary chase) .

The f i r st provi si onal communi t i es ar e t hose of hunt er s, because t he f i r st act i vi t y i s t he

hunt .

Appearance of new f acul t i es: per cept i on of cert ai n r el ati ons. ( r eason pr esupposes t hi s. Cf .

Emi l e). “A ki nd of r ef l ect i on or machi ni c pr udence”. The “Pr of essi on of Fai t h” not onl y speaks

of a passi vi t y, but al so of a “facul t y of compari ng sensat i ons” whi ch i s not yet a tr uef r eedom and r emai ns physi cal .

I t st i l l concer ns a j udgment by i nspect i on, whi ch i s not j udgment by i nduct i on. I t i s a

“sensi t i ve and puer i l e r eason” i nsepar abl e f r om a physi cal acti vi t y.

At t hi s l evel , compar i son of man as a speci es wi t h the ot her speci es. Man has a natur al

generi c conformi t y wi t h hi s sembl ances.

Appar i t i on of i mi t at i ve, gest ur al , nat ur al l anguage.




The new needs and i nter est s change t he si t uat i on by i nt egrat i ng t hemsel ves i n i t . Ther e i s

al so i nt er vent i on of cat ast r ophes. The pr obl em of new i nt erests poses t hat of t he passage of

t he nat ur al i ndi vi dual t o t he mor al man.

I t i s the di scovery of a new acti vi t y, pr operl y spi r i t ual .

Ever ythi ng happens as i f t hi s passage ent ai l ed a regr essi on of acti vi t y. Cf . Emi l e I I I and I V:

The chi l d st i l l has f eebl e desi r es, but hi s power s have grown. Ther e ar e unempl oyed capaci t i es

i n hi m.

I t i s st udi es whi ch make hi m di scover hi s i nt el l ect ual and mor al bei ng.

Li kewi se i t i s sai d i n t he Di scour se t hat “t he Past ors are l ess act i ve and more peacef ul ”. I t

i s t he bi r t h of l ei sur e and i dl e passi ons. Ther ef or e, “t her e ar e i ndi vi dual pr ef er ences and

compar i sons”. The i ndi vi dual di st i ngui shes i t sel f f r om t he speci es.

Under what condi t i ons? To t he ext ent t hat t he speci es i s no l onger def i ned as physi cal

speci es, but as mor al speci es.

New i nter est s and needs: per manent housi ng appears ( embryo of proper t y) . Associ at i ons t ake

shape whi ch ar e not merel y f ounded on an i nterest such as t hat of hunter s.

St at e of t he f acul t i es: i f t her e i s l ess physi cal acti vi t y, a mor al i t y of magnani mi t y and of

vengeance i s di scovered.

The i ndi vi dual ceases bei ng one wi t h t he speci es. He wants t o be r ecogni zed by t he ot hers. I t

i s t he f i r st st ep t owar ds i nequal i t y and pr i de.

Moral i t y i ni t i al l y mani f est s t hr ough t he sent i ment of r i ght : t hat whi ch I am owed. The

i ndi vi dual whi ch f eel s of f ended, whi ch exact s vengeance. “Each i s j udge and avenger of

of f enses t hat he undergoes”.

Ther e i s no l aw as of yet . Thi s i mpl i es t hat t he separat i on between i ndi vi dual and humani t y as

moral speci es i s not compl ete.

I t i s t he best era, says Rousseau.

Di scovery of a moral bei ng whi ch i s proper t o us: f r eedom. Cf . The Pr of essi on of f ai t h, wher e

a radi cal soul - body dual i sm i s af f i r med. The soul , acti ve, pr oduces a wi l l i ndependent of al l

physi cal determi nat i on. Freedomi s al r eady pr esent i n t he st at e of nat ur e, but t here i s no

consci ousness of i t t her e, because i t i s not hi ng but at one wi t h l i f e. We become consci ous t o

t he ext ent t hat we di scover t hat i t const i t ut es our mor al bei ng. I t i s when, t hr ough

perf ect i bi l i t y, we have passed i nt o t he mor al st ate t hat we can concl ude t hat f r eedom exi st ed

i n t he st at e of nat ur e.

Two dual i t i es t ake shape: man as physi cal and mor al speci es ( soul and body) , i ndi vi dual and

speci es. When the f i r st i s di scovered, t he second i s deepened. At t he same ti me that l ove ofvi r t ue devel ops i n t he moral speci es, an i nt er est i n bei ng wi cked devel ops i n t he i ndi vi dual .

I t i s i n the ci vi l i zed ( policé) st at e t hat t he dual i t i es take on t hei r f ul l i mpor t ance.

Here, t he new i nt er est s are rel at ed t o the f or mat i on of t he coupl e metal l ur gy- agr i cul t ur e.

Met al l ur gy takes shape f i r st . Agr i cul t ur e i s bor n f r om t he necessi t y




of f eedi ng those who work t he i r on; t he di vi si on of l abor i s based on t he exchange of i r on and

agr i cul t ur al pr oducts. Then the f i r st appear ance of pr oper t y: di vi si on of l ands. Ther e i s no

convent i onal r el ati on between pr opert y and l abor: t he l aborer possesses the l and: t here i s a

cert ai n ri ght t o t he t i l l ed soi l i nsof ar as i t has produced t he f r ui t s of l abor .

Thi s possessi on, cont i nui ng f r om harvest t o harvest , has a natural or i gi n. Evol ut i on of t he

moral bei ng: t owar ds a mor al i t y of j ust i ce, af t er j ust t he i dea of proper t y, base of t he

devel opment of t he moral bei ng.

Thi s j ust i ce consi st s i n gi vi ng everyone what t hey ar e due.

Ther e i s an “i nequal i t y of combi nat i on” i n t he r el at i on smi t hs- l abor ers. Pr oper t y has cr eated

a sent i ment of j usti ce, but i t s voi ce i s sti l l f eebl e. Despi t e t hi s sent i ment , t he i ndi vi dual

man i s goi ng t o def i ne hi msel f as an owner, more or l ess gr eedy, i n di scoveri ng i nter ests of

owner shi p i n the i nequal i t y of pr oper t i es due to t he di vi si on of l abor .

Ther e i s t hus a new i nequal i t y: of usur pat i on. A r el at i on of f or ces i s est abl i shed between

owner s.

The r i ch desi gn what Rousseau cal l s a t houghtf ul proj ect , whi ch i s a myst i f i cat i on, of

“speci ous r easons”: t hey pr opose an end t o t he state of war and t he r euni on of al l t he wi l l s

i n a si ngl e one t o t he non- owner s: f ormati on of a supr eme power: myst i f yi ng “very gener al

agr eement ”.

Rousseau here t akes up ver y cl assi cal t heor i es, but he want s t o show t hat concei ved thusl y t he

cont r act can onl y be under st ood as a mysti f i cat i on. I n t he “Soci al Cont r act ”, he i nvest i gates

t he abst r act condi t i ons under whi ch t he cont r act coul d have t aken pl ace wi t hout myst i f i cati on.

Rousseau’ s pr edecessor s per cei ve the cont r act as an exchange of my f r eedomf or secur i t y.

Rousseau accept s l ocat i ng t he ef f ect of t he cont r act here to t he ext ent t hat t hi s cont r act i s

a myst i f i cati on, and cannot be obtai ned t hr ough consent .

• Logi cal argument : agr eement s ar e accept ed so as t o not f al l i nto dependence on

ot her s.

• Psychol ogi cal ar gument : t here i s no natural penchant t o ser vi t ude.

• Soci ol ogi cal ar gument : r ef ut ati on of t heses of paternal aut hor i t y whi ch assi mi l at e

t he soci al si t uat i on and t he f ami l i al si t uat i on.

• Moral argument : f r eedom i s not hi ng but one wi t h my moral bei ng, as l i f e i s wi t h my

physi cal bei ng. Nei t her l i f e nor f r eedom ar e al i enabl e.

Rousseau does not deny t hat we have l ost our f r eedom. He even t hi nks i t happened by means of

cont r act , but t hat we have been decei ved.

I s t her e a cont r act whi ch i s def i ned as devoi d of any mysti f i cat i on?

I t i s t he pr obl emt hat t he “Soci al Cont r act ” exami nes.

Fi r st an hi st or i cal i nvest i gat i on: t her e ar e two themes i n t he i dea of cont r act: subj ecti on

and associ at i on.




- subj ecti on: i n t he 16t h and 17t h cent ur i es: i t i s admi t t ed t hat t her e ar e two

cont r act i ng part i es of whi ch of whi ch [ si c] one i s t he subj ect , t he other t he

sover ei gn.

Obj ect i on by HOBBES: t he sover ei gnt y i s doubl e. A t hi r d power ( puissance) i s necessary

t o j udge the di sput es.

-

associ at i on: i t i s t he reuni on of al l t he wi l l s i n one; t here i s a mul t i t ude ofcont r actual acts bet ween t hose who are t o be subj ects.

Cr i t i ci sm by Rousseau: HOBBES has wel l under st ood that associ at i on i s f i r st , but he

went wr ong i n r educi ng subj ecti on t o associ ati on. We const i t ute our sel ves as subj ect

t hr ough t he r el ati on t o a soverei gn who does not ent er i nt o t he contr act.

For Rousseau, an associ ati on i s needed f i r st , pr oduct of t he reuni on pr oposed t o t he poor

by t he ri ch: a publ i c i s f or med.

But t he mysti f i cat i on i s such t hat t her e i s a defect at t he or i gi n: t he poor can per cei ve

t hat t he wi l l i s not common. Thus a cont r act of governance i s necessar i l y requi r ed.

Thi s i s t he second myst i f i cat i on. Because however honest magi st r at es may be, because of

t he or i gi nal def ect, i t i s the r i ch who wi l l be magi st r at es.

Our sent i ment of j usti ce, sti l l f eebl e, was j ust suff i ci ent t o al l ow f or t he r eal i zat i on

of t hi s decept i on.

I t i s t hen t hat t he i nt er est i n bei ng wi cked appear s.




Man di scovers hi s i nt erest i n bei ng wi cked, because pr opert y si mul t aneousl y gi ves us

t he sense of j ust i ce, a part i cul ar i nt er est . Proper t y devel ops by an i nt ernal movement ,

i nequal i t y, say al l t he economi st s bef or e Rousseau.

Rousseau has a more compl ex i dea: i t does not i nvol ve an i nternal movement , but a doubl e

game: new needs and expl oi t at i on of t he l abor of ot her s. I t i s t he stage of usur pat i on. A

dual i t y devel ops bet ween man as moral speci es and t he i ndi vi dual wi t h hi s par t i cul ar

i nterest .

The part i cul ar i nt er est i n bei ng wi cked i s pressi ng, t he voi ce of j ust i ce, whi ch i s

f eebl e, goes t o ser ve t hi s i nt er est . Whence t he mi sl eadi ng pr oposi t i on of t he ri ch, whi ch

pr esupposes necessari l y i nvoked j ust i ce i n or der t o be accept ed by t he poor . I s t hi s

j ust i ce t he same whi ch appears i n t he “Soci al Contr act ”? The cont r act i s mi sl eadi ng

because i t i s made between two unequal par t i es, i t i nvokes a j ust i ce whi ch governs

r el at i ons bet ween par t i es whi ch i t posi t s as equal . I n t he “Soci al Cont r act”, j ust i ce i s

f or med by somet hi ng ent i r el y di f f erent t han a r el at i on bet ween di st i nct par t i es. What i s

pr oduced by the soci al Cont r act i s i nal i enabl e.

The probl em of t he Soci al cont r act i s: i s t here a f orm of j ust i ce whi ch i s by nature

i mpossi bl e to aver t , one that does not l end i t sel f t o any al i enat i on, one that cannot be

used by our wi cked i nter est?

I n f act, Rousseau says sever al t i mes t hat t hi s j ust i ce al i enat es. The rel at i on subj ect-

sover ei gn can pass i nt o the ser vi ce of wi ckedness: i t suf f i ces t hat par t i al associ at i ons

ar e est abl i shed i n the St at e, et c…

Ther e i s t hus a possi bl e al i enat i on of j ust i ce, whi ch i s i nal i enabl e i n i t sel f . I t can be

usur ped by t he par t i al associ at i on t hat passes i t sel f of f as common. But i s i t not t he

same thi ng as a j usti ce whi ch i mmedi atel y decl ares i t sel f a rel ati on bet ween two equal

par t i es wher eas i n f act t hey ar e not .

Two i deas devel oped i n t he “Di scourse on I nequal i t y” ar e t aken up agai n i n t he “Soci al

cont r act ”, whi ch are:

- Soci et y cannot be f ounded on a r el at i on of mut ual subj ect i on, al l submi ssi on i n f act

pr esupposes associ ati on.

- I nsof ar as associ at i on pr esent s i t sel f as rel at i on bet ween di st i nct par t i es, t he

cont ract wi l l be a mysti f i cat i on.

Logi cal ar gument at i on whi ch pr ef i gur es t he Soci al cont r act – whi ch defi nes i t sel f as cont r act

of associ ati on and whi ch cannot be establ i shed between t wo part i es consi dered as di st i nct .

Aggressi ve car i catur e of hi s predecessor s by Rousseau. He gr ant s t hemt hat t he cont r act such

as t hey concei ve of i t i s t he base of a r eal soci ety ( subj ect i on bef ore associ at i on etc…) .But , he says, t hat i s why real soci ety i s essent i al l y mysti f yi ng, where fr eedom no l onger

exi sts .

The soci al bei ng of man: def ect i n i t s pr i nci pl e on account of myst i f i cat i on. Hence Rousseau

accuses i t of or i gi nal si n. I t i s t he mor al bei ng of man pr essed i nt o t he ser vi ce of wi cked

i nterest .




• genet i c poi nt of vi ew

f romphysi cal passi vi t y to physi cal act i vi ty,

f romphysi cal acti vi t y to moral speci es.

• Man as mor al speci es, but r upt ur e of t he i ndi vi dual wi t h the speci es.

- Di scour se on I nequal i t y: decept i on of each ot her .

- New Hel oi se: sel f - decept i on.

• Act of moral wi l l whi ch r est or es a subj ect i ve uni t y bet ween t he i ndi vi dual and the

moral speci es: t he Conf essi ons and the second part of The New Hel oi se.

• Det er mi nat i on of a pol i t i cal act whi ch i nst al l s an obj ecti ve uni t y of t he i ndi vi dual

and of t he mor al speci es: t he “Soci al cont r act ”

THE SOCI AL CONTRACT

The l awyer s of t he 16t h cent ury make the Cont r act a rel at i on bet ween t wo par t i es of

whi ch one i s subj ect, t he ot her l eader . The sover ei gn i s t hus spl i t . A t hi r d i nst ance i s

needed t o j udge di sput es. Power and sover ei gnt y are di vi ded. Rousseau: t hi s concept i on

conf ounds soci ety and government . For hi m, al l government pr esupposes a pr i or associ ati on.

Cont r act book I chapt er V. The subj ect i on of subj ect s t o a l eader al r eady pr esupposes t he

const i t ut i on of man as subj ect, t hus an associ at i on. But i f t he subj ecti on i s a cont r act, t he

cont r act i s not pr i mar y. Over t he cour se of “Cont r act”, i t i s sai d t hat t he subj ecti on i s

i mpossi bl e wi t hout t he associ at i on (book I I I chapt er XVI ) .

Soverei gnt y i s i nal i enabl e. The l awyer s say t he cont r ary: ( PUFFENDORF) . For t hems overei gnt y

i s al i enat ed i n the subj ect i on. For Rousseau, t he tr ansf er of soverei gnt y can be made l i ke a

gi f t or l i ke a sal e. The gi f t can be f or ced or t aci t ( book I chapt er I ) or ot her wi se

vol unt ar y.

Li kewi se, t he sal e can be f or ced, t aci t , vol unt ar y.

A f or ced or t aci t gi f t i s not t he sour ce of any ri ght . I f i t i s vol unt ary, i t i s pure madness

( peopl e who wi l l gi ve away thei r f r eedom l i ke t hat wi l l be mad) .

I n t he sal e, exchange of one’ s f r eedomagai nst secur i t y. Cont r ary t o government , says

Rousseau. Because t he gover nment i s concei ved as a del egat i on or an equi val ent of t he

soverei gn. Par t i cul ar act s whi ch pr esuppose a general l aw cannot be def i ned as act s of t he

government . Gover nment can onl y be ass i mi l at ed t o a commi ssi on, t he act s of t he government are

emanat i ons of t he Soverei gn. Radi cal subordi nat i on of t he gover nment t o the Soverei gn. Whence

t hat t he l at t er cannot be al i enat ed fr om an i nst ance whi ch i s subor di nat e to i t .

The al i enat i on of t he sover ei gn can be concei ved of as f ol l ows:

Sover ei gnt y woul d be repr esent ed by men t o whom l egi sl at i ve power ( puissance) woul d have been

t r ansf er red.

But t here t he sover ei gn can no more be al i enated i n a r epr esent ati on ( book I chapt er I I ) . The

soverei gn cannot be represent ed except by hi msel f . ( Book I I I , chapt er XV: Rousseau says t hat

“sover ei gnt y cannot be r epr esent ed f or t he same reason t hat i t cannot be al i enated. I t

consi st s i n t he gener al wi l l and t he wi l l i s not r epr esent ed”) .




I n the same manner t he government cannot appropr i ate soverei gnt y of whi ch i t i s but t he

commi ssi on, as wi t h t he r epr esent ati ves, who are not hi ng but commi ssar i es of t he peopl e.

The governors ar e but commi ss i onai r es or commi ssar i es, because t hey onl y exerci se t he f unct i on

of j udgment ( deter mi ni ng the case t hat enter s under t he l aw) whi ch i s not t he f acul t y of

wi l l i ng.

Li kewi se t he deput i es have but a f unct i on of j udgi ng: t hey concei ve of l aws by whi ch they

cl ar i f y t he general wi l l . Hypothet i cal l aws whi ch t hey cannot r ender obl i gat ory and eff ect i ve.

Onl y t he Soverei gn deci des on t he proposi t i ons made by t he deput i es.

The deput i es ( t he l egi sl at ure) propose l aws t hat onl y t he sover ei gn peopl e r at i f i es. Thus t he

Engl i sh peopl e i s wr ong i n bel i evi ng i t sel f f r ee, i t i s onl y so at t he moment of el ecti on of

deput i es. The el ect i on havi ng been made, i t i s sl ave t o repr esent ati ves.

These ar e t he ar guments whi ch ser ve Rousseau agai nst absol ut e monar chy, whi ch ser ve hi m i n hi s

cr i t i que of r epr esent ati ve gover nment s.

The l egi sl at i ve st at e of t he anci ent Ci t y: t he l egi sl at or proposes, t he peopl e deci de. I t i s

t he val orous gover nment , says Rousseau. The i dea of r epr esentat i ves i s a f eudal i dea to hi m.

Repr esent at i ve assembl i es have been t he means of t he f eudal i st s t o st r uggl e agai nst monarchy.

The l egi sl at ure as concei ved i n Anci ent t i mes presupposes smal l ci t i es and l ei sur e f or

ci t i zens.

However, i n “Consi der ati ons on Pol and”, Rousseau concei ved f or t he l arge state a

r epr esent at i on by deput i es on t he condi t i on of cont r ol l i ng t hem wi t h f r equent el ect i ons and

wi t h a str i ct obser vance of t he r ul e of r e- el i gi bi l i t y, and f i nal l y by publ i c account abi l i t y:

al l t hese means keep the deput i es i n the st ate of commi ssar i es.

Ther e i s t hus a paral l el al i enat i on of t he peopl e when t hey gi ve t hemsel ves a mast er , or

r epr esent at i ves.

The sover ei gn i s i r r educi bl e t o an i ndi vi dual or t o a group of i ndi vi dual s

1st argument : pol emi c ( l ett er t o Ni r abeau) .

2nd ar gument : t he act whi ch const i t utes t he soverei gn as such necessar i l y consti t utes

hi m as general wi l l . I t i s not i mpossi bl e t hat t hi s wi l l concor ds wi t h a part i cul ar wi l l . But

t hat i s by nat ur e f or t ui t ous ( Cont r act Book I , chapt er I ) .

3r d argument : t he soverei gn woul d be al i enabl e i f he were an i ndi vi dual . The sover ei gn

i s a mor al person whi ch onl y has abst r act and col l ect i ve exi st ence. ( cf . t he Manuscr i pt of

Geneva) .

The sover ei gn i s i ndi vi si bl e i n hi s obj ect .

I n HOBBES, t he sover ei gn i s i ndi vi si bl e i n hi s pr i nci pl e. For hi m, t he cont r act i s an act by

whi ch al l make t hemsel ves subj ect of a Thi r d Part y whi ch does not ent er i nto t he cont r act and

whi ch i s t he sover ei gn.

As t he soverei gn has not ent er ed i nt o the cont r act , i t i s r ul ed out t hat t he subj ect s can

di sobey hi m. There i s t hus i nal i enabi l i t y of t he sover ei gn who




can no l onger r epr esent i t sel f .

HOBBES r educes t he sover ei gn t o a pers on or t o a gr oup of per sons.

That he i s t o be i ndi vi si bl e does not prevent t hat i t i mpl i es a number of di st i nct power s. I n

order f or t he soverei gn t o have absol ute power, he must possess al l t he powers.

So, i ndi vi s i bl e i n hi s pri nci pl e, t he soverei gn i s di vi s i bl e i n hi s obj ect.

Rousseau cri t i ques t hi s t hesi s i n Book I I of t he Cont r act.

For hi m, t he sover ei gn i s absol ut el y i ndi vi si bl e “Si mpl e and one”.

Book I I I .

Ther e i s onl y one obj ect of t he sover ei gn: i t i s t he l aw, deci si ons on peace or on war et c…

( what HOBBES cal l s t he powers of sover ei gnt y) are nothi ng but acts of government whi ch

pr esuppose a pr i or l egi sl at i on.

Fr omwhi ch i t can be concl uded:

- The cont r act i s t hus not an act of subj ect i on

- I t i s not an act by whi ch al l make t hemsel ves subj ect of a Thi r d Par t y.

- I t i s an act by whi ch al l const i t ut e t hemsel ves as sover ei gn, wi t hout possi bl e

al i enati on i n a gover nment , wi t hout possi bl e repr esent at i on i n deput i es.- To be concei ved as such, t he cont r act can no l onger be consi dered a r el at i on between

par t i es (cont r ary t o al l pr edecessors except per haps Spi noza).

What i s t he posi t i ve character of t he Cont r act .

I f t he Cont r act i s posed as a r el at i on, t hi s si gni f i es rel at i on bet ween publ i c-

par t i cul ar i ndi vi dual , or subj ect- sover ei gn. But t he peopl e, t he publ i c, do not pr e- exi st t he

cont r act . Thi s expr essi on wi t h Rousseau i s onl y pr ovi si onary and i s not t he most pr of ound one.

Cf . Book I I chapt er I V, 2nd par agr aph, not e where Rousseau i nsi st s on t he di f f i cul t y of

pr eci sel y def i ni ng the t er ms.

( - t he par t i cul ar , t he i ndi vi dual or t he man ( pr i vat e)

3 const ant ( - t he subj ect

t er ms ( - t he ci t i zen

3 t er ms whi ch ar e r eci pr ocal . Book I , chapt er VI I , 1st paragr aph.

The mi ddl e t er m i s t he i ndi vi dual consi dered under t wo r el at i ons: subj ect and as member of t he

sover ei gn.

2nd paragr aph

Thi s t i me i t i s t he subj ect whi ch i s t he mi ddl e t erm and envi saged under t wo r el at i ons.

So i t wi l l be sai d t hat t he cont r act const i t ut es t he par t i cul ar i ndi vi dual as subj ect underone rel ati on and as ci t i zen under anot her .

Or el se, t he subj ect i s t aken as par t i cul ar i ndi vi dual i n r el at i on t o t he sover ei gn, and as

member of t he sover ei gn i n r el at i on t o the par t i cul ar i ndi vi dual , i n t he i ndi vi dual .

The cont r act t hus makes 3 r eci procal t erms i nt ervene: t he mi ddl e t er m must be t aken under t wo

rel at i ons .




I n t he f i r st hypot hesi s, t he i ndi vi dual i s t he mi ddl e t er m.

I t consti t ut es i t sel f as subj ect i n rel at i on t o t he sover ei gn.

I t const i t ut es i t sel f as member of t he sover ei gn i n r el at i on t o par t i cul ar i ndi vi dual s.

Fi nal l y, onl y the subj ect has a doubl e rel at i on: f i r st t o the sover ei gn and f ur t her mor e, he i s

member of t he sover ei gn. So he i s t he mi ddl e t erm.

The basi c act of t he cont r act i s t he act by whi ch t he i ndi vi dual makes i t sel f subj ect and at

t he same t i me member of t he soverei gn ( ot her wi se he woul d be a sl ave) .

Ther e ar e 3 f ormul as t o t he Soci al cont r act , more and mor e prof ound.

( - r el ati on bet ween two terms

The Contr act i s ( - di scovery of t hree t er ms

( - i t i s t he subj ect i t sel f whi ch i s t aken under t wo rel at i ons

An obl i gat i on i s bor n wi t h t he Cont r act. Who i s obl i ged? ( chapt er VI I , book I ) . I t i s not t he

i ndi vi dual , because l egal l y the i ndi vi dual cannot obl i ge i t sel f .

I s i t t he soverei gn? No, because t he soverei gn i s not submi t t ed t o anyt hi ng except hi s

condi t i on of exi st ence: t he l aws whi ch determi ne the condi t i ons of hi s Bei ng. I n hi msel f , he

cannot be obl i ged t o anyt hi ng. “To vi ol ate t he act by whi ch t he sover ei gn exi st s woul d be t o

anni hi l ate i t sel f ” chapt er VI I .

Onl y the subj ect i s subj ect ed t o the obl i gati on. Onl y i t can be gr asped under t he two

rel at i ons, whi ch i s t he condi t i on of t he obl i gat i on.

What i s t he sour ce of t he obl i gati on? I t i s t he “f r ee agr eement of he who obl i ges hi msel f ”.

Let t er 6 i n From t he Mount ai n.

The t erm whi ch i s capabl e of obl i gi ng can onl y be t he subj ect .

Al l sour ces of obl i gat i ons are up f or di scussi ons, except t hat one.

Nature of t hi s act of engagement : t her e are two char act er i st i cs: t ot al i t y and i nst ant anei t y.Cf . Book I Chapt er VI . Thi s act i s a tot al al i enat i on.

- Total , whi ch i s t o say:

• compl ete: i t cover s ever ythi ng.

• uni ver sal : each i ndi vi dual i s compl et el y al i enat ed.

Al i enat i on whi ch can be compl ete, because i t i s not f or t he benef i t of an ot her . I f i t woul d

be, i t coul d not be t ot al , si nce f r eedom i s i nal i enabl e.

Al i enati on consi st s i n const i t ut i ng a whol e, not i n maki ng onesel f dependent on other s. Whence

t hat each i ndi vi dual i s subj ect ed t o t he same condi t i on.

“Each gi ves hi msel f compl et el y, t he condi t i on i s equal f or al l ”

Book I chapt er VI .

Ther e wi l l not be di f f er ences between i ndi vi dual s whi ch al i enat e mor e or l ess, unl ess not

everyone al i enates hi msel f t otal l y, unl ess someone conserves somethi ng.

On t he l evel of t ot al al i enat i on, equal i t y i s al r eady i ncl uded.




- i nst ant anei t y: Book I Chapt er VI . “The associ at i on i nst ant l y pr oduces a moral and

pol i t i cal body”.

Fromt he very moment t hat I al i enate mysel f , I at t he same ti me const i t ute t he

soverei gn and I r ecuperat e everyt hi ng. I t cannot be otherwi se. The soverei gn r estores

ever yt hi ng t o me and even more, under an ot her f orm. “Chapt er 9, book 1. For exampl e,

t he soverei gn assur es the l egi t i mate possessi on of pr opert y whi ch t he i ndi vi dual has

al i enated f r om hi msel f . He keeps onl y what i s necessary f or communi t y. I n thi s, t here

i s no mor al obl i gat i on of t he sover ei gn. I t i s a condi t i on of hi s exi st ence. I f he

does not ef f ectuat e t hi s resti t ut i on, he i s dest r oyed.

“But i t must be admi t t ed t hat onl y t he sover ei gn i s j udge of such i mpor t ance”. Onl y

t he sover ei gn can say t hat whi ch i s of common i nt erest . That whi ch i s very vari abl e

accor di ng the si t uat i on, t he ci r cumst ances, t he morphol ogy of a soci ety.

I n exchange f or t hi s par t i al r est i t ut i on t o owner s, t her e wi l l be a t ax l evy.

The owner i s but a r eposi t or y of t he publ i c good. He onl y exi st s as owner by t he

soverei gn’ s act of r esti t ut i on.

The i mmedi at e r est i t ut i on concer ns pr i vat e proper t y and pr i vat e opi ni on, t hat i s t o

say pr i vat e r el i gi on, whi ch does not i nt er est t he subj ect. ( f i nal chapt er of t heCont ract ) .

Why does t he soverei gn const i t ute a general wi l l ?

The cont r act necessar i l y f or ms a general wi l l .

Common i nter est and general wi l l must not be conf used.

Common i nt erest i s t hat of t he subj ect i n rel at i on to t he sover ei gn.

That whi ch i mmedi at el y r et urns wi t h t he act by whi ch I const i t ut e mysel f as subj ect :

t he cont r act . Ever yone has a si mi l ar i nt er est , si nce t hey ar e subj ect ed to an equal

condi t i on. Removi ng t he equal i t y dest r oys al l common i nter est .

I can onl y const i t ut e mysel f as subj ect i n r el ati on t o a soverei gn of whi ch t hesubj ect i s member, wi t h respect t o i ndi vi dual s. Fromt hi s poi nt of vi ew, ever yone i s a

l egi sl at or . Thi s ti me, i t i s no l onger equal i t y whi ch i s i nf er r ed, but f r eedom, as

t hat whi ch t he sover ei gn want s wi t h r egar d t o i ndi vi dual s. The gener al wi l l i s t he

wi l l of everyone as member of t he soverei gn, as ci t i zen.

“The common i nterest i s what makes t he wi l l gener al ”. What does Rousseau want t o say?

The common i nt erest i s not const i t ut i ve of t he general wi l l , but i s i t s condi t i on of

possi bi l i t y: t he f or mat i on of t he sover ei gn has f or i t s condi t i on t he act of t he

i ndi vi dual maki ng i t sel f subj ect.

Wi t hout t hi s act , whi ch def i ned the common i nter est , no sover ei gn can be had, and

t her ef or e no gener al wi l l .

I n what sense can we speak of a “ut i l i t ari ani sm” of Rousseau?

The not i on of ut i l i t y appears i n t wo senses

- A f acul t y onl y devel ops i f i t i s usef ul . Need i s i ncapabl e of creat i ng

thi s f acul ty. Ut i l i ty onl y pl ays the part of real i zer of the f acul ty.

- The common i nt er est of t he cont r act i s t he condi t i on of possi bi l i t y,

not t he pri nci pl e, of t he general wi l l .




What does t he gener al wi l l want ?

I t f i nds i t s condi t i on i n t he equal i t y of t he condi t i on of al l subj ects. I t cannot be

determi ned by a pr efer ence. I n t hi s sense, not bei ng determi ned by anythi ng but i t sel f , i t i s

t he wi l l of f r eedom ( Kant ) . I t can onl y want t he l aw.

The l aw l eaves t he r el at i on t o i ndi vi dual s undet er mi ned. I t i s onl y speci f i ed t hrough t he wor k

of the l egi s l ator. I n i t sel f , i t i s onl y the f orm of the wi l l of t he subj ect as ci t i zen.

Let t er 6 i n From t he Mount ai n.

Cf al so Let t er t o Le Merci er de l a Ri vi ère f r om1767: a f orm of governance must be f ound whi ch

puts t he l aw above man.

Book I I I , Chapt er I of t he Cont r act: a di st i nct i on must be made between t wo t hi ngs:

- The quest i on of knowi ng whether t he wi l l can want such act i on ( moral possi bi l i t y of

Kant) . I t i s a l egi s l at i ve power;

- Concer ni ng that : can we, have we the possi bi l i t y t o accompl i sh i t ( physi cal

possi bi l i t y of Kant ) . I t i s an execut i ve power.

Bei ng determi ned by t he l aw, t he gener al wi l l does not consi der act i on i n i t s physi cal

possi bi l i t y, but consi der s i t as abstr act.

An obl i gat i on i s r el ated t o t he l aw. The word ‘ l aw’ can onl y be empl oyed r i gorousl y i n a

pr escri pt i ve sense.

I f t he sour ce of t he obl i gati on i s t he act by whi ch I make mysel f subj ect, t hen t he l aw must

be ci vi l , i t has i t s f oundat i on i n t he cont r act.

I s such a r esponse suf f i ci ent ?

Such a r esponse wi l l have i mpl i ed t hat Rousseau consi derabl y cr i t i ques t he i dea i n the mode of

nat ur al l aw.What happens i n thi s sense: t he Di scour se on I nequal i t y. I s i nequal i t y aut hor i zed by nat ur al

l aw? Rousseau does not r espond to t hi s quest i on by sayi ng that t he concept of nat ural l aw i s a

concept f ul l of nonsense.

Never t hel ess t her e ar e t ext s wher e Rousseau ment i ons t he nat ural l aw and i n whi ch he says t hat

i t i s superi or t o t he contr act i t sel f .

- Let t er of Oct ober 1758: he admi t s t hree superi or and i ndependent aut hor i t i es over t he

sover ei gn: t hat of God, t hat of t he nat ur al l aw, t hat of honor . I f t her e i s a

conf l i ct, i t i s up t o t he sover ei gn t o yi el d. Hi er archy: nat ural l aw ( l ove) , honor,

God, as i s f ound i n The New Hel oi se. ( Let t er on honor i s i n par t I : l et t er of Sai nt -

Pr eux).

- Let t er 6 i n Fr om t he Mount ai n: i t must be pr oven t hat t he cont r act i s not cont r ary t o

nat ur al l aws.

- Emi l e, book 2: “t he et ernal l aws of natur e and t he exi st i ng order . They t ake the pl ace

of posi t i ve l aws t o the wi se man”. The wi se man i s t he one who has ext r acted hi msel f

f romsoci et y.

How i s t he Cont r act a pr i mar y pr i nci pl e f r om whi ch deri ve ci vi l l aw and the

obl i gat i on, whi l e i t i s al so r el at ed t o a hi gher i nst ance, t he nat ur al l aw?




Cf ; begi nni ng of t he Di scour se on I nequal i t y.

The cr i t i que of t he natural l aw has t wo senses wi t h Rousseau:

- Fi rst of al l , i t bears upon t he Anci ents ( Pl at o, Ari stot l e, St oi cs): f or themt he

nat ur al l aw i s t he r ecta rati o, i t i s t he conf or mi t y of t hi ngs t o t hei r pr oper ends.

Rousseau: t hey use the word ‘ l aw’ wr ongl y. By l aw t hey under st ood a l aw t hat nat ure i mposes on

i t sel f and not a l aw t hat i t pr escr i bes. Now, t he concept of l aw i s not a condi t i on of

exi st ence of nat ur e, i t i s essent i al l y a pr escri pt i on ( pr ef ace of Di scour se on I nequal i t y).

The Moder ns have under st ood t hi s prescr i pt i ve charact er . For t hemt he l aw i s a prescr i pt i ve

r ul e f or an i nt el l i gent and f r ee bei ng.

The natural l aw appl i es t o t hi s bei ng capabl e of r ecei vi ng prescr i pt i ons.

Wi t h HOBBES, t he st ate of nat ure i s no l onger t he order of perf ect i ons, but a systemof

f orces, of passi ons, of dr i ves. For t hi s passi onate bei ng, t he l aw t hen becomes t he obl i gati on

whi ch opposes i t .

The st at e of nature i s a sys t em of f or ces, wi t h cor r espondi ng natural r i ghts. To t hi s

st r ucture, a second i s j oi ned: t hat of t he nat ur al l aw. The dr i vi ng f or ce of t hi s l aw i s t he

f ear of vi ol ent death, whi ch i s even t he pr i nci pl e of r eason. The l aw pr escr i bes a r ul e

wi t hout whi ch I coul d not preser ve my l i f e. The nat ural l aw, however, can onl y pr escri be

hypot het i cal l y: i t onl y gi ves t he means t o pr eser ve my l i f e, on t he condi t i on t hat t he other s

wi l l al so want t he l aw. Whence t he probl em: how t o render t he l aw obl i gat ory? That happens

because al l i ndi vi dual s make cont r acts among themsel ves and above al l del egate thei r powers t o

a sover ei gn who does not part i ci pat e i n the Cont r act . Because of t hi s t he natur al l aw becomes

ci vi l . The mi st ake of t he Moderns, accor di ng t o Rousseau: t hey put t he natur al l aw i n t he

st ate of natur e, t hey pr esuppose a bei ng al r eady endowed wi t h reason i n thi s st ate. ( because

no l aw wi t hout r eason) .

Rousseau accepts t he prescr i pt i ve char acter of t he l aw. But t he Moderns have not seen i n what

i t consi sted, s i nce i t i s onl y hypotheti cal .For Rousseau, t he nat ur al l aw i s not i n t he stat e of nature, because i t i s a genet i c

devel opment of vi r t ual i t i es start i ng f r om t he st at e of nat ur e.

Thi s natural l aw pr esupposes soci et y i n t he sense t hat t he vi r t ual i t i es onl y r eal i ze

t hemsel ves under obj ecti ve ci r cumst ances whi ch ar e i n soci ety. For exampl e, t he sent i ment of

j ust i ce onl y r eal i zes i t sel f i f i t i s usef ul , and i t onl y i s so i f t here i s a soci et y.

However , soci et y i s not const i t ut i ve of t he devel opment of t he nat ur al l aw.

The Contr act must be r el at ed t o t he natural l aw. Because t he cont r act , t he absol ut e f oundat i on

of ci vi l l aw, must be l ed back to t he nat ur al l aw, because i t i s at t he same ti me tot al

al i enati on, i nstant aneous rest i tut i on. I f i t cont radi cts t he l aw, i t destr oys i tsel f .




I dea of t he ci vi l l aw i n Rousseau

The l aw i s t he ver y act of t he sover ei gn, t he di r ect expressi on of t he gener al wi l l .

Ther e i s a di f f er ence i n ki nd between decree and l aw.

The l aw goes f r om al l t o al l , i t consi ders t he subj ect s as body and si t uat i ons as

abstr acti ons. I t i s an act of sover ei gnt y.

A decr ee appoi nt s per sons, consi der s subj ect s as par t i cul ar i ndi vi dual s, act i ons as concr ete.

I t i s an act of gover nance.

The l aw det er mi nes t he f orm of government , t he condi t i ons t o f ul f i l l i n or der t o accede t o

government f or each subj ect i n general .

Sover ei gn r el at i on – general wi l l . Cf . Cont r act chapt er I V, book I I I .

The Soverei gn i s a “common me”, a “l i f e provi ded wi t h sensi bi l i t y”.

The gener al wi l l : i t i s t he movement cor r espondi ng t o t hi s l i f e.

As t he f or mat i on of t he Sover ei gn and t he general wi l l , t he soci al Cont r act i s t he for m under

whi ch t he Sover ei gn conserves i t sel f .

The soci al Contr act i s al r eady gener al wi l l . I t def i nes a f or mal wi l l . The cont r act i n i t sel f ,

gener al i zed, f or mal i zes t he wi l l .

The Soverei gn i s t hus al r eady a f or mal wi l l ( whereas t he part i cul ar wi l l al ways sear ches

pr ef er ences and t he gener al wi l l , t he t r ue uni ver sal : pr e- Kant i an di st i ncti on) .

Thi s general i zat i on i s not t he addi t i on of part i cul ar wi l l s.

What does t he general wi l l want ? That whi ch i t want s must be deter mi ned general l y, t hat i s t o

say f ormal l y: equal i t y and f r eedom.

The sover ei gn i s t he general wi l l i nsof ar as i t wants f r eedom and equal i t y.

That t he l aw wi l l be f or mal si gni f i es t hat i t abst r act s f r om persons, f r om i t s r el at i on wi t h

persons of whi ch t he decr ee wi l l t ake car e.

( i n t hi s sense, government i s a f acul t y of j udgment : deter mi nati on of cases that ent er undert he l aw) .

However t he l aw, i f i t i s f or mal i n the sense that i t det er mi nes gener al l y, i s not f or mal ,

because t here i s no l aw t hat wi l l not be a det ermi nati on of equal i t y and f r eedom.

Whi ch are t he best , t he good l aws, f or exampl e? They cannot abst r act f r omt he rel ati on wi t h

t hi ngs and obj ect s.

For Rousseau, t hat whi ch saves us f r om t he rel at i on wi t h per sons i s al ways t he rel at i on wi t h

t hi ngs.

The l aw i s t hus not qui t e deter mi ned unl ess we t ake i nt o account t he obj ect i ve si t uat i on of a

gi ven soci ety (r esour ces, popul at i on, et c…) .

The l aw i s f or mal by abst r act i on f r om t he r el at i on wi t h persons, i t i s not f or mal because i t

does not abst r act f r om t he r el at i on wi t h t hi ngs.

Ther ef or e, t o deter mi ne a l aw, t he general wi l l does not suf f i ce.

The f ormal deter mi nat i on of t he wi l l must be j oi ned t o t he cont ent of obj ect i ve ci r cumst ances

of a gi ven soci et y.

Thus t he gener al wi l l wants t he good, but i t does not know i t ( i t i s t he cont r ar y f or pr i vat e

man) . I t i s bl i nd because i t i s f or mal .




Thus t he gener al wi l l must appeal t o a prodi gi ous under st andi ng ( i t i s a t r ansposi t i on of a

f acul t y psychol ogy to the soci al pl ane) : t hat of t he l egi sl at or who i l l umi nat es t he wi l l f r om

t he out si de. Wi t hout t he l egi sl at or , t he gener al wi l l f or mal l y know what i t want s. But i t

needs hi m t o be deter mi ned mater i al l y. A good l aw must not consi der part i cul ar persons –

f ormal aspect – and adapt i t sel f t o concr et e si t uat i ons – materi al aspect –

The l aw i s t hus t he composi t i on of a f orm whi ch r ef er s t o t he wi l l ;

of a mat t er whi ch r ef er s t o the l egi sl at or .

Thi s i s why i t cannot be a quest i on of an a pr i or i deduct i on of t he l aw f r om i t s f orm.

- : - : - : - : - : - : - : - : - : -



37

EDITED TRANSLATION

[Text in brackets contains added notes by the translator, AK]

Rousseau

1 – Three conceptions of the state of nature

There are three ways to think the state of nature. The first is the Ancient conception (status

naturae), which extends well into the Middle Ages (see Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, Cicero,

Thomas Aquinas). The state of nature is then defined in an order of perfections. It is related to

natural right, in this case meaning conformity with Nature. Its sociability and society are

naturally part of and defined in the order of perfections. A state of nature is never evoked as a

pre-civil or pre-political state (see Aristotle, as well as Cicero’s De Finibus).

For the Ancients, the social problem is not the establishment of a society through a

contract or anything else of that order. According to them, people ideally search for the best

government, which is that of the wise. The problem is that the wise no longer have the desire

to govern men, and that men do not want to wise to rule them. So what is needed is a

government that can take the place of the wise, which raises the problem of the best regime

(see Plato’s Laws, in which the nomos is necessary as a real substitute for wisdom). This

conception extends into modern political philosophy, not with philosophers, but with the

theologians and the lawyers.

The second conception arrived with Hobbes. In Hobbes, the state of nature is defined

as a mechanism of forces. Right, understood as a system of power, replaces the order of

perfections as defining what is natural. Right thereby becomes absolute. Hobbes reacts against

the earlier, largely Aristotelian tradition by holding that man is not a sociable animal. And



38

since in his conception of the state of nature, everyone is allowed to judge for himself, his

philosophy abolishes the privilege of the wise.

Society is therefore justifiable from an origin which both affirms itself in nature and

marks the extreme limit of that which is natural. Conflicts between individuals automatically

lead to internal conflict in individuals, namely between a sense of ambition and a fear of a

violent death. Hence society is established as the only way to overcome these contradictions,

which happens through a specific act: the contract. How will Rousseau accept and transform

these terms? He agrees with Hobbes that society is not natural. However, he opposes the idea

that contradictions force man to exit the state of nature.

Now, what is the idea of a contract? In its legal definition it is a relation between two

parties, one that bestows rights and duties on each party, relative to each other, for a

determined time. The contract is voluntary and does not extend to third parties. However, the

notion of the social contract changes this definition. In this case, the contract will last an

indeterminate time and will apply to third parties. Nevertheless, what the authors who use the

term ‘social contract’ stress most is its voluntary aspect. Their idea of political philosophy is

always a philosophy of the will.

Who are the parties of the contract? From the perspective of the lawyers it is subjects

and sovereigns. Yet if this is so, who will judge whether the contract is properly upheld? The

source of power will be double, so a third party is needed to judge. Yet this third party will be

the sovereign (so Hobbes objects that the contract cannot be between subject and sovereign,

an objection found also in Rousseau).

According to Hobbes, the contractual relation is only established between those who

will become subjects. We need to imagine a series of contracts of everyone with everyone, by

which everyone establishes himself as subject of a third party which does not enter into the

contract. A modern equivalent of such contracts with stipulations for others is life insurance.



39

Rousseau will take up Hobbes’ critique against the idea of subjects and sovereigns as

contracting parties, but he rejects Hobbes’ solution.

What is the obligation that results from the contract? This is the problem of a finality

to the contract, a finality which must be recognized in the product of the contract. A

commonplace in political philosophy of the 18th century is the discovery of a man-citizen

duality which did not exist in the Ancient world. The latter focused on man’s capacity for

‘virtue’, but the modern fact is the duality: man has become a private individual and a citizen.

Moreover, a private individual is incapable of being a citizen, and ‘virtue’ as a determination

of the citizen is impossible. Virtue exists only as private virtue (see Montesqieu’s Carnets:

‘we have gained in humanity, but we have lost in virtue). The reasons for this shift are both

ideological (the rise of Christianity) and economical (the emergence of property income). It is

as Rousseau writes in the Discourse on the Arts and Sciences: ‘ancient politics spoke only of

honor and virtue; ours speaks only of commerce and money’. Hence we get a difference in

nature between the most virtuous citizens of Geneva and the lowest among the Romans.

Hegel, too, takes part in this pessimism of political philosophy, in this idea that we are

not capable of democracy, which is nevertheless the best regime. A choice must be made

between two types of education: the formation of the citizen and the formation of private man

(see the beginning of Emile). The citizen is posed in the city as a free citizen who requests

freedom from society. Insofar as man is a private individual, he requests security from the

city, which comes down to the guarantee of his properties. How does the contract respond

here?

I exchange my natural freedom, entirely or in part, and I receive security from the

Sovereign. In Hobbes, the only freedom of the contract is a certain security. However, certain

rights always remain inalienable, most of all the right to resist whoever tries to kill me. In

Spinoza, freedom is even retained in the civil state: I do not content myself with simple



40

necessity. In its modern guise this kind of freedom will be the freedom of thought. In the case

of Rousseau, freedom is connected to inalienable rights. Hegel will reproach Rousseau for

having forgotten that we are no longer citizens. This is perhaps true if we only look at the

Social Contract , but it is false when considering Rousseau’s full body of work.

A third conception of the state of nature surfaces in the middle of the 18th century, a

utilitarian and positivist one. It runs counter to Thomist theology and ancient metaphysics,

making the very notion of contract metaphysical (see Hume and Bentham). In case of Hume,

we find two arguments. First, a complete negation of a state of nature, which Hume says is

not a state of right, but one of needs, a state that can only be defined negatively. Second,

Hume holds that society does not have as its origin a contract, because a contract is an act of

limitation of natural rights, while the constitutive act of society is essentially positive. For

Hume, this revolves around agreement, such as we see in the harmony of rowers. In

Bentham’s case, the purpose of this agreement is security.

All proponents of the contract (Spinoza, Rousseau, Kant, and others) call on freedom.

2 – The New Heloise: virtue, objectivity, hierarchical stages

Even though he was concerned with political institutions, Rousseau had a project to write a

book of which the theme obsessed him, and for which he had the title Sensitive Morality, or

The Wise Man’s Materialism. Though this book was never finished, its ideas are taken up in

The New Heloise1. For Rousseau, Julie and Saint-Preux are made for one another, because

they both love virtue. However, there is a conflict, because the objective situation precludes

their would-be virtuous love. It is Julie who lives the conflict: she loses virtue, but the love of

virtue still remains within her. So she writes to Saint-Preux: ‘I keep my love for you; the love

1 According to Burgelin, the heroes of The New Heloise also illustrate the myth of Plato’s Phaedrus, with Saint-

Preux as the black horse, Julie as the heart, and Wolmar as the noûs. [See Burgelin, P. (1952). La philosophie de

l’existence de Jean-Jacques Rousseau. PUF, AK]



41

of virtue is for Wolmar and I obey my parents’. Yet, a revelation takes place on the day of the

marriage: ‘Our various situations change and they determine, despite ourselves, the affections

of our hearts’2.

Now, in certain objective situations we have no choice but to be wicked. So how to

reconcile virtue and the interest of society? As Rousseau writes, ‘we shall be vicious and

wicked as long as we shall have an interest in being so’. Wanting to change oneself strikes

Rousseau as ridiculous. Instead, he states our soul is defined in its relations with objects. The

will can change the situation by intervening as an objective element of the situation itself, as

when Julie decides that if Wolmar dies, she will not marry Saint-Preux. This is a private

transposition of a famous idea in political philosophy: to establish situations such that people

can no longer be wicked. We find this also in Hume: the problem of political philosophy

being to find objective situations which reconcile justice and interest. So we see the strong

will intervening in private life as an objective element of the situation. Wolmar’s variant of

this idea will be the subjection of the physical being to things (as a therapy for Julie and Saint-

Preux).

In part IV of The New Heloise, Saint-Preux returns to find Julie married and with two

children. It is Wolmar who has asked Saint-Preux to come, the former having the idea to

observe people and to experiment on them. Wolmar wants to heal Julie, who has acquired

duty, yet has not moved past her earlier sin. So in letter 12, we find the therapeutic visit to the

Gove, the place where Saint-Preux has embraced Julie and to which she had never been able

to return: ‘Julie, fear this refuge no longer, it has been profaned’. By that Rousseau means: the

Grove has been dissocialized. Also see letter 18, where Wolmar leaves Julie and Saint-Preux

at the place where the latter had once been exiled during their love.

2 Note to letter 20, part 3.



42

What is Wolmar’s plan? He knows Julie and Saint-Preux love each other in the past.

Julie is no longer the same woman, because she has become virtuous. However, Saint-Preux

does not realize this. As we read: ‘take away the memory, and he will no longer have the

love’. The error which misleads him, i.e. the trouble, is a confusion of times. Saint-Preux is

fixated , in the psychoanalytic sense. So Wolmar needs to make Saint-Preux conscious of the

fixation, conscious of the fact that the present Julie is no longer the Julie he loves. It is therapy

by way of becoming conscious. However, Wolmar also thinks this is dangerous, since

becoming conscious does not (necessarily) heal. Saint-Preux would still be able to love the

present Julie.

So it is better to make Saint-Preux lose all memory of the times which he must forget,

which will be done ‘by deftly substituting other ideas for those which are dear to him’. We get

an operation of substation: ‘I cover the past of the present’. It involves the continuous

substitution of a friendship for the woman for the love for Julie as a young girl. It is the

transfer of psychoanalysts. The transfer involves chancing the situation in order to become

virtuous. The wise man is he who puts determinism in the service of virtue. A situation can be

changed through the will; this is Julie’s method. Yet Wolmar prefers to operate within the

situation itself and to execute a transfer (which is the materialism of the wise man).

Rousseau has a conception of the hierarchy of stages of the ‘beautiful soul’. There are

four stages, which can be different:

1.

The original goodness of the soul

2.

The natural goodness or love of virtue

3.

Virtue itself

4. Wisdom



43

2.1 – First stage: the original goodness of the soul

The original goodness of the soul is the goodness of the soul in the state of nature. The

affirmation of this goodness is never separated from a deterministic affirmation of the

situations which determine our affections. The soul is first of all a faculty of feeling, not one

of reason. That which first appears is a natural ‘reliance on things’. This affirmation entails

that of original goodness, because all affections are good in the state of nature, that is to say:

appropriate to the object. And put differently, this is the naturalist transcription of the

conception of the state of nature: reality thought as perfection. In such goodness, everyone is a

whole onto himself. Everyone is at one with the sentiment of existence. However, there is a

natural diversity of souls due to the difference of fundamental faculties:

-

Julie: energetic soul, lazy with regards to a change of state, and interior sensibility.

-

Saint-Preux: interior sensibility, weak soul.

-

Wolmar: little sensibility, cold soul, and a taste for reason.

- Claire: impulsive soul, ‘the crazy one’.

Nevertheless, every type of soul has an original goodness. Wickedness cannot exist at this

level, because the intuitions do not permit it. In function of its type, each soul has its place in

the order of nature.

2.2 – Second stage: natural goodness or love of virtue

We now arrive at the problem of the genesis of wickedness. With society comes a radical

change of situation which renders vice possible. With society, new relations are formed which

prevent us from being good and which develop an interest in being wicked within us. These

new relations are relations of the master-slave type.



44

Now, in the state of nature, everyone has a relation with things, for himself. Society

establishes a relation of reliance of people on other people, so that everyone is taken as a part

and no longer as a whole. This relation emerges during infancy. For example, a badly raised

child doing what he wants to others: ‘in creating a right to be obeyed, children leave the state

of nature almost from birth’3.

Hence the goal of the Emile: to recover an education that will entail a reliance on

things and not on wills. Children must be made to feel their impotence with regard to things.

With society, everyone is always a slave and master of someone. This artificial relation

engenders vice, because it gives us an interest in being wicked. Nevertheless, our original

goodness subsists. Natural goodness is original goodness insofar as it subsists under these

new relations. Concerning this point, there are first of all degrees. For certain souls, original

goodness is effaced by the multitude of social relations (and in this sense, loving solitude is a

criterion of goodness). Second, there are intermediaries. The good soul will be selective with

its social relations, because it distrusts them. It can, however, be caught short by the situation

and react against its own goodness, driven by determinism (this is the case for me, Rousseau

says).

To love virtue is to want to retain the goodness of virtue despite the situation. This

natural goodness is not virtue itself, but only the love of virtue. This is the problem of The

New Heloise. Julie is very good, and so is her father. Yet because of their objective social

situations, she cannot love Saint-Preux without being at fault, and neither can Saint-Preux

love her. What remains for them is the love of virtue. The moral problem here is how to leave

this state of loving virtue yet, driven by the situation, doing the contrary?

3 The New Heloise, 3, part 5.



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2.3 – Third stage: virtue itself

The point is to make the love of virtue outweigh the interest in being wicked. Virtue is a

means to realize the love of virtue4

. However, Rousseau doubts the efficacy of virtue as

struggle. He does not doubt the existence of the struggle between the love of virtue and the

interest in being wicked, but its outcome. Virtue is ‘always a state of war’. The struggle

between the love of virtue and the interest in being wicked can take the guise of a platonic

flight (Julie) or of a stoic one (Edouard). It is a delicate struggle, because the enemy one has

to vanquish can be reason itself.

After her marriage, Julie will have another method. It will no longer be the direct

struggle, but a transformation of the situation through the will. In other words, one must

remove wickedness indirectly. Yet even in this case Rousseau remains skeptical. The will

intervenes in the situation, but what will guarantee that any effected change will be definitive?

So in a sense, Julie still fails. It is the error of both stoicism and Christianity: they over-

emphasize duties and virtue. See Rousseau when he writes that ‘wisdom is to dismiss the

difficulty of our duties, […] happy is he who is not confronted with the necessity of being

virtuous, and contents himself with being a good man’5.

2.4 – Fourth stage: wisdom

Virtue is a struggle in a context established by a situation. Wisdom establishes situations in

which virtue is not needed. Wisdom leads only to the restoration of the unity of virtue and

interest within us, something of which Rousseau dreamt. Wisdom is not separable from

enjoyment ( jouissance), and it presents itself first of all under the aspect of Wolmar’s method.

He no longer relies on the will to change the situation, but on a selection carried out in the

4 The letter to Sophie: ‘goodness is lost by the exertion of a multitude of artificial relations. Until then I had been

good … I become virtuous’.5 Letter to the Abbey of Carondelet, January 1764.



46

situation itself: a selection of times (cover the past by the present) and of places (render that

which was sacred familiar): ‘true happiness consists in saying that I am wholly where I am’.

In the Reveries, Rousseau insists on the sentiment of existence. Our misfortune is that

we anticipate the future in recalling the past, that we are not living the present ‘which always

endures without marking its duration in the least, without sentiment of succession’. The

sentiment of existence concerns a pure present which passes. This is assimilated to Eternity or

to the divine state, because ‘one is sufficient onto oneself, like God’.

Wolmar wants to select the elements of the present. Time must be lived as passage,

and it is at that moment that the substitution is made. This method of selection results in the

Reveries. At this level, it is no longer a selection of objects which populate time, but time

itself which is stripped of all succession of objects. And by doing so, the ease of existence is

discovered. In the initial stage, Rousseau had to use our dependence with regard to things, but

at the end of his life, he affirms that one must liberate oneself from this reliance, and establish

an emptiness.

The materialism of the wise man centers on using the determinism of situations in

order to disengage oneself. Wolmar controls the objects, but is that a good method 6? IN the

Reveries, Rousseau hardly believes that it is sufficient to change situations in order to be

happy. He there substitutes it for the reverie which, when objects no longer hold sway over us,

permits a coincidence with the pure passage of time7.

3 – The Social Contract and Emile are parallels

On the plane of the citizen, the Social Contract is the parallel to the Emile on the private

plane. The legislator and the educator are parallels. Both are mythical beings, because, says

6 See the end of The New Heloise.

7

Book 9 of the Confessions (Pleiad P. 400-401, 408-409). Rousseau here takes up anew themes from his bookSensitive Morality.



47

Roussau, they are too full of virtues to be real. In addition, there is a relation of essential

succession between the Contract and the Emile. The contract presupposes the educated,

formed, private man.

In the Emile, Rousseau specifies that there exist three types of education. First, an

education of nature, an “internal development of our faculties and organs”. Second, an

education of men, “the use we are taught to make of this development” of nature. Third, an

education of things. Yet over the course of the Emile, these educations are reduced to two

types. First, domestic or natural education. Second, public education concerning relations of

men among men, each man being a part of a larger whole.

The first type of education considers man as a whole, so it is an education of natural

man. It places man in relation to things and to his own semblances, each forming a whole onto

itself. The second type of education considers man as a citizen, as a part in relation with other

parts. There two educations are contradictory. In actual society, we want them both at the

same time, and thus we end up with nothing: ‘neither man, nor citizen’. We must become

conscious of their differences in kind. Rousseau says that there is no longer public education.

We must therefore take the path of private education and subsequently stay the course. Only

after that does it make sense to ask whether the restoration of a public education is possible.

Whence that the Contract presupposes the Emile.

4 – The state of nature

The state of nature is pre-social, pre-political, and pre-civil. This idea is not new (take

Hobbes, for example). Nevertheless, why does it appear as pre-social? According to the

Discourse on Inequality, it is a state of equality and of independence. Yet this is not where

Rousseau locates its originality: he defines it by dispersion. And thus we find Rousseau



48

contesting Locke’s position on the question of the marital relation in the state of nature8. For

Locke, it is a natural relation until children start to take care of their own business. For

Rousseau, Locke presupposes that which is in question, which is to say co-habitation of man

with woman in the state of nature. Now, the state of nature is that of fortuitous encounters.

This isolation is what permits Rousseau to posit the state of nature as a state of equality and

independence: the latter are the analytic consequence of the former.

How does this relate to Hobbes? From an Aristotelian and Thomist perspective, the

natural order is like the order of perfections. Sociability is a part of the natural order. Yet for

Hobbes, the natural order no longer concerns an order of perfections, but a mechanism of

forces, or more specifically: of needs and desires. Whence that natural right becomes defined

as the realization of one’s desires insofar as it is within one’s power to do so. Right, not duty,

is thus posited as primary and natural. This is a point of view which excludes every notion of

dependence, which is why it is a reaction against the Aristotelian tradition: man is no longer

defined as a sociable animal. In this perspective, there is equality in the respective

compensation of the inequality of forces: the strongest always finding a stronger one than

himself, and the least strong capable of being sufficiently strong to kill the strongest.

Does this suffice to conclude that the state of nature does not imply social life? For

Hobbes, social life implies an authority, a reliance on respect for a power. The state of nature

thus excludes society understood as civil state, but does it exclude sociability which allows for

a natural society as an aggregate of relations between independent individuals 9? Such

sociability would have derived from an identity in nature between men as reasonable beings:

‘the state of nature and a social life are not two opposed things’ 10. However, this conception

presupposes that one grants himself reason right away. Now, in the case of Hobbes, there is a

8 Note 2 of the Discourse on Inequality.

9

See Grotius [Hugo Grotius, 1583-1645, jurist in the Dutch Republic, AK]10 Puffendorf [a 17th century German political philosopher and historian, AK].



49

genesis of reason. But Rousseau, against Hobbes, also demands a genesis of the complex

passions for which Hobbes appeals to the state of nature. According to Rousseau, Hobbesian

man ‘abuses’ certain faculties which must be produced historically.

Now, by changing the plane on which the problem is posed, Rousseau escapes these

difficulties in Hobbes. If we accept the thesis of dispersion, then there is no longer a problem

if this type, because each form of society is necessarily excluded from the state of nature. In

Hobbes, need is what brings us closer to one another, but in Rousseau, it is what separates us.

In the Essay on the Origin of Languages, without doubt contemporaneous to the Discourse,

the natural effect of needs will be the separation of men: ‘the state of war reigned everywhere,

but all the land was at peace’. Of course wars would be possible through fortuitous

encounters, but they did not happen: ‘not a Golden Age because men were united, but because

they were separated’. The Discourse affirms that Nature does not bother with bringing men

closer through mutual needs. She does not prepare men for social life. And this is the Stoic

element in Rousseau: the idea that needs separate us. Need is defined as self-sufficiency.

Naturally, this is limited by physical necessity, since it does not exceed the forces of that

which experiences it. Our needs are proportionate to our forces and our forces to our needs.

There is reciprocal regulation11. The state of nature is therefore a balance between power and

desire. In the case of Hobbes, what we have is jus in omnia. Perhaps, says Rousseau, but if so,

then because everyone only desires that which is within reach: an unlimited right of man to all

that he can attempt and all that he can reach. This right is in fact limited in the state of nature,

and Rousseau compares this state of nature with ataraxia: ‘everyone is a whole onto oneself’.

Here, the ground of natural right is self-love moderated by compassion, resulting in balance.

11 Emile II.



50

5 – The meaning of ‘nature’ in Rousseau

“Natural” first of all means “primitive” or “original”, as in ‘man in the state of nature’ or in

‘primitive man’. This sense of ‘nature’ does not include an aspect of sociability. In a second

sense, found in the Profession of Faith, it is said that ‘man is sociable by nature or at least

made to become so’.

Now, love in the state of nature is a small thing, especially when compared to the love

between Julie and Saint-Preux (‘our souls are made for each other, it is nature which wants

it’12; ‘if love reigns, nature has already chosen […] sacred law of nature’ which cannot be

violated with impunity). Any familial sentiment has need of a habit, of a development which

forms like a second nature. That which is natural is thus no longer the primitive, but it is a

development made from the origin and following directions virtually contained in the origin.

This connects to the problem of ‘natural law’ in Rousseau. It often does not concern any law

that would reign in the state of nature, but instead a law that governs the development of

‘natural man’, that is to say of man insofar as he is presupposed to be subjected to a law of

development of virtualities inscribed in the original state.

The ‘domestic or natural’ education of Emile includes an education in nature (internal

development of our faculties and our organs) and the education in things (the acquisition,

engendered by experience, of objects which affect us). Natural man is thus man insofar as he

forms himself and insofar as he is educated. The Emile is conceived as leading from man in

the state of nature to natural man.

Consciousness and reason are often called ‘natural’ by Rousseau, much like society

and sociability13. However, fully natural as it may be, reason nevertheless demands a

12 The New Heloise, III, 11.

13

The letter to Christophe de Beaumont: the genealogy of vices and the genesis of reason. [The then-archbishopof Paris, AK].



51

development which starts in the state of nature. In the Geneva manuscript, there is a chapter

on the state of nature which disappears in the Social Contract . Why? Because this chapter

risks mingling different problems. The Social Contract presupposes natural man, so that its

problem concerns the passage of man to citizen and not natural man as private man.

There is in Rousseau a notion of perfectibility: the state of nature must be understood

as a genetic element , heavy with potential, with virtualities. This genetic line is altered by the

genesis of vice. Is this accidental or necessary?

Rousseau uses an analytic and regressive method to find the characteristics of man in

the state of nature, starting from natural man. There is the necessity to find a principle: what

to define? The state of nature cannot be defined as an actual state of the faculties, but it can be

defined as a virtual and genetic state. Thus self-love and compassion are a state of passion as

long as their virtualities are not developed 14. The analytic method cannot lead to a definition

of the state of nature without a dynamic principle: a regression of the actual to the virtual. The

analytic method of Rousseau’s predecessors does not suffice. As it says in The New Heloise:

‘nature is a book in which one must learn to read’. It is not enough to analyze if one does not

know how to decipher. Everything which is actual and formed is exterior to the state of

nature.

Before Rousseau, there is talk of a savage and a civilized man. Yet the genesis is

precisely the actualization of the virtualities of the state of nature. There is no spontaneous

passage. Moreover, in the Discourse we read that a faculty does not develop itself as long as it

does not respond to a need or an interest, and that a need never appears as long as it is not

determined by a situation. The state of man must therefore be defined by objective

circumstances, by needs that these circumstances determine, and by subjective faculties

necessary for the satisfaction of these needs. For example: speech presupposes the social state.

14 Emile IV: compassion is laden with a virtual sociability, and self-love with love for others.



52

According to Rousseau, his predecessors have disregarded the order of causes by

positing, from the start , already-formed faculties in order to deduce situations. For example:

‘man speaks, so he lives in society’. But for Rousseau, faculties must have a genesis, and if

man had fully formed faculties he would not be in need of using them. And so he criticizes

Hobbes, who makes the state of nature a state of war. Because man in the state of nature

cannot be in a state of war. One must proceed as follows: being given a faculty of aggression,

what interest does it presuppose, and what situation does this interest presuppose? We then

see two problems.

First, the legal or objective problem that war is not just any violence. It is defined by a

relation between states, by a certain duration, and by its goal (which is to obtain, by means of

force, reparations for supposedly inflicted damage). War thus presupposes property: ‘it is the

relation of things and not of men which constitutes war’. The state of war thus presupposes

society.

Second, the subjective problem of interest, or of pride as a human interest which also

presupposes the state. Engels will praise Rousseau on this point, for having employed a

dialectic method in the Discourse15. In fact, Engels finds himself in the same relation to

Dühring as Rousseau finds himself to Hobbes. What does Robinson use in order to enslave

Friday16? In order to enslave someone, a social contract constituted on productive forces and

relations of production is needed: the masters of America enslave their slaves through cotton.

15 Engels’ Anti-Dühring.

16 [According to Dühring, Robinson would have used a sword, an idea for which Engels ridiculed him: ‘But let

us look a little more closely at this omnipotent “force” of Herr Dühring's. Crusoe enslaved Friday “sword in

hand”. Where did he get the sword? Even on the imaginary islands of the Robinson Crusoe epic, swords have

not, up to now, been known to grow on trees, and Herr Dühring provides no answer to this question. If Crusoe

could procure a sword for himself, we are equally entitled to assume that one fine morning Friday might appear

with a loaded revolver in his hand, and then the whole “force” relationship is inverted’ ( Anti-Dühring part II,section III), AK].



53

6 – Is the state of nature a reality or a fiction?

It can be doubted whether this problem has the importance that some accord it. For

Rousseau’s predecessors, the state of nature is simultaneously a foundation and an origin17.

Starting from Hobbes, the state of nature comes to be considered as a pre-social life. In a

sense the state of nature is thus fictitious, because humanity never finds itself entirely in it.

Yet is real in certain situations. For Hobbes, civil war is one of those situations.

For Rousseau, the state of nature is not a fact of observation 18. Neither infancy nor

savagery are the state of nature. Now, the state of nature is never posed problematically.

Instead, what happens between the state of nature and the actual state, all the intermediaries,

is posed as hypothetical. Nevertheless, both ends are given as real. The state of nature is real

insofar as it is a point of departure for a movement from which man takes shape. Since there

is this genesis starting from the state of nature, how does it work? The Discourse proposes

one way, the Essay on the origin of languages and the history of manners propose others. But

the point of view is always the same. Emile makes the genesis from the point of view of the

child.

7 – The unity of Rousseau’s works (I)

Ernst Cassirer has proposed the Kantian thesis that Rousseau’s works are unified by the

concept of freedom19

. The Social Contract does not want to be a possible reform of society.

17 Kant on the distinction between foundation and origin.

18 Lines from the Discourse: ‘we start by excluding all the facts…’, and by ‘facts’ Rousseau means sacred texts

insofar as they attest to the creation of man with fully formed faculties; ‘that which reflection teaches us,

observation confirms’; ‘the presupposition of a state of nature’; ‘a state which has perhaps never existed, which

will probably never exist’.

19

[On February 27th, 1932, Ernst Cassirer hosted a conference on the theme of unity in Rousseau’s work, inwhich he proposed this thesis, only to get blasted by the other attendants for downplaying both the aesthetic or



54

In the Discourse, there is an agreement which is mystifying in its principle, and it generates

the corrupting social state. This mystification is glaring (se fait criante): social amenities. A

reorganization of society cannot suffice since it is tainted in its principle (Rousseau here

completely opposes the Encyclopédistes).

But is a reform of society possible? According to Rousseau, it is possible under certain

conditions and up to a certain point. However, today we are too deep into the agreement. We

can no longer make a clean slate, which presupposes a legislator who arrives from the outside

(Cretans, Lacedaemonians, or Romans, for example). In certain states, man is first of all a

citizen, but that is no longer possible now. The contract exists because the agreement can no

longer be changed. It is an error to relate the contract to a state of nature from which it would

have proceeded. It must be related to natural man, which is to say to man formed according to

the law of nature. This is the case for Emile after his education is done, when he is owner and

husband: private man, just, virtuous. The education has stopped being public, we cannot

return to before the agreement.

Rousseau’ correspondence with Tronchin20 make him realize the difference between

private man and the citizen. It is when Emile is formed in private that the political problem is

posed to him. Do not such men establish a new social order? No genesis passes from an

anterior stage to the social contract. Instead, it is through a kind of transmutation that private

men establish another social order. Natural man must be related to his own genetic line, and

all that can be done is preventing the child, by means of domestic education, from putting

itself in corrupting situations.

One genetic line responds to a history which leads from the state of nature to the

corrupting social state. A second line is that of pedagogy: the law of nature permits formation

artistic side of his work, as well as the paradoxical aspect many considered its defining characteristic, AK]. Also

see Kant’s Conjectures on the beginnings of human history.20 [A physician who frequented the circles of Voltaire, Diderot, and Rousseau, AK].



55

in a corrupted society, a man of nature as private. A third line, non-genetic this time, concerns

natural man creating a corresponding social order with his will.

8 – How does one leave the state of nature?

8.1 – From state of nature to savage state

In Hobbes, for example, there is a fundamental disequilibrium in the state of nature – it is

unlivable – which makes it necessary to leave this state. This exit is made possible by the

natural law, a means that presupposes a minimal development of reason. And all this will

work the better if everyone abstains from anything that can turn out to be disadvantageous.

Yet in Rousseau, the state of nature is one of full self-sufficiency and hence without

contradiction. The human species is considered as just another animal species. In the state of

nature, an individual is nothing but at one with its species. There is an identity between

individual being and generic being, because the individual is a whole onto itself. Instead, that

which engenders the exit from the state of nature is a multiplicity of ‘strange’, ‘fortuitous’,

and ‘mild’ causes. So it happens through a kind of mechanism, but there is nevertheless a

‘hidden plan of nature’, so that man goes to realize his final goal. In order to do so, an

objective situation is needed in each stage of humanity’s development. If the situation

changes, new interests and needs appear in man.

By leaving the state of nature, we fall into the savage state. This situation is

characterized by two new facts. First, morphological causes, and second, climatic causes

which act only in relation to demographic causes. Put differently: people multiply, they

increasingly encounter one another, and they start to seek out the most favorable regions. New

interests and needs arise, but one still remains, from the point of view of man considered as an

animal species, physical. Man is always defined by his relation with things and his reliance on

them. Yet whereas man is predominantly passive in the state of nature, his physical being



56

becomes active in the savage state: a generic activity of the uniquely physical individual:

‘how many inventions die with their inventor’.

Two new interests arise at this point. At certain times there will be an interest in

cooperation, and at others, an interest in rivalry. For example, the deer hunter (cooperation)

who sees a hare pass by (solitary chase). The first provisional communities are those of

hunters, because the first activity is the hunt. At that point, new faculties appear through

perceptions of certain relations21 or ‘a kind of reflection or machinic prudence’. The

Profession of Faith not only mentions a passivity, but also a ‘faculty of comparing sensations’

which is not yet a true freedom and remains physical. These new faculties still concern

judgment by inspection, which is not judgment by induction. It is a ‘sensitive and puerile

reason’ inseparable from physical activity.

At this level, there is still a comparison of man as species with the other species. Man

has a natural and generic conformity with his semblances. Qua language, there is at this level

an appearance of imitative, gestural, natural language.

By integrating themselves into the situation, the new needs and interests change it.

There is also the intervention by catastrophes. The problem of these new interests poses that

of the passage of the natural individual to the moral man. This is the discovery of a new

activity, properly spiritual.

8.2 – The advent of morality and freedom

With this passage, everything happens as if it entails a regression of activity. See the third and

fourth part of Emile: the child still has feeble desires, but his powers have grown. There are

unemployed capacities within him. It is his studies which make him discover his intellectual

and moral being. Likewise, it is said in the Discourse that ‘the Pastors are less active and

21 Reason presupposes this, see Emile.



57

more peaceful’. All this concerns the birth of leisure and idle pensions, hence ‘there are

individual preferences and comparisons’. The individual now distinguishes itself from the

species. Under which conditions? To the extent that the species is no longer defined as

physical species, but as moral species. More new interests and needs arise as permanent

housing appears (the embryonic form of property). Associations take shape which are not

merely founded on an interest such as that of the hunters. As for the state of the faculties, if

there is less physical activity, a morality of magnanimity and of vengeance is discovered.

In any case, the individual ceases being one with the species. It wants to be recognized

by others, which is the first step towards inequality and pride. Morality initially manifests in a

sentiment of right, in a consideration of that which I am owed. It concerns the individual that

feels offended, that exacts vengeance: ‘each is judge and avenger of offenses that he suffers’.

There is no law here as of yet, which implies that the separation between individual and

humanity as a moral species is not yet complete.

It is the best era, says Rousseau.

We discover a moral being, proper to us: freedom. See for example the Profession of Faith, in

which a radical soul-body dualism is affirmed. The active soul produces a will independent of

all physical determination. Freedom is already present in the state of nature, but there is no

consciousness of it there, since it is nothing but fully one with life. We become conscious to

the extent that we discover that freedom constitutes our moral being. It is when, on account of

our perfectibility, we have passed into the moral state that we can conclude freedom existed in

the state of nature.

Two dualities are now taking shape. First, man as a physical being and man as moral

species (body and soul). Second, man as individual and man as species. The second is



58

intensified by the discovery of the first. At the same time that love of virtue develops in the

moral species, an interest in being wicked develops in the individual. It is in the civilized

( policé ) state that the dualities take on their full importance. Here, the new interests become

related to the formation of the couple metallurgy-agriculture. Metallurgy is the first to appear.

Agriculture is then born from the necessity to feed those who work the iron. The result is a

division of labor based on the exchange of iron and agricultural products. The first appearance

of property then follows in the guise of the division of lands. There is no conventional relation

between property and labor. The laborer possesses the land, and there is a certain right to the

tilled soil insofar as it has produced the fruits of labor. This possession, continuing as it does

from harvest to harvest, has a natural origin. There follows an evolution of the moral being

towards a morality of justice, after just the idea of property which is the base of the

development of the moral being. This justice consists in giving everyone what they are due.

8.3 – Mystification, wickedness, and alienation

There is an ‘inequality of combination’ in the relation between smiths and laborers. Property

has led to a sentiment of justice, but its voice is still feeble. Despite this sentiment, the

individual man is going to define himself as a more or less greedy owner, because he

discovers interests of ownership in the inequality of properties resulting from the division of

labor. There is thus a new inequality, a usurpation, and a relation of forces is established

between owners. Subsequently, the rich design what Rousseau calls a ‘thoughtful project’,

one that is a mystification of ‘specious reasons’. The rich propose the non-owners an end to

the state of war and a reunion of all the wills into a single one. They propose the formation of

a supreme power through a mystifying ‘very general agreement’.

Rousseau here takes up very classical theories, but precisely because he wants to show

that the contract as conceived by them can only be understood as a mystification. In theSocial

Contract , he investigates the abstract conditions under which the contract could have taken



59

place without mystification. His predecessors perceived the contract as an exchange of

freedom for security. Rousseau agrees that this is the effect of the contract, but precisely to

the extent that this contract is a mystification and cannot be obtained through consent. Why

not?

1. Logical argument: agreements are accepted so as not to become dependent on others.

2. Psychological argument: there is no natural penchant to servitude.

3. Sociological argument: refutation of theses of paternal authority which assimilate the

social situation and the familial situation.

4.

Moral argument: freedom is nothing but one with my moral being, as life is with my

physical being. Neither life nor freedom are inalienable.

Rousseau does not deny that we have lost our freedom. He even thinks it happens by way of

the contract, so that we have been deceived. Is there thus a contract which can be defined as

devoid of any mystification? This is the problem the Social Contract investigates. First, there

is an historical investigation, in which we find two themes belonging to the idea of contract:

subjection and association. Concerning subjection, it is generally held in the 16th and 17th

centuries that there are two parties to a contract, one of which is the subject, and the other the

sovereign. Here, Hobbes will object that the sovereignty is double, and a third power

( puissance) is necessary for the judging of disputes. As for association, this is to be

understood as the reunion of all wills in one will, progressing from a multitude of contractual

acts between those who are to become subjects. But here Rousseau will criticize Hobbes.

Even though Hobbes has understood that association has to come first, he made an error in

reducing subjection to association. For Hobbes, we constitute ourselves as subject through the

relation to a sovereign who does not enter into the contract. For Rousseau, an association is



60

needed first, a product of the reunion proposed to the poor by the rich: the formation of a

public.

Yet the mystification is such that there is already a defect at the origin: the poor can

perceive that the will is not common, so that a contract of government is necessarily required.

This is a second mystification, because however honest the magistrates of this government

may be, on account of the defect it will always be the rich who become magistrates. Because

it was still feeble, our sentiment of justice was just sufficient to allow for the realization of

this deception, and it is then that the interest in being wicked appears.

Man discovers his interest in being wicked because property simultaneously gives us

the sense of justice, a particular interest. Property develops through an internal movement of

inequality, or so say all the economists before Rousseau. Yet Rousseau has a more complex

idea, stating that property does not concern an internal movement, but a double game of new

needs and exploitation of the labor of others. It is the stage of usurpation. A duality develops

between man as moral species and the individual with his particular interest.

The particular interest in wicked is hard-pressing, and the voice of justice, which is

still feeble, starts to serve this interest. Whence the misleading proposition of the rich, which

presupposes necessarily invoked justice in order to be accepted by the poor. Is this justice the

same which appears in the Social Contract ? The contract is misleading because it is made

between two unequal parties, because it invokes a justice which governs relations between

parties which it posits as equal. In the Social Contract , justice is formed by something entirely

different than a relation between distinct parties. What is produced by the social contract is

inalienable.

The problem of the Social Contract is whether there is a form of justice which is by

nature impossible to avert, one that does not lend itself to any alienation, one that cannot be

used by our own wickedness. And in fact, Rousseau says several times that this justice can



61

alienate. The relation subject-sovereign can pass into the service of wickedness: it suffices

that partial associations are established in the State, et cetera. There is thus a possible

alienation of justice, which is nevertheless inalienable in itself. It can be usurped by a partial

association which passes itself off as common. Yet this is not the same thing as a justice

which immediately declares itself a relation between two equal parties whereas in fact they

are not. Now, two ideas developed in the Discourse on Inequality are taken up anew in the

Social Contract . First, the idea that society cannot be founded on a relation of mutual

subjection, because all subjection presupposes association. Second, insofar as association

presents itself as a relation between distinct parties, the contract will be a mystification. This

is the logical argumentation which prefigures the social contract – a contract which defines

itself as one of association, yet which cannot be established between two parties considered as

distinct.

Rousseau will make an aggressive caricature of his predecessors. He grants them that

the contract as they conceive of it is the base of real society (subjection before association, et

cetera). But, he says, that this is so is precisely the reason that real society is essentially

mystifying and that freedom no longer exists in it. There is, at this point, a defect in the

principle of the social being of man, on account of mystification. Hence Rousseau accuses it

of original sin, and of pressing the moral being of man into the service of wicked interest.

8.4 - How to leave?

When it is not yet too late, a revolution can constitute the political act by which one leaves22.

Yet revolution can also be impossible, it can be too late, and then the only thing remaining is

domestic education. The point of such an education is to efface the corruption, i.e. the malign

22 Discourse on Inequality, second part; also Emile when Lycurgus collectivizes property and in doing so effaces

the defect, whereas Solon contents himself with abolishing debts and changes nothing profound; and Social

Contract chapter 8.



63

posited as a moral species, but there is also a rupture of the individual with the species. In

Discourse on Inequality, we see this in mutual deception; in The New Heloise, we see this in

self-deception. An act of moral will can restore a subjective unity between the individual and

the moral species24. Finally, there is the determination of a political act which installs an

objective unity of the individual and of the moral species: the social contract.

10 – The social contract

The lawyers of the 16th century understand the contract as a relation between two parties, one

being subject, the other being leader. The sovereign is thus split, power and sovereignty are

divided, and a third instance is needed to judge disputes. According to Rousseau, this

conception of the contract confounds society and government. For him, all government

presupposes prior association25. The subjection of subjects to a leader already presupposes the

constitution of man as a subject, and thus an association. But if the subjection is a contract,

the contract is not primary. Over the course of Social Contract , it is said that subjection is

impossible without association26.

Rousseau will hold that sovereignty is inalienable, whereas the lawyers (Puffendorf,

for example) will hold the contrary. For them, sovereignty is alienated in the subjection. For

Rousseau, the transfer of sovereignty can only be made in the form of a gift or of a sale, each

of which can in turn be forced, tacit, or voluntary27. Now, a forced or tacit gift cannot be the

source of any right. And if the gift is voluntary, it can only be pure madness, insofar as people

who give away their freedom just like that must be mad. In the case of a sale, there is an

exchange of one’s freedom against security. But this is contrary to the notion of government,

24 Confessions and the second part of The New Heloise.

25 Social Contract book I, chapter V.

26

Social Contract book III, chapter XVI.27 Social Contract book I, chapter I.



64

says Rousseau, because government is conceived as a delegation or an equivalent of the

sovereign. Particular acts which presuppose a general law cannot be defined as acts of the

government. Government can only be assimilated to a commission, as the acts of the

government are emanations of the Sovereign. There can only be radical subordination of the

government to the Sovereign. Whence that the latter cannot be alienated from an instance

which is subordinate to it. Now, the alienation of the sovereign can be conceived as follows: it

would be represented by men to who legislative power ( puissance) would have been

transferred. However, neither can the sovereign be alienated in a representation in this case28.

The sovereign cannot be represented except by himself 29.

Likewise, the government cannot appropriate sovereignty of which it is but the

commission, as with the representatives, who are nothing but commissaries of the people. The

governors are but commissionaires or commissaries, because they only exercise the function

of judgment (determining the case that enters under the law), which is not the faculty of

willing. In similar manner, the deputies have but a function of judging: they conceive of laws

by which they clarify the general will, hypothetical laws which they cannot render obligatory

and effective. Only the Sovereign decides on the propositions made by the deputies. The

deputies (the legislature) propose laws that only the sovereign people ratifies. Thus the

English people is wrong in believing itself free, it is only so at the moment of election of

deputies. After the election, it is a slave to representation. Such arguments serve Rousseau in

his critiques of absolute monarchy and representative governments.

The legislative state of the ancient City is that the legislator proposes, and then the

people decides. Rousseau calls this the valorous government. The idea of representatives is a

feudal one to him. Representative assemblies were the means by which feudal lords struggled

28 Social Contract book I, chapter II.

29

Social Contract book III, chapter XV: ‘sovereignty cannot be represented for the same reason that it cannot bealienated. It consists in the general will and the will is not represented’.



65

against monarchy. The problem is that the legislature as conceived in ancient times

presupposes small cities and leisure for citizens. However, in Considerations on Poland ,

Rousseau designed a system of representation by deputies for a large state, which would turn

on the condition of controlling the deputies through frequent elections, a strict observance of

the rule of re-eligibility, and finally public accountability. These means were to keep the

deputies functioning as commissaries of the people.

There is thus a parallel alienation of the people in when they give themselves a master,

and when they give themselves representatives.

10.1 – The sovereign is irreducible

Three arguments lead to the conclusion that the Sovereign cannot be reduced to an individual

or to a group of individuals. First, a polemic argument 30. Secondly, the act which constitutes

the sovereign as such necessarily constitutes him as the general will. It is not impossible that

this will concords with a particular will, but that is by nature fortuitous 31. The sovereign

would be alienable if he were an individual. The sovereign is a moral perso which only has

abstract and collective existence32.

10.2 – How is the sovereign indivisible?

According to Hobbes the sovereign is indivisible in his principle. For him, the contract is an

act by which all make themselves subject of a Third Party which does not enter into the

contract and which is the sovereign. As the sovereign has not entered into the contract, it is

ruled out that the subjects can disobey him. There is thus inalienability of the sovereign who

30 Letter to Nirabeau [Deleuze means the Marquis de Mirebeau, with whom Rousseau stayed for a while after his

stay in England, AK].

31

Social Contract book I, chapter I.32 See the Geneva manuscript.



66

can no longer represent itself. Now, Hobbes reduces the sovereign to a person or to a group of

persons. That he is to be indivisible does not preclude that it implies having a number of

distinct powers. In order for the sovereign to have absolute power, he must possess all the

powers. So, though indivisible in his principle, the sovereign is divisible in his object.

Rousseau critiques this thesis in book II of the Social Contract . For him, the sovereign is

absolutely indivisible: “Simple and one”33. According to Rousseau, there is only one object of

the sovereign: the law. Decisions on peace, on war, and so on (what Hobbes calls the powers

of sovereignty) are nothing but acts of government which presuppose a prior legislation. From

this we can conclude that:

1.

The contract is not an act of subjection

2. It is not an act by which all make themselves subject of a Third Party.

3. It is an act by which all constitute themselves as sovereign, without possible alienation in

a government, without possible representation in deputies.

4. To be conceived as such, the contract can no longer be considered a relation between

parties (contrary to all predecessors except perhaps Spinoza).

10.3 – What is the positive character of the Contract?

To posit the contract as a relation signifies a relation between public and particular individual,

or between subject and sovereign. But the people, the public, do not pre-exist the contract.

This expression by Rousseau is only provisionary and is not the most profound one34. Yet in

any case, we are constantly dealing with three terms: the particular (the individual or private

33 Social Contract book III.

34

Social Contract book II, chapter IV, 2nd

paragraph, note where Rousseau insists on the difficulty of preciselydefining the terms.



67

man), the subject, and the citizen. These terms are reciprocal35. In one case, the middle term is

the individual considered under two relations: as subject and as member of the sovereign. In

another, it is the subject which is the middle term and envisaged under two relations. So it will

be said that the contract constitutes the particular individual as subject under one relation and

as citizen under another. Or else, the subject is taken as particular individual in relation to the

sovereign, and as member of the sovereign in relation to the particular individual, in the

individual. The contract thus makes three reciprocal terms intervene: the middle term must be

taken under two relations. In the first hypothesis, the individual is the middle term. It

constitutes itself as subject in relation to the sovereign, and as member of the sovereign in

relation to particular individuals. So in the end, only the subject has a double relation: first to

the sovereign and furthermore, as member of the sovereign. So the subject is the middle term.

The basic act of the contract is the act by which the individual makes itself subject and at the

same time member of the sovereign (otherwise he would be a slave). There are thus three

formulas to the Social contract, each more profound than the other: a) a relation between two

terms; b) a discovery of three terms; c) it is the subject itself which is taken under two

relations.

10.4 – Obligation, totality, instantaneity

An obligation is born with the Contract. Who is obliged 36? It is not the individual, because

legally the individual cannot oblige itself. Is it the sovereign? No, because the sovereign is not

submitted to anything except his condition of existence, to the laws which determine the

conditions of his Being. In himself, he cannot be obliged to anything: “to violate the act by

which the sovereign exists would be to annihilate itself”37. Only the subject is subjected to the

35 Social Contract book I, chapter VII.

36

Social Contract book I, chapter VII.37 Social Contract book I, chapter VII.



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obligation. Only it can be grasped under the two relations, which is the condition of the

obligation. What is the source of the obligation? It is the ‘free agreement of he who obliges

himself’38. The term which is capable of obliging can only be the subject. All sources of

obligations are up for discussions, except that one.

This act of engagement has two characteristics, to with totality and instantaneity39.

The act must be a total alienation, which is to say it is complete insofar as it covers

everything, and universal insofar as each individual is completely alienated. This alienation

can be complete, because it is not carried out for someone else to benefit from it. If that were

to be the case, alienation would not be total, because freedom is inalienable. Alienation

consists in constituting a whole, not in making oneself dependent on others. Whence that each

individual is subjected to the same condition: ‘each gives himself completely, the condition is

equal for all’40. There will be no differences due to more or less alienation among individuals

(unless of course not everyone alienates himself totally, unless someone conserves

something). On the level of total alienation, equality is already included.

The act is also instantaneous: ‘the association instantly produces a moral and political

body’41. From the very moment I alienate myself, I at the same time constitute the sovereign

and I recuperate everything. It cannot be otherwise. The sovereign restores everything to me

and even more, just under another form42. For example: the sovereign assures the legitimate

possession of property which the individual has alienated from himself. He keeps only what is

necessary for community. There is no moral obligation of the sovereign in this. It is a

condition of his existence. If he does not effectuate this restitution, he is destroyed.

Furthermore, only the sovereign can say that which is of common interest: ‘but it must be

38 Letter 6, Letters from the Mountain.

39 Social Contract book I, chapter VI.

40 Social Contract book I, chapter VI.

41

Social Contract book I, chapter VI.42 Social Contract book I, chapter IX.



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admitted that only the sovereign is judge of such importance’, of that which is very variable

according the situation, the circumstances, the morphology of a society.

In exchange for this partial restitution to owners, there will be a tax levy. The owner is

but a repository of the public good. He only exists as owner by the sovereign’s act of

restitution. The immediate restitution concerns private property and private opinion, that is to

say private religion, which does not interest the subject 43.

10.5 – Why does the sovereign constitute a general will?

The contract necessarily forms a general will, but common interest and general will must not

be confused. Common interest is that of the subject in relation to the sovereign. That which

immediately returns with the act by which I constitute myself as subject, is the contract.

Everyone has a similar interest, since they are subjected to an equal condition. Removing the

equality destroys all common interest. I can only constitute myself as subject in relation to a

sovereign of which the subject is member, with respect to individuals. From this point of

view, everyone is a legislator. This time, it is no longer equality which is inferred, but

freedom, as that which the sovereign wants with regard to individuals. The general will is the

will of everyone as member of the sovereign, as citizen.

‘The common interest is what makes the will general’. What does Rousseau want to

say by this? The common interest is not constitutive of the general will, but is its condition of

possibility: the formation of the sovereign has for its condition the act of the individual

making itself subject. Without this act, which defined the common interest, no sovereign can

be had, and therefore no general will.

43 Social Contract , final chapter.



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In what sense can we speak of a “utilitarianism” of Rousseau?

The notion of utility appears in two senses:

- A faculty only develops if it is useful. Need is incapable of creating this faculty. Utility

only plays the part of realizer of the faculty.

- The common interest of the contract is the condition of possibility, not the principle, of the

general will.

10.6 – What does the general will want?

The general will finds its condition in the equality of the condition of all subjects. It cannot be

determined by a preference. In this sense, not being determined by anything but itself, it is the

will of freedom (as in Kant). It can only want the law. The law leaves the relation to

individuals undetermined. It is only specified through the work of the legislator. In itself, it is

only the form of the will of the subject as citizen44. A distinction must be made between two

things45:

- The question of knowing whether the will can want such action (moral possibility of

Kant). It is a legislative power;

- Concerning that: can we, have we the possibility to accomplish it (physical possibility of

Kant). It is an executive power.

Being determined by the law, the general will does not consider action in its physical

possibility, but considers it as abstract. An obligation is related to the law. The word ‘law’

can only be employed rigorously in a prescriptive sense. If the source of the obligation is the

44 Letter 6, Letters from the Mountain; cf. letter to Le Mercier de la Rivière from 1767: ‘a form of governance

must be found which puts the law above man’.45 Social Contract book III, chapter I.



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act by which I make myself subject, then the law must be civil, it has its foundation in the

contract. But is such a response sufficient?

Such a response will have implied that Rousseau considerably critiques the idea in the

mode of natural law46. Is inequality authorized by natural law? Rousseau does not respond to

this question, and says that the concept of natural law is a concept full of nonsense.

Nevertheless there are texts where Rousseau mentions the natural law and in which he says

that it is superior to the contract itself:

-

Letter of October 1758: he admits three superior and independent authorities over the

sovereign: that of God, that of the natural law, that of honor. If there is a conflict, it is up

to the sovereign to yield. Hierarchy: natural law (love), honor, God 47.

- Letter 6 in From the Mountain: it must be proven that the contract is not contrary to

natural laws.

- Emile, book 2: ‘…the eternal laws of nature and the existing order. They take the place of

positive laws to the wise man’. The wise man is the one who has extracted himself from

society.

So how is the Contract a primary principle from which derive civil law and the obligation,

while it is also related to a higher instance, the natural law48? The critique of the natural law

has two senses with Rousseau. First, it bears upon the Ancients (Plato, Aristotle, Stoics), for

whom the natural law is the recta ratio, the conformity of things to their proper ends.

Rousseau argues that they used the word ‘law’ wrongly. By law they understood a law that

nature imposes on itself and not a law that it prescribes. For Rousseau, the concept of law is

46 This happens in the Discourse on Inequality.

47

As found in The New Heloise; the letter on honor is in part I: letter from Saint-Preux.48 See the beginning of the Discourse on Inequality.



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not a condition of existence of nature, it is essentially a prescription49. The Moderns have

understood this prescriptive character. For them the law is a prescriptive rule for an intelligent

and free being. The natural law applies to this being which is capable of receiving

prescriptions.

In Hobbes, the state of nature is no longer the order of perfections, but a system of

forces, of passions, and of drives. For a passionate being, the law then becomes the obligation

which opposes it. The state of nature is a system of forces, with corresponding natural rights.

To this structure, a second is joined: that of the natural law. The driving force of this law is

the fear of violent death, which is even the principle of reason. The law prescribes a rule

without which I could not preserve my life. The natural law, however, can only prescribe

hypothetically: it only gives the means to preserve my life, on the condition that the others

will also want the law. Whence the problem: how to render the law obligatory? That comes to

pass because all individuals make contracts among themselves, and above all delegate their

powers to a sovereign who does not participate in the Contract. Because of this the natural law

becomes civil.

Now, the mistake of the Moderns, according to Rousseau, is that they put the natural

law in the state of nature, that they presuppose a being already endowed with reason in this

state (because no law without reason). Rousseau accepts the prescriptive character of the law,

but the Moderns have not seen in what it consisted, since it is only hypothetical. For

Rousseau, the natural law is not in the state of nature, because it is a genetic development of

virtualities starting from the state of nature. This natural law presupposes society in the sense

that the virtualities only realize themselves under objective circumstances which are in

society. For example, the sentiment of justice only realizes itself if it is useful, and it only is

49 See the preface of the Discourse on Inequality.



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so if there is a society. However, society is not constitutive of the development of the natural

law.

The contract must be related to the natural law. The contract, the absolute foundation

of civil law, must be led back to the natural law, because it is at the same time total alienation

and instantaneous restitution. If it contradicts the law, it destroys itself.

10.7 – The idea of the civil law in Rousseau

The law is the very act of the sovereign, the direct expression of the general will. There is a

difference in kind between decree and law. The law goes from all to all, it considers the

subjects as body and situations as abstractions. It is an act of sovereignty. A decree appoints

persons, considers subjects as particular individuals, actions as concrete. It is an act of

governance. The law determines the form of government, the conditions to fulfill in order to

accede to government for each subject in general.

The Sovereign is a “common me”, a “life provided with sensibility”. The general will:

it is the movement corresponding to this life50. As the formation of the Sovereign and the

general will, the social contract is the form under which the Sovereign conserves itself. The

social contract is already general will. It defines a formal will. The contract in itself,

generalized, formalizes the will. The Sovereign is thus already a formal will (whereas the

particular will always searches preferences and the general will, the true universal: a pre-

Kantian distinction). This generalization is not the addition of particular wills.

What does the general will want? That which it wants must be determined generally,

that is to say formally: equality and freedom. The sovereign is the general will insofar as it

wants freedom and equality. That the law will be formal signifies that it abstracts from

persons, from its relation with persons of which the decree will take care (and in this sense,

50 Sovereign relation – general will. Cf. Social Contract book III, chapter IV.



government is a faculty of judgment: determination of cases that enter under the law).

However the law, if it is formal in the sense that it determines generally, is not formal,

because there is no law that will not be a determination of equality and freedom. Which are

the best, the good laws, for example? They cannot abstract from the relation with things and

objects. For Rousseau, that which saves us from the relation with persons is always the

relation with things. The law is thus not quite determined unless we take into account the

objective situation of a given society (resources, population, etc…). The law is formal by

abstraction from the relation with persons, it is not formal because it does not abstract from

the relation with things.

So to determine a law, the general will does not suffice. The formal determination of

the will must be joined to the content of objective circumstances of a given society. Thus the

general will wants the good, but it does not know it (it is the contrary for private man). It is

blind because it is formal. Thus the general will must appeal to a prodigious understanding (it

is a transposition of a faculty psychology to the social plane): that of the legislator who

illuminates the will from the outside. Without the legislator, the general will formally know

what it wants. But it needs him to be determined materially. A good law must not consider

particular persons (formal aspect) and adapt itself to concrete situations (material aspect).

The law is thus the composition of a form which refers to the will, and of a matter which

refers to the legislator. This is why it cannot be a question of an a priori deduction of the law

from its form.

a politic of things. delueze course on rousseau(cc)

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