Jean Jacque Rousseau Published on Term Paper

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In so giving each grants the same rights to others over himself that he is in turn granted by them over them. Each member gains the equivalent of everything he loses, and a greater amount of force to protect what he has. Given these conditions, Rousseau is ready to make his argument:

If therefore one eliminates from the social compact whatever is not essential to it, one will find that it is reducible to the following terms. Each of use places his person and all his power in common under the supreme direction of the general will, and as one we receive each member as an indivisible part of the whole."

By locating the binding force of the state in this concept of a general will, Rousseau thinks he has formulated a source for legitimate power. Of course, how he constructs the state comes to be crucial. The devil, as the saying goes, is in the details. But in establishing authority in the general will (with its attendant concept of the common good) Rousseau forms the heart of his argument for legitimate authority.

Then, Rousseau begins to unravel. He argues that a person can be made to obey the general will because he agreed to be bound by it (26). He argues that a sovereign is to be established who will ultimately have absolute and indivisible power, held as it is in a tense relationship with his obligations to seek the general will (30, 34). He argues that a person can be put to death for disobeying the state in its application of the general will (35). And he goes on like that. It seems that, far from disliking the sovereign that Locke, for example, establishes because he is too strong or his power unjust, Rousseau simply didn't like the reasoning behind the initial application.

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Locke argues in the Second Treatise of Government: "Whosever therefore out of a state of nature unite into a community, must be understood to give up all the power, necessary to the ends for which they unite into society, to the majority of the community…" (53) in this formulation and throughout his work, he provides a kind of check on the sovereign that keeps the sovereign in line with what Locke's ultimate purpose is: the protection of property rights. Rousseau, on the other hand provides very little in the way of checks on his sovereign. He argues that the states will likely be smaller and more comp-act, so that the sovereign can stay in closer contact with the subjects (63-66). And he claims, rather mercifully, that if it necessary to install a dictatorship, it should only be done for a short period of time. Beyond that, the people must obey the sovereign.

Of course, there is some exaggeration in that claim. But the view here is that Rousseau deserves it. He failed so miserably when establishing his view of the state that he negated the ingenious formulation of his reasons for justifying it. In the end, the Rousseau's general will seems to be just another excuse for authoritarianism (Read).

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