Rousseau's "The Social Contract" - Book I

here's a dumb question that professors asked some time what do you think of the reading did you did you like did you like her so I've come I've gone back and forth with students before over there some folks tend to think that like I he's there he's their favorite writer not mm-maybe in terms of ideas maybe in terms of style I've also had students like tell me that like they dislike Rousseau more than anybody else in this class worse than can't even I'm like wow that's that's surprising cards on the table I really like Rousseau I find him kind of frustrating as a writer sometimes because he's vague but he also has a kind of a I don't know a flowery prose and he's working with like very expansive ideas in a way that perhaps is like exactly what you would expect from a French author maybe also starts to kind of like get it at some sort of like deeper issues within philosophy that's still raged to this day this question about how precise should philosophical language be in philosophical writing and Rousseau it's not as precise as some of the other folks that we've read like John Locke for example who can be like very precise he's refreshingly loose with some words where he's like I don't care like which word you use it all means roughly the same thing whereas Rousseau is kind of like using lots of words and you get the sense that like he has a very idiosyncratic idea of what these words mean and like it's a little bit of a puzzle sometimes trying to figure out what Rousseau is talking about but the little glimpses that he gives us of this puzzle of like what it's going to look like when it's all put together are kind of cool and kind of impressive in a way that like makes me a little bit more optimistic about what humans are capable of maybe even like what what human society is capable of and this is also surprising for the social contract because in plenty of other places Rousseau is very there's a kind of very very dark and pessimistic idea about what life in civil society looks like so all that is to say that like Rousseau is a little bit of a puzzle and sometimes a little bit of a challenge to read but I find them to be a kind of an exciting and productive challenge what do you think do you like it dislike it we confused by things that's one of the things that the quiz is for to kind of like help be that check to be like ah so can you do you remember any kind of like can you pinpoint some of the confusions where were things that you're like I'm I was pretty sure he was saying this but it turned out that he wasn't so one thing it might be like don't rely on your recollection go back to the text and and check and see if it's there it's always possible by other way that I just missed code the answers on the quiz and so like you got marked wrong but you were right that would be extra confusing but let me know if that ever happens was grossest maybe who like is like I I had to be like totally transparent I had never even heard of group I'm not like much for political philosophy certainly like early modern or medieval political philosophy I had never even heard of grossest until I read Rousseau then I was like who's this guy but yeah this is always a this is always a a bit of a difficulty for folks who are approaching philosophical writing for the first time Aristotle is one of the worst on this where he'll just go on for like pages and click chapters of books just talking about other people's views or like all of the possible views on something Aristotle loves to like start a project by saying like let's see what everybody has to say about this and we'll just go on and on and on your winner and like when am I gonna get to like Aristotle's idea it's not till the very end that Aristotle's like okay so here's why the other things were wrong and here's what I'm saying that's new but yeah this can throw us right we're used to kind of reading and thinking to ourselves that like whatever the author is writing must be what they think mmm necessarily in fact good philosophical writing I would encourage you to adopt this strategy yourself explores as many sides of the issue as as it can right and kind of will inevitably at first address the possible ways of thinking about something that are different than what you're going to propose ultimately anything else really similar still right to Hobbes and Locke uncannily similar it's called the central contract obviously we're going to talk about another social contract there's also a reference to a state of nature that we're in before the social contract after the social contract when the best day of nature go into civil society it is perhaps unsurprising that all of these figures are referred to as social contract theorists like social contract theory like folks social contract theory rotational theorists that's the word I'm looking for social contract theorists and it's the dominant political philosophy in early modernity is social contract theory we're so starting to get into something that looks maybe a little bit he's still like solidly the title of the piece is the social contract he's still a social contract theorist but he's doing it in a slightly different way in a very interestingly different way than Hobbes and Locke were and as usual the thing that we're gonna be trying to keep a really sharp eye on today is like where all the places that he's digging instead of zagging or all the places that he's saying something that's different than what we saw in Hobbes and Locke before we get into I guess the details of the social book one of the social contract how about a little like Rousseau the man because he's an interesting fellow he's definitely didn't go into a whole lot of details about the life of John Locke either time that we read on just because his life story isn't nearly as interesting as jean-jacques Rousseau's life story which is absolutely fascinating first of all let's say this about challenge tracker so have you guys ever seen a portrait of a contractor so guy in the tub Oh in that painting the death of Marat the guy in the tub is Marat not Russo as the title might suggest a right time period about we'll notice that like the social contract is written in 1762 another big treatise that Rousseau is pretty well known for which is I think still widely talked about in philosophy of Education today a piece called Emile also came out in 1762 and if you know anything about like European and American history like this is like right on the doorstep of like everything just going crazy for a little while there are gonna be like revolutions galore and so like all of these like rumblings that we kind of see this movement from one of the the things that we're tracking perhaps is just how permissible this idea of like overthrowing a government might look right just how how we can fragile the authority of government might be for Hobbes it was very very strong and the idea of a revolution was unthinkable for Locke we see like suddenly were a whole lot more permissive of revolution and with Rousseau we're gonna I think what we're gonna end up with is this idea of like how are we not constantly in a state of revolution because the bar that he's gonna set for a legitimate government is really high it's like crazy high there's when I say that like there's something kind of inspirational about Rousseau it's like he sets a crazy high and seems to think that like it is attainable and if it were we'd be like that would be awesome if like civil society was like Rousseau is talking about it that would be so good but he also acknowledges that like this is really really hard to attain so yeah John factor so I mean oh I was asking about the portrait if you haven't seen a portrait of him I recommend it because he's incredibly good-looking especially for a philosopher are you looking at one right now he's a he's a hunk he's a hunky guy a spend like I said especially for a philosopher while he's checking it out okay you can also check out like portraits of John John Locke John Locke you should go look and he's just gone Locke he's British and David Hume and all the other people had Thomas Hobbes is like he's not like particularly ugly John clock is like really ugly yeah well that's not the only got kind of like a bird face - he's got a weak chin big nose this is maybe Nietzsche said said that like it's perhaps unsurprising that you see a lot of ugly philosophers because like these guys are like we can we can bodily sort of yeah and so like yeah of course they retreat into the life of the mind because like the life of the body is not treating them very well Socrates of course like notoriously ugly even like brings it up himself in conversations with people sometimes in very flirty way juries like ah my interlocutor here is like a young beautiful man with like all of the all of the kind of like strange quasi pedophilic sort of like baggage that comes along with this in ancient Greece but yeah Socrates always saying like well you were young and very beautiful and I'm very ugly and and his interlocutors will sometimes Socrates got like a smush day in a pug nose big bulging eyes yes and most philosophers are not very good looking at present company excluded Rene Descartes also like if I was sitting next to Rene Descartes on a bus I might think about moving but jean-jacques rousseau an incredibly good-looking guy John Jacques Rousseau was born in 1712 so I'll let you do the math to figure out how old he was when he wrote the social contract 50 years he was 50 when that happened so he's born in 1712 in Geneva Switzerland he does not stay in Geneva there is no Switzerland by the way at this time it's kind of a loose conglomeration of city-states but jean-jacques Rousseau refers to himself he identifies as a citizen of Geneva like for the rest of his life he moves all around he goes travelling to France and to Russia and to England and he he's he's in many ways he embodies this life of just a citizen of Europe more so than a citizen of any particular state but even to like his old age just before he dies he's still like signs books for people jean-jacques rousseau a citizen of geneva he takes an incredible pride in this and if you know anything about Switzerland - at the at the time Geneva was like this and it still is to a large extent one of the few plausible representations of like a pure and direct democracy like Switzerland like commits to democracy and I think in in ways that other other democracies would look at and be like that's like that's an extreme democracy like everybody votes all in almost everything instead of this kind of like ah we represent a you know we we elect representatives who will then like vote on our behalf sort of thing this is what we have in our representative democracy here in the United States Russo's mom died when he was very young this ends up being a I think of a pretty serious event in his life he's kind of left to his own devices he becomes an apprentice to an engraver when he's very young he's not treated very well in fact I think he's physically abused by being engraver when he turned 16 he kind of like sets off on his own he meets up with somebody whose name I never remember and every time he establishes a relationship with while he's 16 by the way a relationship with 30-ish early thirtyish years old woman named Francois Louise de Warren's who takes him on as a ward as kind of like a kind of a parental figure to him there's perhaps some reason to suspect that she takes him in because he's interested in converting him to Catholicism from Calvinism grew up a Calvinist and she's trying to convert him to Catholicism and it has some kind of like modest success in this although that I think there's probably good reason to be suspicious of exactly how strong any of the theological commitments that jean-jacques Rousseau has are by the tiniest xx this is not a parental relationship with the Warrens any more like their lovers and so like that's a little strange and weird perhaps he perhaps yeah I mean if the standard is like what's going on in Athens and like third century BC then like I guess it's not that strange that mentor figures and lovers are like things that get kind of like mixed up it's totally frowned upon today in like the modern University for good reason like be like ambiguous about that so yeah in his uh in his early 30s he eventually kind of leaves de warns and is striking out his own starting to make a name for himself as like a thinker and a cultural critic he weighs in on like the arts he weighs in on philosophy he weighs in on like political matters by the time he's 30 he strikes up a relationship with a seamstress somebody who's notably like not of any sort of nobility which is still a thing in Europe at this time strikes the per relationship with a seamstress Therese Levasseur and this is a kind of on-and-off-again relationship that he has with liver sir for like the bulk of his adult life together they end up having five children every single one of them whom gets given up for adoption yeah so Rousseau like real father of the Year candidate right there it has five five different children with this woman and gives all of them up for adoption and then has like the balls in 1762 to write this treatise Emil which is about how to bring up your children properly hmm we'll see there's some significant criticism of Rousseau in like lots of different respects for we'll see from Mary Wollstonecraft when we read her who is British and maybe part of the explanation for this is like as Rousseau kind of bounces all around Europe occasionally coming back to like meet up with live uh sir and like have another baby and give it up for adoption Rousseau manages to both like impress people and make friends really really fast and then like almost as quickly a lien eight people and make enemies it's like all kinds of like little temporary friendships that spark up and part of this is may be explained by the fact that like Rousseau seems to be the kind of guy who just like he speaks his mind like without a whole lot of filter and this gets him into trouble a little bit he speaks with confidence on all manner of things and this is the sort of thing that might get him into trouble yeah you had a brief friendship and that eventually led to a falling out with Voltaire when he was in France he had a brief friendship that eventually led to a falling out with David Hume when he was in England one of the things that contributed to his falling out with Hume was that like Russo's rooster started talking about like British people in British culture while he was a guest in England this wouldn't be the first time that a French person like said like English culture is but like Rousseau said it and while he was a guest and then like people started criticizing him and Rousseau was like people are like out to get me and it's like well maybe if you didn't act like an [ __ ] all the time like people wouldn't be so out to get you and he thought that Hume should have defended him more than Hume actually did and maybe Hugh should have maybe he shouldn't have doesn't really matter it just it does seem like it do you know anybody like this somebody who's like very charismatic very smart they make friends really quickly but they also make enemies very quickly and sometimes like the two were based like a revolving door between like who's a friend and who's an enemy I dated somebody like this for a while so yeah jean-jacques rousseau the very good-looking guy who had five children that he gave up for adoption made all kinds of temporary friends eventual enemies he gets invited to pressure by by the Emperor and stays there for a little while and then alienates the people of Germany what else can we say about him his death is also a very interesting story does anybody know how Rousseau died Rousseau died of a cerebral hemorrhage that it's kind of difficult to pin down exactly what caused this cerebral hemorrhage because he I think there's a record of him having sustained like several head injuries over the course of his life because he was also like a little bit of a daredevil this is one of the things that Hume like so much better he was like that John Jacques Rousseau guy he's like crazy there's a story that Hume tells maybe this isn't as impressive there's a story that Hume tells about them being on a boat ride on a ship right across the English Channel and the weather was getting rough from the tiny ship was tossed and Hume spends the whole trip in his quarters because he's like it's just nuts up there there's like waves crashing and lightning and people getting tossed about and we're so spent the whole trip on the deck just kind of like in the rain he's also we get this maybe impression in reading what he says in the social contract it's a lot louder in other works like a meal Rousseau is kind of the beginning of this turn from early modernity this kind of attitude this attitude towards the emerging science and the promise of our ability to tame nature and subdue it into something that's better than what nature is this is loud and clear in the social contract but there's something about Rousseau that's also starting to turn towards a movement that follows this kind of it's kind of early scientism of early modernity and eventually turns into a kind of Romanticism so like the picture of like Rousseau with a square jaw on like the deck of the ship in the rain it's like this is a perfect picture of Rousseau died of cerebral hemorrhaging that's what I was talking about and the most likely candidate for what caused this was that he was out walking in the street and a nobleman what was going by in his carriage and alongside the carriage was running the nobleman's dog which was a big dog a Great Dane Great Danes are really big dogs and the Great Dane jumped up on Rousseau and knocked him down and he bumped his head and a couple days later died of cerebral hemorrhage so big tough guy jean-jacques Rousseau done in by a Great Dane ultimately I know there you go beware of Danish dogs great and small all right that's a sketch of the life of jean-jacques rousseau let's get into what's going on in the social contract book one where it's kind of like working through book one today book two is for our next session but I think we're going to get a pretty good sense of like the broad strokes of what it is that Rousseau is up to just by looking at what he's doing in book one starts as is the style at the time we've seen this before in other treatises it starts off with a little preface that offers an introduction and a statement of his goals right so we get this kind of like intro and goals and what is Russo's goal for this whole project in the social contract this was a quiz question was it not this sounds totally like the kind of quiz question that I asked yeah what is he like yeah we're so heat like yeah he starts with a question I'll go ahead and give you a kind of a little bit of structure here he starts off with a question and then he adds a constraint to like what a good kind of answer would look like he and you got something yeah so it's not so much like whether it's legitimate although that's really really close and that's a very similar question to the like to the sorts of questions that our other social contract theorists are asking as well whether civil government is legitimate under what conditions is civil government legitimate Rousseau is asking just little tiny twist on this the way that Rousseau asset is he says can there be a legitimate civil government which immediately suggests that he's a little bit pessimistic about this right he opens up we have like one more thing to say about like his his intro and his state his statement of purpose but before we remark on that it might help to jump ahead just a smidge into the very beginning of chapter one of book one of the social contract where we're so open it was like one of the more famous lines that any philosophical text opens with which is man is born free yeah you guys finish it man is born free yeah and everywhere in Chains you can see why people think of him as a little bit of a romantic that like man is born free man's natural state is freedom but yet everywhere that we look man is in Chains why is this like he surely he doesn't mean literal chains here right it's not the case that everybody is literally chained up it's not even the case that well is that the case that everybody's literally enslaved what does this mean that it man and you know forgive the sexism humans right all humans born free yet everywhere in Chains make sense of this for me what does he mean by this yes Alyssa yeah you have to follow the rules of society which is a bummer right this is a form of enslavement like you don't get to do whatever you want when you look like every human almost every human right yeah a man is born free and everywhere so just about every human who lives under civil society which is pretty much all humans are in Chains they don't get to do what they want to do they have to follow the rules rules that they don't want to follow if this is the case can there be a legitimate civil government hard to see how if man is born free yet everywhere in Chains unless we somehow think that a legitimate civil government is going to be one where people are enslaved where people are in Chains metaphorical chains of course it's hard to see how there's going to be a legitimate civil government and just to kind of like check everybody's intuitions on the basis of like the reading that you've done for book one of the social contract does Rousseau think that like it's totally legitimate for a government to enslave its people does he think that no no he doesn't think that so perhaps a little bit pessimistic and we get another sense of this in the constraint that he puts on what it would mean for there to be a legitimate civil government Rousseau says I got a try in this attempt to articulate whether or not there could even be a possible legitimate civil government I'm going to try always to unite as they say it too tonight what right allows with what interest demands can there be a legitimate civil government if there was it would have to be the sort of government that always was able to unite what right allows with what interest demands so that justice and utility don't at any stage part ways we can see that there's a tension here what right allows with what interest demands what's the split there like why is there a tension between what right allows and what interest demands or the way that he phrases it immediately after this so that justice and utility don't at any stage part company do justice in utility have a tendency to part company is what is just always going to be what is useful example say what say what ah and is this unjust or is this just I suppose so it's not useful to kill cows incredibly useful to kill cows if you eat them and then make shoes and belts out of them yeah and maybe just like ignore the cows like we do this with people as well right it is still 16 17 62 by the way like England doesn't have a serious abolitionist movement going and won't until the early 19th century United States it's going to take a lot longer to figure that out but that seems like that's not just if there's something wrong with like killing people or killing cows for food and belts or just enslaving them or otherwise like treating people badly I suppose that's useful that's useful for some not particularly useful for others for the ones who are being used and certainly unjust what about justice is justice occasionally not particularly useful or does justice fail to meet people's interests what interest demands we're gonna have a just in fair society are some people's interest going have to be ignored is everybody gonna get here's another way of thinking about this is everybody gonna get what they want in a just and fair society this is why everyone's born free but everywhere in Chains right because in order to live in a just society it can't be the case that everybody gets what they want but Rousseau says that like we're going to try to keep these two together this is what it's going to mean in order for us to have a legitimate civil government this is also one of the reasons why I talk about this being a little bit inspiring cuz Hobbes for sure Locke less so but still in significant ways might just open that a crack for the people who are coming back in I don't want them to be locked out seemed to indicate that like in order to live in civil society sometimes you're gonna have to understand that you can't always get what you want and I would have to try sometime to get what you need but like but like but what about what I want right if I don't get to do what I want how can we talk about Liberty after all Locke says this is all that Liberty is is all that being free is it's getting to do whatever you want Rousseau says we're going to have to discuss some sort of social order and explain how that social order can come about but it can't be justified by force can't be justified by force nor can it be justified by nature because we don't have a social order by nature by nature just like all of the other social contract theorists by nature were in the state of nature where there is no social order there is no civil government in the state of nature so this is not something that just kind of like emerges naturally all on its own nor is it the sort of thing that we can discuss as being legitimated by force or coming about according to force and this is immediately Rousseau begins to launch into some discussions about like alright so what kinds of models for governments do we have what is like what is the conventional thinking this is what Sarah was maybe exactly the sort of thing that Sarah was complaining that as a matter of fact like yeah this is where he discusses war it's in this this vague conversation where he starts talking about here's what people have to say about the legitimacy of government and where social order comes from he discusses the prospect that like just like Locke does he says maybe this is maybe it's about families because families are kind of like a naturally occurring social order so maybe we should look to families and he eventually says first reasons that are I think fairly similar to the reasons that Locke gives like not quite but there's something that he does highlight in the discussion of families that maybe is an important key for what's going to come later he talks about appeal to force he talks about this just about it as like kind of the right of the stronger in the discussion of warfare he explicitly calls it the right of conquest and eventually ends up talking about slavery as well here let's start with families why our families and feel free to like borrow from Locke because it's going to be the same sort of justification that Rousseau offers why are families not a very good model for a civil society children are at least a little bit dumb right this is the whole point of parental authority over them is that they aren't capable of making their own decisions but yeah eventually they're they don't stay that way right parental authority is only temporary eventually it runs out is this what you're gonna say in yeah yeah and can we all agree that this is a sort of authority that is like completely unwilling like nobody checks to see if kids are okay with being parented by their parents and if they said like I don't wanna like I want to like be off on my own do we say like oh well very well I don't want to get in your way little five-year-old kid like go on and like be whatever it is you want to be sometimes I guess people do parent like this is the script parenting this is one route this is one way that children die all kinds of ways but yeah that's that's one way it's not safe right it's not safe to let children make their own decisions and we just don't care if they object to parental authority is that a good family by the way I mean one that relies on parental authority in order to get children comply this is perennial 3 this is an appeal divorce right the rate of the so-called right of the stronger Rousseau talks about this too right he says love like love is what like keeps families going he said the guy who gave his children up for adoption love is what keeps families going and and is the reason why if you ever see somebody who like reaches the age of maturity but doesn't play tell their parents to go cram it with walnuts and like say like I'm off on my own now like people who maintain good relationships with their parents and continue to respect their parents opinion even after they're old enough to say like I'm able to make my own decision like my parents walked into my house and my mom said like it was a part of me that would be my house you said when you have your own house you can listen to the music that you want to listen to right and you can like make your bed if you want to or not but as long as you live under my roof like you like oh that's tough now I'm living there my room so there's like a moment where that goes through my head but then there's another moment where I'm just kind of like but I love my mom and I care about her opinion if she says that I should clean my room I seriously consider like yeah maybe I should yeah she's right I am a little bit of a slob it always have been it's love that keeps those sorts of things together even when parental authority evaporates keep track of that something very very similar is going to be at work in the sort of civil society that Rousseau is is talking about and in fact we've remarked from time to time how like Hobbes and Locke are they they're kind of sort of approximating some way of like getting people to care about their neighbors but it never really turns into like a fully fledged golden rule and Rousseau is getting much much closer to this we've got a social contract theory that has like all these little elements of communitarianism in it as well so we get this conversation about families but then there's this conversation about appeal to force about this rate of the stronger or right of conquest and of this Rousseau says that's the most ridiculous use of the word right that I've ever heard there's no right of the stronger you maybe think back to like those of you who've read book 1 of the Republic this is like an argument that gets put forth relatively seriously by a fictional character that Plato makes up through Semak s who says like this is what justice is justice is whatever the strong people say and maybe this is like an account that some a backwards looking account of like how it is that governments happen there are some people that are stronger than others in the state of nature sure we're all roughly equal according to like abilities both mental and physical in the state of nature but some people are gonna have slight edges and those slight edges are gonna like turn into the sorts of things where like now they have more power over everybody else and lot discusses this this is maybe how we get the first Kings whereas Locke is going to like object to absolute monarchy as basically just a form of slavery that this is really no different than the state of nature it's just everybody agrees that like one person is scarier than everybody else this is exactly what hops Hobbes is sitting there thinking like that's what the Leviathan is that's every civil society and Locke says like no no that's a terrible civil society it's barely a civil society at all in fact maybe it's just the state of nature all over again this idea that like there's our right to dominate and control other people if you are stronger than them this describes what does happen it doesn't talk about what should happen it has like no normative content and as it has no pre-scripted it has there's no value to it it seems like right what have you ever complained that your rights were being violated have you ever asserted or right not successfully why isn't it not necessarily that like people are going to go oh well in that case like you're right but when is it that people make a claim to a right do they make a claim to a right when they're getting what they want no they make it rights are to protect the weak there is no right of the stronger that's not that's not any kind of rate we'll put it in scare quotes here for a very important reason because there's no right associated with this this just describes what does happen there's no prescriptive content to it there's no there's no way of talking about what should happen this is what rights do rights are supposed to talk about what should happen so know if you appeal to the two like why a social order is justified comes from this idea that like somebody is stronger somebody has conquered somebody else and this is what provides some right for them to rule over the people that they've conquered Rousseau says that's not I'm right that's just what happens nobody respects that because it's right it's not even clear if anybody respects that at all you might not challenge that kind of like faux Authority but only because it would be foolish to do so right because you might die in the process this right of the stronger just describes like how people do dominate one another it doesn't talk about like whether or not that form of control or that form of governance is legitimate and that's what a right is supposed to be talking about we saw this a little bit with Locke he kind of he injected this idea of Rights into the conversation rights of nature that like have some serious purchased natural rights it has some serious purchase even in the state of nature such that like if those rights are not being served by civil government we have a right to say like alright forget you sovereign I'm out I'm going back to the state of nature where I can fend for myself even better than then I'm fended for here in civil society and here Rousseau is doing a similar sort of thing in order to reject this idea that any kind of legitimate social order comes from the so-called right of the stronger and this thing bleeds into a conversation about war and it bleeds into a conversation about slavery and all kinds of efforts that some people have made to justify even certain forms of slavery that come from or which are that like you've conquered an other people maybe they were even the aggressors they attacked me first and in order to subdue them in order to stop them from attacking me I had to conquer them with force and now well we have two options either I can kill them or I can keep them my slaves this was a like one of the biggest justifications for slavery throughout Western history has been like these people were conquered and we can't just leave them to their own devices because they're pretty salty about being conquered and they're going to come back at us so like we have to keep them subdued we have to enslave them and this is perhaps a better option than being killed we might even offer it to them we might say like look here like you're a prisoner of war you have two options we can either kill you or we can enslave you which would you prefer and most of us are gonna say like I guess I'd rather be enslaved what would you prefer would you prefer to be enslaved or killed some people say killed interesting I think I'd go with enslaved yeah you would too yeah that's exactly why yeah this is this is mmm this is maybe why it's like a bad a bad idea to give this view is that like this is a slave you're always gonna have to keep an eye on as a matter of fact Rousseau even points this out he says if your legitimacy if like your so-called legitimacy if your claim to dominate somebody else's based on strength that strength is fickle right you can keep an eye on people for at least a little bit but as soon as your back is turned they might rise up against you and try to overtake you and enslave you if given this option by the way if anybody were ever to choose being enslaved maybe maybe it's for the reason that Ryan gave maybe it's for the reason that I was thinking of which is like well at least you're alive right I've seen enough people who had like lives worth living under slavery not literally just kind of historical accounts that I don't think I'd rather be dead than enslaved but still this is not really my choice this is a false trip this is not a real choice this is a coerced choice this is a choice that I'm forced into anything you might say like you could've chosen death like yes I had the other option but the fact that I had this dilemma in the first place is a product of somebody asserting their so-called right to control me just because they were stronger and there is no real right like this there's no legitimacy to it so there's no legitimacy to like that form of slavery where I opted to be enslaved rather than killed was this kind of like resonate with us by the way that if I give you a choice between like either you die or you're enslaved you might think yourself like well I guess one sense I I always have a choice like I can always choose to die instead but this is not a real choice this is a forced choice it's not freely chosen yeah Matthew yeah it might be an act of prudence yeah but I don't know that we would necessarily say that anything anything right came out of it right anything just came out of it right I don't think we'd be able to say like oh I don't know why the slaves complain they got what they wanted we offer them death or slavery and they chose whatever they preferred yeah who are these who are these like complainy whiny people who like get what they prefer and still think that there's something wrong with it there's something obviously crazy about that sort of justification all right well Rousseau says one other thing about slavery that is like pretty noteworthy he goes through a laundry list of folks who have justified slavery in one form or another Hobbes gets a call-out Caligula gets a call-out Brosius gets a call-out Aristotle gets a call-out and Rousseau makes it I think maybe it was this a quiz question Rousseau gives a kind of like a little bit of a left-handed compliment to Aristotle where he's like aerosol was kind of right about one thing Aristotle said that some people seem to be born to slavery that some people seem to be only suitable for slavery they can't actually make judgments for themselves we were just saying this about children but maybe we think this about oh oh I don't know backwards cultures that we go and conquer and we're like they're looking them they're like they can't really fend for themselves we have to take them in and care for them with a sort of a parental authority that never goes away because there's something about these people that they're just like not suited to freedom and Rousseau says yeah there are some people like this but it ain't natural we beat it out of them we make them unsuitable when we enslave somebody from birth we destroy the part of them that would have been capable for of like taking care of themselves and this does not justify that slavery at all this says like we've done this incredible violence to this person so yeah you might be able to make claims that like people who have been enslaved for their entire lives if you were to let them out on their own recognizance since they might not do too well the same way Jack was suggesting like maybe we use a cow model and this just comes to mind because we've been talking about animal rights in my environmental ethics class sometimes people will say this about like this is why it's okay to basically enslave cows I don't know if it's like really all that much of a stretch to describe the conditions that we submit cows to as slavery I don't know if dogs would be our children enslaved yeah maybe because like eventually they grew out of it dogs are yeah dogs are maybe more companion species dogs enjoy the relationship that they have with us most dogs do not although some dogs might be enslaved but a cow in a factory farm that's being like raised for slaughter seems like we just keep it around so that we can exploit it that's kind of slavery right and sometimes people justify this by saying like cows are not suitable for life in the wild you can't just let all the cows loose and expect that they're gonna be okay they'll die pretty quickly first of all I don't know if that's true but second of all we made them that way perhaps like we incur some responsibility to take care of them we don't get to say like god they're naturally like suited for like being in slavery like we made them suited to being slaves it's not natural at all okay let's get into the whole social contracting business but before we get into the social contract I'll erase this bit nothing really brand-new so far right this all seems like pretty standard social contract theory fair even the stuff about family or like we saw that with Locke the stuff about slavery who Rousseau says slavery is bad everybody said slavery was bad with the possible exception of hops maybe eventually we're gonna get this social contract and talk about what that is but before there's a social contract there's an earlier agreement there's a first agreement that's the earliest agreement right you can't be earlier than first there's the first agreement and it ain't the social contract because the chapter on the social contract happens after the chapter on the first agreement what is that first agreement what needs to happen according to Rousseau before we can even make a social contract that was not rhetorical shall I ask it again sometimes when I ask a question and I like to wait a long time for answers like that somebody raises their hand they're like what was the question no they all right maybe you didn't maybe didn't hear cuz you didn't know I was about to ask a question what is this first agreement that Rousseau talks about that has to happen before the social contract and maybe in searching your memory you can find the answer I can think of like one place that's a more reliable source for the answer that's right the ceiling yeah look at the ceiling maybe it's up there no is it on your desk it might be on your desk if the text is on your desk what's the first agreement it's the title of a chapter pretty easy to find want a little bit more of a roadmap chapter five book one the social contract by jean-jacques Rousseau published in 1762 I ain't giving this to you like if we have to like wait out the rest of the class I'll do it it's gonna be awkward for the folks at home I apologize video viewers people have to become a people yeah listen thank you Thank You Christian everybody thanks you the people at home thank you yeah individuals uh so first of all it might be like you have to be this is Russo all over the place just like cotton was you have to be really really careful about the way you phrase these sorts of things because if we say like a people has to become a people really like a people doesn't have to become a people a people is a people that's just true by definition that which is is and that which is not cannot be right yeah so like yeah are people already is a people but a group of individuals a bunch of individuals has to become a people and for those of you who are keeping track this is one of the big moments where we get something new from her so this is something significant in order for there to be some sort of legitimate social contract a bunch of individual like you can't make a social contract between just a bunch of individuals in the state of nature this is different like Hobbes didn't talk about this Locke didn't talk about this they both seemed to have like glossed over this and assumed that like any group of individuals who are self-interested in rational are going to get together and be able to form some sort of social contract by which they form the sovereignty that represents the authority of civil government an authority that comes from the consent of the governed may be a tacit consent according to Hobbes that like no rational person would deny because it's always better to live under civil government than it is to be in the state of nature I got an ongoing sort of consent as Locke describes it such that like if you ever check back in and you're like yeah I don't grant mikan-san phlox says like well then leave like you can totally overthrow them like you can do this this is allowable if they're not actually providing for the security of your life liberty and property and Rousseau seems to be saying like this is way more complicated than these folks are making it out to be a bunch of individuals has to become a people first and there's no like formal agreement this first agreement isn't the sort of thing where like everybody kind of looks around like oh so we're are people right no they have to kind of get a sense that like this like the whole group is a thing is that clear enough we're a class I don't know if you like experienced this in all of your classes do you feel a sense of community in your classes we made no social contract this is a very authoritarian environment by the way like there's a little bit of a kind of like if you don't like it you can leave I suppose this ain't high school you paid for it right yeah so you don't have to do although you paid for it before you found out what it was like so like maybe there's some buyer's remorse from time to time have you ever been in a class where like you by the end of the semester you're alike like we're this is a thing like we're a group of like we're a team maybe we're a community there doesn't have to be any kind of like formal making of rules that everybody can sense - there's this this kind of like vague and tacit and unspoken sense that like hey you know what like we're all in this together that there is such a thing like maybe it's a mental construct or maybe this is just kind of the nature of like the relationship between parts and wholes but like individually where parts of a whole that is a thing this is what a people is okay families like that sometimes too right yeah yeah I don't know if I would say that like I hate people in my family there are some that I recognize that like and maybe this is kind of like what you're getting at with like people that you didn't particularly care for in your high school community but like you recognize like I gotta find a way to get along with them somehow right because they're not going away recently had an experience with a neighbor that was like this where I was just kind of like oh boy it'd be great to just be like like see you later but like no not like literally yes see you later see you everyday when I walk my dog like you're not going away we got to find a way to like to get along because like this is a thing we're a people and this has to happen before there's a social contract it's necessary to create a social contract it's necessary to create a sovereign it's necessary to create some sort of like civil society once we've done this then we can initiate a social contract but you're not going to be able to trust people this is very different by the way remember Hobbes said like people have to be scared into compliance right they have to be like in order to feel like they can get over this inherent mistrust of one another we have to have a big scary Leviathan right I have to be awed into compliance and we're so is taking a very different approach where he says like first you have to kinda sorta at least a little bit care about one another you have to kind of sort of like have some sense that there is a community a natural community families are like a natural community like this right it's not civil society just yet but a natural community must form Locke talks about this a little bit when he says it's possible to have peace in civil society it's possible that cooperation sorry not in civil society it is possible to have it in civil society it's also possible to have it in the state of nature for Locke and whereas Locke doesn't go into the details behind this Rousseau is starting to flesh this out a little bit more he says like there has to be a sense community a group of individuals has to become a people and only then can we make a social contract this is contrary to things that like Hobbes and Locke said yes it's just kind of like a little slight spin that adds a little bit different flavor to something that ordinarily was very very similar content but Rousseau is very careful to point out that like the social contract that gets made is not the creation of some sort of new power nothing gets invented in the social contract it's easy to read Hobbes this way by the way write that like we invent an artificial person that gets imbued with all of this authority and maybe we say like well it's not really invented because like that authority comes from the collective wills of all of the people that make up the Leviathan that's like that's that's the beginning of this idea that like the authority of government comes from the consent of the governed in some way this is not the creation of a new power Rousseau says that it's the consolidation maybe or like I've got better words and yeah that's exactly what I said it's the consolidation individual power and will of all of the people who are coming together all of the various individuals that are like the parts of this whole community maybe a better word than consolidation though and I think this starts to get like considerably more at the spirit of what Rousseau is up to and why it might be different than what Hobbes is talking about perhaps even what Locke is talking about but maybe instead of consolidation we could use a word like it's the coordination of individual powers and we'll of all of the members that's not new it's not the creation of some sort of new power it's the consolidation maybe even better the coordination of all of these powers it's pointing them all in the same direction have you ever done like it some sort of joint practical project with people have you ever tried to assemble furniture with somebody do it by yourself I do it by myself sometimes - why do you do it by yourself instead of with other people you know you get it like when you have like multiple people so I'm like now you're kind of getting in each other's way I started putting these pieces together but they started like putting thing and like they didn't go together the same because we're not on the same page not necessarily that she's better than you but just that it's it's me I'm a maybe yeah maybe um but but more like it's just inconvenient to try to like coordinate a whole bunch of people but if we are able to coordinate we're capable of more right we have more power we have more skill we can get bigger things done but it does require that like we're coordinating with one another and in order to do that you can't just do whatever you want right you have to check in with other people make sure that like the way that I'm doing it is consistent with the way that they're doing it I have to maybe putting together furniture is a bad idea how about ensemble music playing you can't just like let everybody do whatever they want you have to pay attention to what other people are doing you have to like back off and give other people's face sometimes if you don't like ensemble music playing maybe team sports team sports like you can't be a team can't be a musical ensemble you can't be a couple you can't be a family you can't be a people unless you're already starting to like navigate this space of recognizing that like I have to restrain myself a little bit otherwise we're not going to be able to coordinate our efforts everybody can't be left to their own devices on a team the team has to be functioning together you have to all be pointed towards the same goal in a way that like they start to spontaneously sell organize and like startin at the this point of the social contract we do better than spontaneously self-organized we formally organized we start making rules for ourselves and so far it looks like it's the sort of thing where it's just kind of like gasps just kind of happening naturally right everybody recognizes that like oh we're a team and like we're all imbued with this kind of like camaraderie and team spirit by which we're kind of like oh no like you go first and then all go and that like it's going to be easier that way we're gonna be more coordinated this way but we know that there's a big problem that's associated with this because like not everybody wants to be a team player and sometimes for good reason because you're looking at the way that the team is doing things and you're like yeah I could do better myself and maybe you're right there's a big problem that's associated with this that Rousseau points out and this is like the problem that needs to be solved we've already got some sense of like what you doing that's different there's this idea of a people that you have to be first it has to kind of like present itself organically in order for a social contract to even begin to make sense but there's this big problem here that Rousseau is is identifying for us that says like how can we do this in a way that ensures that there is no loss of Liberty in this process because as soon as people feel like their liberty is being constrained as soon as they feel like I can't do what I want to do in this team setting they're not gonna want to be a part of the team anymore they're not gonna like function as part of the team anymore that all that team spirit all have that kind of like Sonny like everybody's working and it's just like naturally falling into place we've recognized that this doesn't just spontaneously happen takes more than a semester perhaps for this to happen or it takes like the right kinds of events for all of us to go through together that sort of trust has to be built up there's a big problem that's here which is how can we do this in a way that ensures that there's no loss of Liberty such that nobody is kind of in this community and thinking themselves like I don't like it I don't get to do what I want everybody needs to be thinking about this as cooperating with one another is the way to get what I want the big solution to this so there's a big problem in the room so it says all right so here's the big solution I want to get the phrasing on this one right direct quote the big solution to this is that we need to see the total alienation of each associate not bad with all his rates to the whole community this is art we're gonna ensure that there's no loss of Liberty there needs to be a complete alienation a total alienation of each person with all of their rights to the community this is way different than Locke Locke said that there's like a partial denial of like your liberty right this is your day that you lay down a little bit of Liberty to get more in return it's just a good deal in a good civil society there's no total alienation of the individual Rousseau is saying what we need is the total alienation of each associate with all of his rights to the community um anybody in the spot with me right now cuz he just said here's the big problem how can we do this in a way that ensures that there's no loss of Liberty and it's like well you just need to like completely give up like all of your rights like yourself and all of your rights to the community that way there's gonna be no loss of Liberty and I'm listening to this and John Locke is probably listening this and saying this sounds like a complete loss of Liberty what's that yeah that's the thing right like it's not a loss if you do it willingly yeah it does feel like it's a technicality and also this is a little bit utopian we kind of like mentioned that Rousseau is like man was born free and everywhere in Chains like he's gonna be describing the possibility of a legitimate civil government there's a pretty good bet that he's thinking to himself like there haven't been any yet it's like oh this is what it would look like it would be like everybody willingly completely alienates their identity and like all of their rights and gives them over to the community like totally a total alienation everything ourselves like how is that work and we might ask like serious practical questions here like how are you going to get people to do this a parasitic hive mind bacteria this is surprisingly not the route that Rousseau takes nor is genetic engineering or brainwashing or anything like that or subduing people into compliance by like I don't know like opiates of the masses like television and Facebook and stuff like that maybe there's a way of kind of interpreting this that I think is a little bit better than total alienation this is exactly what Rousseau does say but I think that there's a way of interpreting what he's saying here maybe what we're looking for here is what we're looking for is a total identification of my individual will with the common good or my own personal interests are my individual will that's making my individual interests there needs to be a complete identification of my interests with the interests of the community with the common good there cannot be any separation of these two this cannot be understated cannot be understood yeah I can totally be understood this cannot be overstated in terms of its importance for Rousseau this is what leads us to this key concept I don't think it's just not possible to understand Russo's take on the social contract without understanding what the heck the general will is he gets a lot of mileage out of this concept and it's not immediately clear what this is in fact it remains a puzzle we're going to keep talking about the general will well into our next session because there are all kinds of little philosophical riddles about the general will but this is what the general will is this is the general will is this common good and in order for there to be like a possibility of a legitimate social contract in order for there to be a possibility of a legitimate civil society all of the members of that society need to completely alienate sure if you want to think about that way they need to identify their own interests with the interests of the collective we're so employs some really interesting metaphors here in order to kind of like elaborate on what's going on here he talks about I think that probably the most productive of these is the body politic he also plays around with the etymology of Republic sometimes referring to like Res Publica the public thing we can think of like the Republic Roman Republic sometimes he plays a little fast and loose with kind of citizen subject language reset citizens and subjects are like the same things in a properly functioning civil society in a legitimate civil society one where all people have if we want to find other sorts of language we have like Vic total alienation the tonal identification sometimes I hear folks talk about this in terms of subsuming your individual will or subsuming your individual interests under the interests of the common good or subsuming the individual will under the general will its lining these things up perfectly so that there is no conflict between them this is the magical move right there's and maybe it's like a little too magical maybe it's a little too utopic keep in mind that Rousseau understands how hard it is to get this he sit in the bar crazy high for a legitimate civil society he's not so pessimistic there that he thinks that can't be done he still thinks that it's like a worthwhile philosophical project to try to figure out like what would it be like in order for us to have a community where everybody follows the rules because they want to because they all understand that these rules are good well in order for that we would have to have good rules right like I don't object to the good rules I only object to the bad rules this is what we all think right my problem with the legitimacy of government or the authority of government isn't what they tell me to do isn't when they tell me to do the things that I agree with it's when they tell me to do things I disagree with so maybe the problem there is with the rules but what we're gonna definitely see a lot more of in booktube but like it's already in the post here like it's already in the works the furniture is already in the room Rousseau is just going to rearrange it just a little bit is this recognition that like perhaps this hinges at least as much on the people as it does on the government perhaps this hinges at least as much on this kind of like mental state there's a kind of like a psychological dimension of like what makes a people fit to be ruled by good rules you could have the best possible laws Rousseau is gonna say this in book two like you could have the best laws if you give them to shitty people you will not have a functioning civil society there needs to be this at least an openness or a willingness to be ruled by good rules to think that like it is possible that I can completely identify my own interests with the interests of the whole and this is not that for another concept I was talking about the analogy to team sports anybody participate in team sports is this how it works like there's just there's no I in team there is a me and team yeah there's normally a mean team but like the team can't be a team if there are people who say like my interest in the team's interests are slightly different and that's a shitty team right that's a team that falls apart yeah they're out to pad their own stats rather than making sure that the team wins and that is a shitty team that is a team that is not functioning and no amount of like good rules are going to like if you do have those sorts of rules that force people in the compliance yeah now maybe more man is born free but everywhere in Chains right this is the kind of civil society where rooms like noone like being ruled by the rules we've got to find something where people are interested in being ruled by the rules that's the clock Bell but don't pack up yet because there are like a couple of various not there are a couple of very big things that we're gonna pick up with it our next meeting but I want to get them on the board here first one is this just downright puzzle and maybe this is a cop-out I don't know what to make of this I'll be totally honest like this is the sort of thing where like when I read it I'm just like ah Rousseau man what do we do with people who aren't willing to do this what do we do with the people in our community who cannot identify their own interest with the interest of the common good Oh better than set them free yeah yeah those who don't comply all will be forced to be free and I don't know if you read that and thought to yourself like what kind of Orwellian doublespeak is that because I don't know if that's a thing to being forced to be free but maybe one clue to this is this distinction between different kinds of Liberty that are so discussed and surround the same when he's when he's I think this is chapter 8 and the chapter on civil society where he says look there's natural Liberty but what we get in exchange for natural Liberty which we kind of give up you're like how can we do this in a way that ensures that there's no loss of Liberty we give up natural Liberty and what we get in exchange for that is civil liberty and it's a better Liberty the way that Rousseau talks about this is something we saw a little bit with Locke as well Rousseau kind of describes the distinction here as the it's the difference between possession and property and there's just in case you were thinking to yourself like oh right maybe you're trying to sell me on this idea that civil liberty is somehow better than natural Liberty but then Rousseau adds like one more kind of Liberty to sweeten the deal and he says you also get this in civil society and a legitimate civil society at least you get moral Liberty and moral Liberty is really nothing more than a human beings ability to rule themselves to be subject to their own rule because newsflash and Manuel Conte is going to hammer this one into the ground in its groundwork for the metaphysics of morals I guess it's a good place for a groundwork to be to be hammered into the ground but Concha is gonna say doing whatever you feel like doing is not freedom being a some might say a slave to your passions right think about somebody who's an addict an addict who does what they feel like are they free not clear that they are in order to really be free you need to be subject to your own rule some restraint is required in order for there to be real freedom this is what's going on here in civil liberty and moral Liberty is there's this recognition that like I am my own rule I'm not subject to no rules at all that's not freedom I'm subject to my own rules I am my own sovereign and then we think we might think to ourselves like but then how is there a community ah because there's a complete identification of me and the community there is no difference between the interests there's perhaps is no difference between like there might not even be a significant difference ontologically when everybody is really living in a legitimate civil society thank you guys so much for sticking around a little bit extra we'll pick this up on

Channel: Adam Rosenfeld

Views: 2,775

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: History of Modern Philosophy, Early modern philosophy, political philosophy, social contract, general will, rousseau, liberty, community

Id: 9SVn5SqzcIE

Length: 73min 40sec (4420 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 27 2018