Rousseau's "The Social Contract" - Book II

are you guys doing today good good thumbs up all around anybody not anybody not okay oh yeah like actually I'm really looking forward to not Spring Break what is it spring holiday yeah it's pretty holiday so today we're doing another day our last day our second slash last day of coverage of Rousseau's the social contract in our last meeting we actually got like all of the major conceptual furniture into there today we're just going to kind of be elaborating on this and maybe we can revisit a question that I addressed at the beginning of our last session which is this question of like so really is is we're so a good writer is he like making his ideas clear in the social contract and he even kind of gives a little bit of a nod to some potential problems with this at some point in book 2 we're gonna let me finish the thought he says that like my ideas all hang together but I can't like get them all out at once and this is maybe like when I don't know about you guys when I read that phrase I'm just kind of like boy that's a mouthful right there Rousseau because like it seems like every single thing he says is there's almost like a Compton flare to this although he's pre-con so maybe Conte has a Russo neum flare to him where we might say something like he's really just kind of expressing the same idea over and over and over again from slightly different directions and the big idea if we're gonna kind of like talk about this in a variety of ways we're gonna talk about the general will some more today we're going to talk about sovereignty in some slightly new in different ways we're gonna talk about the law and the law giver maybe the law giver is like something that's like not part of the same thing but the law the people the sovereign and sovereignty and the general will if the way that you kind of like help yourself out with trying to keep hold of all this is to think to yourself like this is all the same thing for Rousseau you can be doing a whole lot worse these are all just different profiles of roughly the same thing he's trying to articulate this idea of what it is that a civil state looks like and perhaps like Russo's writing it's this thing that like it all hangs together but it's difficult to say it all at once we're gonna start off with kind of rehashing some stuff in book one just because it's so important that like we can't we can't kind of get away with not rehearsing and we only talked about it once at our last meeting and it's complicated enough that it bears a little bit of review then we'll get into some of the stuff that's going on in book 2 which is as I was just saying really not a whole lot more than an elaboration of what's going on in book 1 and some slightly more specific terms let's make sure I got everybody who's here actually here and good attendance is done the general will let's start here test your mental acuity in your memory and your comprehension of your so what is the general will and again not a rhetorical question that's a real question you guys tell me what's the general will we talked about this at our last meeting Pearson the body politic yeah that's we could do a whole lot worse than kind of glomming on to this it's a bit of a metaphor but maybe not Rousseau refers to this as the body politic oh that's not good you guys like me and like 99% of the calls that you get are just like not people that you know I'm on the Do Not Call list I don't know how the number got out there but like bad people have it okay um the body politic I'll go ahead and put it in quotes so we can think about it in like a metaphorical sense this body politic is a body right did we talk about did we talk about bodies and body parts at all that's right and we talked about like ensemble musicianship and we talked about team sports did we talk about bodies and body parts so bodies have parts right this is maybe we can go all the way back to Descartes with this where he was like this is what it means to be an extended body is that it's divisible into parts right this is part of the argument that he makes about how the body is distinct from the soul because the soul doesn't have parts of oh maybe maybe the soul does have something kind of like parts it has faculties or something like this um but yeah the soul is not divisible the same way that a body is but without getting into too much kind of adult content what's up with body parts our body parts separable from the body like I can cut my hand off and then like ah my hand is like just a part of my bike but it's been separated but is my head when I cut it off is it like part of my body anymore wouldn't be too good on its own right yeah do any of my body parts sometimes like rebel and they're just like let's say I'm in the cold and it's really cold and my body starts drawing blood away from the extremities so that I don't die of hypothermia and then like my toes are just like whoa body you can't do that if you like draw blood away from us we're gonna get frostbite and die and like ten the toes be angry maybe we're doing a little bit of anthropomorphize ation here but like would it make sense for the toes to be angry that they're not being well tended to by the body here the body's trying to save itself yeah what happens if the body doesn't save itself the toes are still gonna die anyway right so this is like if the toes are gonna have a chance the body needs to survive right we can think about this as like a a very powerful metaphor here this body politic is this thing where we would say like all of these various parts of the body are such that they only succeed if the whole body succeeds we might also get into this in just a second about like what we might do with rebellious body parts is there such a thing as like parts of your body that are just kind of like screw you rest of the body I'm going for myself cancer is this is like cancer right and at that point maybe we might think to ourselves like you know is the body entitled to just try to kill the cancer and get rid of it yeah maybe right alright so think about this idea of a body politic Rousseau also talks about this in terms of a republic and both he and our translator stress the literal Latin parts of Republic it's a Res Publica right like res extensa res co he taunts the thinking thing the thinking substance the extended thing or the extended substance that's risco Eaton's and res extensa Res Publica is like the public thing it is some public thing that's what the general will is it's some public thing the way that Rousseau defines this is he says the general will is this public person that's formed by the Union I'll come back to that idea of a union it's formed by the union of all of the other persons and is this what a body is a body is like it's just the union of all the body parts it is but maybe we want to say this in a stronger sense than just a mere conglomeration right if I took a whole bunch of dismembered body parts and I put them in a pile and I was like that's a body somebody might say like that's a pile of parts but I don't know if I would say that it's a body just yet they have to be organized in a certain way and they have to be coordinated we talked at our last meeting the individual will needing to be alienated in its totality for the sake of the general will you use that word alienation just did some other terms that might be helpful and might get closer to getting us to like what it is that Rousseau is trying to talk about there needs to be an identification of all of the individual wills with that general will we don't have that the general will just kind of evaporates it falls apart there is no body if all of the parts aren't somehow the parts don't really identify themselves I suppose in the same way that toes don't have particular desires but if they're not all recognizing that their own success is the same thing as the success of the whole then everything falls apart there is no whole functioning body anymore and then it's just a matter of time before there are no parts either because it's the union of all of the individuals that it's a union of all the individual persons into like one public person we saw that idea with Hobbes right this is that that picture on the frontispiece of the Leviathan it's the Leviathan is made up of the union of all of the individuals but that just kind of gets us at this idea of like how the power comes together right if we're going to say that the general will is this union of all the individual wills maybe we think of it as like well it's it's bigger you take all the individual wills and you put them together and now you have a big will perhaps a more powerful will what we get with this idea identification or ordination is like in addition to and increase that's kind of provided by the sovereign or the general will or the civil state we're getting a kind of not just not just a combination of the Wills into one bigger more powerful will but we're getting a coordination of them so that they're all pointed in the same direction as well right so it's not just this brute union it is a union in the sense of coordination into a whole of identification with of all the parts with the whole some other really fun stuff that Rousseau says about the general will and kind of explaining it in various terms we can get this this metaphor of the body politic of the Res Publica right Rousseau talks about it as he says you can think of the general will as the state if you're thinking about it in a passive sense and you can think of it as the sovereign when you're thinking about it in the active sense so when the general will is kind of maybe not in an act in kind of like an actual activity right now we can talk about it as the state and this captures one dimension of the general will if we want to think about it as active and doing things perhaps commanding all of the parts we can think of it as the sovereign but they are two sides of the same coin there's like an active and a passive capacity to the general will we can also think about this in terms of the people and we can think of the people in a similar sort of an active and a passive sense so the people when we're thinking about them in their passive sense such that we would associate them with the whole of the state what would I call that maybe it will help too shall we do the other one first what do I call individual people in a civil society who have come together as a people as a whole but we're thinking about them in terms of their parts now then as parts but as active parts in the civil society and it's kind of acting with sovereignty citizens there we go yeah good excellent that was a that was a reach I was not sure I was like are they gonna get this one but yeah good all right they're citizens in this kind of active sense that the citizens are acting with sovereignty and what's this other side subjects yeah good was that a quiz question are you guys just like really on top of this I was a quiz question alright and you're I don't have to be an either/or and you're on top of this so yeah citizens in the sense that like we command right in that like we make the rules and we like exert this Authority in this active sense of like each of our participation in the general will in the sovereign in the state in the law as the people right and subjects in the sense that like we receive the commands that we are commanded and this is why Rousseau is able to say things like the social contract is some things that the social contract that kind of like brings this general will together the social contract is a contract that each of us makes with ourselves this is a different formulation than we've seen from folks like Locke and Hobbes where the social contract is something that each individual makes with all of the other individuals that come together and form the state now we're thinking about this as something that each individual does with themselves such that like we become citizen and subject to ourselves now all this talk of like parts and wholes seems like it might sort of suggest a possible objection I'm kind of like block this off just for a second might avail itself of a possible objection one that Russo acknowledges and I think it says that it's book 1 chapter 7 of the social contract and if you guys follow contemporary kind of 20th century politics you might have recognized the subjection to its one that's really really similar to an objection that I in Rand makes it's an objection that suggests that we're just making an ontological mistake when we talk about members of a society as parts of a whole such that we would say something like look man I'm not just some part of a whole we might even say that whole is a fiction individuals come first societies are these things that like we invented this concept of a society of a whole that like we're all kind of like parts of but first and foremost and perhaps in reality each of us as an individual here's what Rousseau has to say about this he's imagining the subject this objection then he says suppose somebody says the following suppose they say this I have an absolute and naturally independent existence I am NOT something that exists only because certain items have come together in an association so what I am said to quote unquote oh to the common cause ie to the body politic or the sovereign whose existence is in that way dependent on it the conduct of its members pause for just a moment this the society the whole the people is dependent on me I am NOT dependent on the people and perhaps there's some truth to this but I don't know if it's only just one side of the coin like that and this is really a gift what the what the whole of society owes to me that I give it is a gift a handout and if I withhold it that won't harm anyone else as much as it will benefit me as for the moral person that can that constitutes the state that is not a man but a mere mental construct this is Rand says almost exactly the same thing in kind of critiquing this idea of kind of a communitarian you know the whole with the parts or perhaps worse putting the whole before the parts if you've heard this that the the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few right but we can imagine somebody who would make an objection that says something like no no no first and foremost and of paramount moral value is my existence as an individual and insofar as the society has any value at all it's this conglomeration of the values of all of the individuals that kind of get lumped together and compose it this is a powerful map I don't know how how good of an objection is this Pearson you would like to smell the fart yeah in the same way that like we can think about like body parts and body whole yeah that like what's that needlessly prideful ah maybe needlessly kind of like confident in this idea that like look I can do just fine on my own I don't need the society as much as the society needs me and it's like like be careful about that might even think about this as kind of like even the forms of societies that we form in the state of nature right like families because here we talked about this before about how how just unbelievably awful newborn humans are at surviving so like when I say like can you make it on your own a lot of people think like alright so I'll go to like the sporting goods store I'll get a whole bunch of survival gear and then I'll go off into the woods and become a hermit on my own words like women you can't do that because now you're benefiting from like the health and cooperation of others we like made all this and survival gear for you so you got to be able to do it like super low-tech and you're like I've seen YouTube channels the people that go off into like the woods with nothing at all and they find a sharp rock and they start like building things up from that primitive technology you guys familiar with this YouTube channel it is like so soothing to watch this guy just like make his own mud hut yeah Josh as perhaps yeah using the knowledge and on top of that he went off on his own as a fully functioning adult if you imagine him like abandoned in the woods as an infant like no no perhaps more so and this is maybe one way we can think of sort of like natural fitness for society that like or a natural need for society that all of us have is that like a lot of animals are ready to go almost right away a gazelle on the Prairie it's born it's wobbly for a couple of minutes and then it's running humans absolutely useless pooping and crying machines for at least what three years twenty to twenty years we can't make it on our own we just can't we can't we can't right maybe we could as like individuals but then we're kind of like tossed back into like you'd have to be all by yourself what if you came across other people who are on their own and then we have like Hobbesian state of nature problems that are kind of springing up so there's something about this objection that is kind of maybe a little bit intuitively appealing but on kind of further inspection maybe it's it's not as compelling as it might seem at the very least we might say like ah this is tricky I'm not really sure what to make of this not really sure what to talk about what to say about like the priority of the parts or the priority of the whole we might say that neither has priority that they kind of Co constitute one another this is by the way if we're kind of thinking about like that objection sounds like stupid that objection sounds like a sort of an arrogance well note what Russo's response to this objection is almost immediately he responds with the following it means nothing less than each individual will be forced to be free this is this is immediately on the tails of this objection that Rousseau's gives us this force to be free idea and we got to this in our last meeting right that Rousseau says those who those who talk like this those who act like this those who would put their own individual interests ahead of the interests of the whole those who would put their own will ahead of the general will perhaps even those who would make a distinction between the individual will in the general will these people are going to need to be forced to be free and my question with this at our last meeting was what the hell does that mean like how can you force someone to be freaking for somebody if you force them to be free that's they're not really free are they jack so this is one way that we could talk about forcing people to be free we could kick them out although it's interesting that like Rousseau doesn't say a whole lot about banishing people in this conversation of forcing them to be free or even later when we get into the conversations of the sovereign and the things that it can do what sorts of limits on its power there might be he talks about the death penalty is this forcing somebody to be free there I've freed you from this mortal coil I've killed you think again of the cancer right cancer wants to be on its own alright cancer I'll kill you forced you to be free Plato talks like this sometimes that in dying you become more free but I'm buying that can you make somebody free by killing them certainly seems to fly in the face of any kind of intuitive moral objections I might have to murder that it's not somehow doing somebody a favor Charles exclude them from the social contract they have in fact already excluded themselves from the social contract in fact right we can regard them as like they're not actually part of the part of the whole anymore if they've decided to cut themselves off from it so we can help them do whatever whatever it is that they want but again this would be what would this look like would it be banishment with the death penalty fit would putting somebody in prison fit does that force somebody to be free continue Charles yeah no you don't get you don't get any help yeah if you yeah if you really want to be free then like go ahead and be free this is this would it seems like this kind of like if you don't want to be a part of the club then I guess you're not part of the club you don't get the benefits and so if you're going to complain about the drawbacks you don't get all of the all of the prizes that come along with those drawbacks but again this does not seem to be the sort of thing that Rousseau is talking about he doesn't really talk about banishment all that time he doesn't talk about social isolation it's not like a timeout that he's talking about he's talking about like exerting the full force of sovereignty of the general will on this person to make them comply to bring them to heel this is getting awfully close to the sort of stuff that Hobbes says about like this is the whole purpose of sovereignty is its to get people into compliance to force them to be free part of the way that we might be able to make some sense of this because this is genuinely a kind of like a puzzling sentiment from her so given everything else that he said because it almost seems not just almost it totally seems like the whole trick to making this thing work for Rousseau is this idea that like everybody participates willingly in society right nobody is made to do anything against their will this is why he says at the very very beginning of the social contract man is born free yet everywhere in Chains right the whole business with us being in Chains is that like we have to follow rules that we don't want to follow and insofar as we feel somewhat oppressed by these rules and so far as these rules seem to thwart our will or work against our interests then we're in fact not free we're enslaved and this is the sort of thing that seems to be going on here as soon as you have somebody like it's it's all well and good to suggest that like we start off with a people that all identify that like hey we're all in this together and then we make rules and everybody likes the rules because everybody like agrees on the rules and everybody agrees that the rules are necessary and everybody knows that the health of the body politic is necessary for the health of all of the parts and that like the way that I look out for myself when I say that I make this social contract with myself is that it's a deal that I make with myself it's for my own benefit and everything that like the sovereign does everything that civil society subjects me to everything that I have to endure as a subject of the body body politic is something that I suffer with a smile except as soon as somebody says but I don't wanna so what do we do with those people and can we do it in such a way that respects their liberty that kind of honors this thing that Rousseau says at the very beginning of the social contract when he says like look I'm trying to figure out if there's such a thing as a legitimate civil state and in order for it to be legitimate there has to be no loss of Liberty so can there be no loss of Liberty if you're forcing somebody to be free the way that Rousseau seems to be able to try to make some sense of this and I think he's reasonably successful is he makes this distinction we got to this at our last meeting - right distinction between natural Liberty and civil liberty but we rushed it maybe all right natural Liberty versus civil liberty will force them to give up their natural Liberty because after all this was what the person who is making the objection was saying right about Baba I have an absolute and naturally independent existence sure in the state of nature each of us is independent and separate individuals but in civil society perhaps not interdependent on one another the same way that body parts are interdependent on one another to make a whole so there's natural Liberty and we forced them to give that up so that they'll adopt the civil liberty instead and in which case they still get to remain free in fact maybe it's even a better freedom what's this difference between natural Liberty and said like it's one thing to say that like oh there's a natural Liberty and there's a civil liberty and that one's not as good and this one's better okay sure Rousseau like wait what's he talking about is this believable again not a rhetorical question what's the difference between natural Liberty and civil liberty Jack yeah insofar as like your will is free I don't know if that makes any sense it insofar as like you have a will then you can exercise that will those kind of like what John Locke talks about in the essay right you have a will you can exercise it sometimes you get what you want and in those moments you're free sometimes you don't get what you want in those moments you're constrained and you're not free you're not at liberty to do whatever you want this is natural Liberty maybe he gives us some examples to think about this one example what's the example for a nap of natural Liberty that he offers up possession yeah mere possession and we saw this we saw this with Hobbes we saw it with Locke as well that it's one thing to say that like I can get things in my possession but my possession only guarantees me access to this thing that I possess insofar as I have the power to hold on to it if somebody else overpowers me and takes it away from me I lose that possession but there's something that I don't lose even when somebody takes something out of my possession and that's this kind of analog of possession that I get in the civil state that's property yeah and then this three is better than mere possession civil liberty is better than natural Liberty in case you need the deal to be sweetened just a little bit more looser tax on and this is this is actually quite a big deal it's quite a big deal because it helps us make sense of exactly how it is that like Rousseau isn't doing some kind of sleight of hand move reason it's kind of like well like I took away your natural Liberty but I gave you civil liberties so like I came out better for it well we have in this moral Liberty we get a like a much clearer sense of what it is that we're so says we're getting by coming together and identifying as a people by coming together and identifying as one body politic by subsuming our individual wills under the general will what is moral Liberty yes yeah the ability to be my own boss the ability to rule myself we might say to ourselves wait hold on didn't I have this over here in natural Liberty and Rousseau is like no you don't Compton is going to double down on this in our next this requires restraint it's not just doing whatever you feel like my dog can do whatever she feels like she does not have Liberty she has a kind of natural freedom but it's not really liberty my dog is not her own master kind I actually I don't know if that's true because I work with my like most of what I work with on my work on with my dog is self-restraint put a treat down on the table she's gonna go after him I got weight and she's like she even adopt certain strategies pill look away she like don't let the treat be in my field of view because if I look at it I know I won't be able do you do this with yourself as well that if there's something you're like I want that but I oughtn't have it so like I have to exercise my will right I have to maybe even put up blocks and barriers to myself like look away don't even look at it and this is being your own ruler this is being your own boss because you're just a slave to your passions otherwise there's not an interesting sort of a morally interesting sort of Liberty at work with just a mere natural Liberty something a little more interesting with civil liberty this is a kind of Liberty that gets that I have good reason to expect others will respect and with moral Liberty Rousseau manages to close this circle where it's not just about like I have a Liberty that others have to respect it's I have a Liberty that I respect I respect my own rule by being able to rule myself which means being able to restrain myself not just do whatever I feel like recognize what I should do and have that be something that governs what I want to do does this make sense yes no you only yeah Rousseau yeah good good question Rousseau says you only get moral Liberty in a civil state you only get moral Liberty in a civil state because you can't become the sort of thing that has moral Liberty until you're in the civil state there's no way for you to learn moral Liberty outside of the civil state and again think back to small children can they rule themselves can they restrain themselves or do small children just do whatever they feel like m'kay you've had I'm sorry were you I have read Lord of the Flies yeah in a state of nature in fact yeah it was like actually a few better literary examples of a Hobbesian state of nature than Lord of the Flies and this perhaps is this anybody like spend a lot of time caring for trying to govern small children we recognize they do not do a good job of governing themselves just last night I was talking about like an experience that I had when I was like a teenager with like a five-year-old who just like turned and looked at another five-year-old I was watching them and like I saw like something went through their head I'm like what are they thinking are they gonna hug the kid next to them are they gonna like talk to you they just punched him right in the face and I like pulled him aside and I was like why did you do that and the kid just looked at me like like it was a nonsense question like I need reasons to do things and you don't learn any different unless you're governed by somebody else unless like first you get these training wheels version of like learn to follow rules and eventually you'll learn to be able to follow your own rule they are aren't they people say that they're so pure and like angelic like no no they're awful if adults acted the way small children did we'd like not hesitate one moment to call them moral Liberty here's what Rousseau has to say about the gaining of moral Liberty through civil society he says the passage from the state of nature to the civil state produces a very remarkable change in man in humans the role that instinct used to play in her conduct is now taken over by a sense of justice and her actions now have a moral aspect that they formerly lacked formerly lack not formally lacked formerly lacked the voice of duty has taken over from physical impulses in a sense of what is right has taken over from mere appetite and now only now this person has until now only considered themselves sorry I lost track of that never does that ever happen you guys like where'd the sentence go and now only now the person who has until now considered only herself finds herself forced to act on different principles and to consult her reason before listening to her inclinations Rousseau goes on in this civil state she is deprived of many advantages that she got from nature but she gets enormous benefits in return her faculties are so stimulated and developed her ideas are extended her feelings are ennobled and her whole soul uplifted all of this happens to such an extent that if the abuses of this new condition didn't often pull her down to something lower than she was in the state of nature she would be bound to bless continually happy the moment that took her from it forever and out of a dull limited animal made into a thinking being a human civil society living in the civil state this movement this progress of going from natural Liberty to civil and moral Liberty this is what makes us human civil society it domesticates us it makes us human we're not really human before this not in any kind of like morally interesting way we're not really significantly different than a mere beast it's in this movement from natural Liberty to civil liberties than this movement from the state of nature into civil society that we actually become human it's a domestication is maybe that's not civilization right civil society civil eise's us we like this idea it sound about right Pierce Maslow's hierarchy of needs food water shelter yet the thing that the self-actualization right it's the ability to like make plans for yourself and pursue those plans and this is different than just doing whatever you feel like right it's this it's this ability to set goals this is to rule yourself is to make rules and follow those rules for yourself and we might think to ourselves like yeah but that's not what happens in civil society I don't get to do it for myself others do it for me I'm subject to those rules and the trick to this Rousseau is going to say is like you're not just subject you're citizen as well you're both citizen and subject and this is what it means to rule yourself and this is why the Liberty that you gain in civil society is clearly greater than whatever Liberty you might lose in leaving the state of nature buying it have we satisfied this Randy an objection over here all right I'm not sure if I am but like yeah it sounds pretty sounds really cool makes me kind of like stiffen my posture a little bit I'm like that's right I'm a human lives in society it's better than like a mere beast I'm your beast I don't know but like certainly I'd prefer to live like that right despite the fact that like sometimes I look at my dog or I look at my cats especially when I have a lot of grading to do or like I need to like come teach a class and I'm not super psyched about teaching I think myself like maybe it would be better to just kind of lay around and let somebody else like bring me my kibble and I'd like to be able to lick my own butt and like all of those things like this would be much nicer I wouldn't care about all the things that I care about it would be wouldn't it be blessed to live as a cat instead of a human no yes Sara says yes you're there's nothing stopping you I bet you can find a wealthy person that will keep you as a pet what's that yes Jimmy right brats you should be there's a certain indignity in that at least insofar as like what was that a sugar daddy right yeah yeah this is even like I think a little bit more perverse than a sugar daddy right this is like this is in this is enslaving yourself to somebody right this is like denying your will it's a benevolent form of slavery it's not like they're not gonna make you go pick cotton or anything they're just gonna make you give that give unconditional love and look pretty but you don't get to make any decisions for yourself that's the that's like the tricky part right I mentioned that the social contract that brings us into civil society that brings us into this civil state that kind of forms the general will and kind of crystallizes it that this is a deal that we make with ourselves Rousseau says we make a commitment in the social contract to ourselves and to everybody else such that as members of the state as members of the state which is to say as subjects we make a commitment to the sovereign and as sovereigns which is to say as citizens right we make a commitment to every individual in the state including ourselves and this is the only way to make this work is to like commit ourselves to every individual in the state and ourselves that remember that they're like they're not any different they are the same thing my commitment to every member of the civil society to all of the parts of the body politic is this way that I honor myself that I make a commitment to myself because I am one of these parts as well and sovereignty this is just like the active dimension of the general will sovereignty is really nothing more than its the exercise of the general will it's taking that general will and it's putting it into action if there's power or authority behind that sovereignty it slits the legitimacy that comes from the fact that the general will represents everybody's will it represents the good of all the common good the Commonwealth right let's toss that one into the next year the Commonwealth now with a - so we recognize that like I guess the Commonwealth the state is the common good they are like one in the same thing a little more than halfway through the class a little more than halfway through the board all right this sovereign or sovereignty as Rousseau is discussing it is inalienable that's interesting I suppose we're just saying I've seen this word alienation with Rousseau before alienation was what I had to do with my individual will in order for there to be a general will in order for there to be a civil sight in order for me to move from the state of nature into the civil state but sovereignty is inalienable how does this work Hobbes this is completely against what Hobbes says right the sovereignty is exactly alienable for Hobbes I give up whatever sort of natural individual sovereignty I might have to the sovereign and this is what grants them authority that I can give authority to somebody else this is what Hobbes says the Leviathan is right it's all of our authority is alienated from ourselves and invested in one figure in one artificial person but Rousseau says none of sovereignty is inalienable you can't do it you can't give over your authority you're right [Music] you can feel free to like move someplace else too by the way yeah how exciting is anybody who's like I'll be fine in the state of nature like like a little bit of nature comes into the classroom that's true yeah that's that's a very scary bugs are very scary things they can kill us they don't listen to reason right you're like bug like go back outside it's better for you in the bugs like okay so what was I talking about yes sovereignty is inalienable you can't actually give your sovereignty over to somebody else which is maybe a little bit surprising because it almost sounded like that's exactly what Rousseau was talking about when he says we alienate our individual will to the community and maybe it's easy to think this way because it seems like this is pretty much what Hobbes was saying so this is an alienable contra Hobbes so what does this mean how can I make sense of this that like sovereignty is inalienable I can't give authority away to anybody then how how is there a sovereign how is there any kind of authority through which the Commonwealth can exercise the general will how do we force people to be free if sovereignty isn't inalienable again not a rhetorical question shall I ask it again so but I said at least I'm seeing good phases now like genuine puzzlement like thinking is happening not this kind of like blank cow stare not all the time but sometimes yeah I asked you a question everyone's like how does this work one way that it works maybe the way that it works I'll help you out on this one next one that was on you for sure for sure one way that it works is there must be an active voice an active sort of participation of each member of the Society you don't get to be a citizen exercising sovereign Authority you have to be a citizen exercising sovereign Authority there must at the very least be access we might even go so far as to say that like what's being suggested here is like mandatory participation in government like you don't get to be a free rider you have to help enforce the rules you have to help make the rules we'll get to that with the law and the lawgiver but everybody has to be an active participant in the society you don't get to do it whenever you feel like just like you don't get to only follow the rules whenever you feel like you don't only have to be like subject to the law whenever you feel like it you have to follow the law whenever whenever it applies to you right and you have to enforce the law whenever the opportunity presents itself to you maybe this is mandatory voting maybe this is mandatory participation in some sort of fashion in the civil step maybe where everybody just kind of agrees to let somebody else take care like all of the like civil goings-on and the rest of us just kind of sit back and follow the rules we're so saying like no way you can't actually have a fully functioning civil state that way you can't have a general will that is actually being exercised unless every single member of the community is actively participating in the state okay yeah jury duty yeah that Mike jury duty might be an excellent sort of example of this when you're called up you've got to go this is isn't to say that like you have to be in like kind of a bureaucratic administrator every moment of every day he's got sleep and you gotta make sandwiches and like you gotta like do your job there's lots of stuff in everybody's life but has nothing to do with the general will and the Commonwealth they're like all kinds of like all kinds of spaces available to each individual or they can kind of do what it was like nobody cares it's like well maybe this is not true but like let's go ahead and say like for the sake of argument it is not anybody else's business and it doesn't have any effect on anybody what television programs you watch when you go home do whatever you want then right but insofar as you're participating in these men is this true or is like no you have a you have a moral responsibility a civic responsibility to watch the right kinds of television programs man you had your hand up just yeah just following the laws is that it that's the passive capacity of like that's being a subject not a citizen yeah the activity side of it is acting as sovereign yeah and it might be it might actually be the sort of thing that like doesn't require a whole lot of effort it could just be like every so often everybody checks in with you you're like are you okay with how everything's going and you're like thumbs up I like it like okay you officially grant your approval each time and maybe we can even talk about ways in which this consent is tacit just in your participation in the everyday goings-on but it seems like Rousseau is giving like a much more active and not just saying like it's allowable for you to be an active component of the sovereign he's saying it has to be the case because you can't alienate that authority to some other figure you have to keep it for yourself it only gets exercised when every single member member is exercising it Thomas you seem like you want to say something nope that's just the face you were wearing right then okay all right I said I was gonna let I was going to do this one for you and then make you do the next one sovereignty is inalienable that's chapter that's book 2 chapter 1 yeah book 2 chapter 1 book 2 chapter 2 sovereignty is in its indivisible I said this one was contra Hobbs that it's an alien of all cuz Hobbs seems to indicate that we all do alienate our own individual sovereignties and create the Leviathan this artificial person that we imbue with all of our wills and authorities indivisible perhaps contra Locke who talks about division of powers within the state or separation of powers that there has to be this separation of powers sovereignty is indivisible in the sense that like the powers cannot be separated from one another now maybe there is some kind of just ordinary division of labor that goes on here but it's not a division of authority this is crucially important there might be a division of labor but there's no division of authority and another way of looking at this idea that sovereignty is indivisible as Rousseau goes on to explain is that you can't have any factions no factions factions are absolutely toxic to a civil society there is no general will when you've divided the body politic up into like different parts and said like this part wants the destruction of this other part now you might have disagreements within this society where like two groups are saying like wow we think that like we should have these laws and other folks say like no we think we should have these other laws and like maybe you'll get like a group of okay folks will begin to identify with like certain groups like I'm with the people who want these laws and like I'm with the people who want these laws this is not necessarily factions in the sense that Rousseau is talking about because perhaps we can all still agree that like what the end is what the goal of making the laws is is to kind of bring us all together move us from a state of nature into civil society to execute the general will but as soon as we start thinking in terms of like ah those people are not just folks with different ideas and we got to figure out whose ideas are the right ones such that like we have common goals but perhaps we just have completely different goals or when we start to think that only way for us to succeed is for this other opposing faction to be destroyed there just is no general will anymore you can't have it everything falls apart Ian you had your hand up I don't know if they would have to be that way but boy and I don't want to like that's a good question as in fact it's such a good question that it's the next reflexion draft question which is like the like given the state of like politics in American society right now and feel free like draw from Hobbes draw from Locke draw from Rousseau if you want to tell me if like are we living in a civil society and is it even possible for us to be living in a civil society right now because we have some of the trappings but according to like well how Rousseau starts this whole project off and we were born free but everywhere in Chains it's certainly possible for there to be political parties that aren't factions in this sense there's this kind of like loose conglomerations of like ideas about how best to execute the general will but if they're if they're opposing interest groups if that's what it is if political parties are interest groups if these factions are ways of kind of dividing up the interests of these people against the interests of this other faction nah this can't be right splitting the interests of the body politic destroys the body there can't be a general will if there's the interests of these people versus the interests of these people everybody's interests have to be coordinated and in sync with one another and if you think that this just isn't possible then maybe the kind of civil society that Rousseau is talking about is something very like gasp is that that's a nice fairy tale or so but it's just not possible but we start to think about like ah this way that civil society when executed properly symbolizes us and makes us into the kinds of people that like is it that like is it possible maybe we just need the right kinds of laws right and we don't have the right kinds of laws if we had better laws like are there laws out there that everybody could get on board with and we just have yet to find them and get to that in just a moment look to chapter one sovereignties inalienable look to chapter two sovereignty is indivisible book 2 chapter 3 can the general will be wrong I'm not even gonna put it on the board because there's not a whole lot of space and I don't think we need to write this on the board again the general will be wrong no no the general will cannot be wrong now this almost sounds like what Hobbes was saying to write that the sovereign can't be wrong and Rousseau is saying the general will is just the exercise sorry the sovereign is just like the this kind of dimension of the body politic such that it's exercising the general will and that can't ever be wrong so whatever the government says like you just gotta follow it if it's expressing the general will write if sovereign Authority is legitimate and the only way for it to be legitimate is for it to be the exercising of the general will then it can't be wrong but the way that Hobbes said it it's kind of like whatever the king says that's what's right because there is no injustice outside of the Kings say-so and what so is saying here is that like as soon as the expression of the general will be comes or if the general will will it were to be wrong it just wouldn't be the general will no point of the general will is that it's the thing that satisfies everybody's interests what was that Benjamin it's a common good the Commonwealth right always by definition right as soon as it was something different it just wouldn't be the general will anymore which raises an interesting question how do we figure out what the general will is we take a vote is the product of a democratic election the general will if it okay a unanimous product of a democratic election is that the general will yes necessarily not necessarily this was a quiz question wasn't it yeah Josh did you ever hand up okay all right the majority would be the general will this is how we decide what the general will is is we vote and whatever the majority says that's the general will not the other what so as the majority always right because the general will be Jessica and the general will be wrong no can a majority in a society be wrong can a unanimous decision by a Democratic body politic can that possibly be wrong can it be inconsistent with the common good yeah it totally can Rousseau explains how like people can be tricked into voting against their interests and especially with factions we can say like I'm like I'm aligning my interests with this faction because I think that they're gonna serve my interest best but I might have to sacrifice some of my interests in order to like get my faction to survive now I'm splitting interests not just within the body politic I'm splitting interest within myself as well but I have some interests that are not going to be satisfied in order to satisfy other interests a Democratic majority even a unanimous one is not the general will it might be the best chance we have at trying to like approximate the general will but we shouldn't confuse the two we shouldn't grant absolute sovereignty to a Democratic majority even a unanimous one little in a super like super majority right ah that's sovereignty no no sovereignty is something that comes from the exercise the authentic legitimate exercise of the real general will which is the thing that kind of coordinates and unifies everybody's interests and satisfies them as soon as anybody stops doing that sovereign Authority is just not legit now the bar is so high right could this ever happen Jack those are certainly part of it yeah there and there are other things that might be like sorts of things that various representatives of the state might exercise as Rousseau calls them decrees they're not really quite laws they don't come with any kind of sovereign authority they're just everybody agreeing to do something it's not necessarily like for the common good but maybe it's for the common good that we make some sort of agreement like we all decide to drive on the right side of the road instead of just letting to be like I don't know pick a side of the road everybody do their own thing right I don't know that the right side of the road satisfies the common good any better than driving on the left side of the road does but like picking something seems to be necessary right naming streets we can't just let anybody like name the streets but it doesn't seem like it really aims at the common good the real laws oh yeah Amanda there's no like the best trainer will the general will is like that's the good like it's the good for everybody yeah so they're like better and worse general wills they don't just naturally know it they have to become civilized in order to know it they have to become the sorts of thing the sorts of people who are capable of recognizing good laws yeah a little frustrated do you think is there some circularity here Rousseau said like I like it all hangs together but I can't say it all at once and are we starting to suspect it like maybe there's some circularity here like how is it that you become how is it that you become civilized how is it that you become capable of recognizing what the general will is he says ah you live under the general will you become civilized by living in the civil state well yeah but how do we get a civil state like well we have to have the sorts of laws that kind of organize society according that like wait like who's yeah it's like my belt loops are holding up my belt but my belt is holding up my pants and the belt loops like who's the real hero down there right it's there's like who is doing the the work and we can get some sense of this in this kind of relationship between the law and the lawgiver there's plenty of interesting things to say about the law giver but probably most notably about the law giver is that Rousseau seems to suggest that like it's probably not going to be somebody from the community the lawgiver probably has to be some sort of like first of all he says like we would have to have like a God to be the lawgiver but short of that maybe just an incredibly wise foreigner who comes and doesn't make the laws this is why the chapter in which this is discussed and we're so does this from time to time it's very very frustrating I don't know if you encountered this he talks about the social contract that's the title of the piece the social contract but almost every time he mentions it throughout the social contract he goes with the social compact instead of contract like what's the difference there's a chapter in which he discusses the lawmaker and then proceeds to the lawgiver everytime and stresses that the Lawkeeper only proposes laws they can only make suggestions that there's supposed to be somebody who's like a little bit wiser and presumably like has no dog in the fight as to what the laws are gonna be there are kind of like anticipations of like eventually things that John Rawls is going to like pull out of Rousseau here we might even think about like this kind of original position or veil of ignorance sort of thing like in order to be the sort of person who could make real laws that are going to satisfy the general will or can even design real laws you have to not have any self-interest in what kinds of laws are going to be made right you have to be able to like do this from kind of a disinterested position maybe not a disinterested position but when we're like you don't know exactly which position you might end up occupying in the society am I going to be a rich person might gonna be a poor person I have to not know in order to design laws that are going to be actually fair that are actually going to satisfy the general will but the all of the interesting things about the lawgiver as I actually know like not aside first just one more thing about the lawgiver Rousseau is perhaps even like thinking about himself in this respect you guys like was there some mention of this in the footnotes Rousseau actually designed constitutions for like two different groups of people the Corsica and for Poland neither one turned like ended up working out Corsica got conquered and annexed by France and Poland ended up kind of splitting into like they couldn't maintain themselves as a people they like the body politic just exploded through like no small part due to like meddling from Russia who didn't want this kind of like unified Poland threatening any of their interests happens from time to time it's like it's geopolitics all over the place right yeah but he did he designed constitutions for people thinking of himself of like this wise foreign lawgiver that's going to come in and say like here's how you guys should do things the United States did this is well we've like brought in folks from other countries to help us design our constitution it was like mostly done by founding father like potential American citizens but like when Russo talks about this is it interesting sort of like figure that he's talking about and the most notable thing about it is that like the law giver this person who designs and proposes the laws can't actually be a member of the body politic perhaps this is because there is no body politic yet but also because they have to kind of have no interest in exactly how this pans out Corinne ah good question general laws versus specific laws sovereign Authority are there any limits to it this doesn't seem like it's answering question but I'm on my way to it are there any limits to sovereign Authority in one breath Russo says sovereign authority is absolute but we have an old familiar sort of move that we've seen almost every social contract theorists make here it's absolute asterisks with the big limitation being that sovereign Authority which is nothing more than the exercise of the general will PS must apply generally this is because the general will can only prescribe laws to itself for I was saying that like when I when I make the social contract when I make the social compact I make it with myself the general will also only applies to itself it only applies generally so Russo ends up saying as far as the law is concerned when we talk about laws like legitimate laws that are like the exercise of the general will it can only apply to all laws must apply to all not to each although maybe to each but specifically to all generally there can only be general laws this is a point of a fair and just laws that it has to apply equally to every member of the society there cannot be laws that are only making prescriptions to particular parts of the society they have to always be laws that apply to everything to everyone yes so the so are we thinking about like maybe laws that are like specifically aimed towards suspect classes or something like that thank see if you can come up with one we might think of like one example that comes to mind mostly because it was in my notes and I used it last semester that I taught this what if I have a law that says if you're a convicted felon you can't vote it's not a law that only applies to like part of the society yeah but it affects everyone says shy Rachel yeah there's a place for any of us if you become a convicted felon you will not be allowed to vote this is this is like the the clever move there right but I can't for example make a law that says ooh can I can I make that says if you're mentally ill if you're diagnosed ibly mentally ill you are not allowed to purchase firearm that was the other the other possible reflection draft was going to be about like self-defense rights in Second Amendment rights that's not most mentally ill most mentally ill folks are quite gentle and not dangerous at all there are definitely this is a really interesting passage where like Rousseau was talking about how like it kind of helps so like I only make get to rule myself like but you're subject to the laws of the sovereignty like but I am the sovereign not all by myself each of us is in part the sovereign and each of us is in part the subjects that have to obey the sovereign the general will only applies to itself it only applies to the totality of of the society but now we're wondering like yeah so how do the details play out on that what would it mean to have a law that only applies to specific parts of the body politic but not to the entire body politic in the discussion of the laws Rousseau seems to suggest that like you cannot have a functioning civil state without proper laws and those laws can only come from a almost like godly wise foreigner which is like wow the bar is really really high but then he adds on top of this that even if we had totally awesome laws we still might not get a functioning civil society because you have to have a people that is well suited to receiving those laws and he gives all kinds of conditions that need to be satisfied for this there are temporal conditions the people can't have been together for too long they can't have been together for too short of a period of time there has to be the right number of people Rousseau says every member of the science of the society has to know every other member of the society and they yeah anybody yeah anybody know like how big could that possibly be like the latest info from social psychologist says like in the neighborhood of 200 people this is why I can't remember all of my students names because there's more than 200 of them each semester and all of you guys but not other classes there are all kinds of idiosyncratic concerns that go into this that say like every single like set of laws and every single like question have like how a people comes together it's going to depend on like local conditions if it's a seafaring community they're gonna have slightly different conditions if they're like a Plains community slightly different conditions again but this the laws have to match the people and the people have to be the sorts of things that can receive the laws this is hard this is really really hard such that like we might have some inkling of what Russo's answer to this upcoming reflection draft might be but maybe we're so setting the bar too high maybe maybe not that's it for Rousseau our next readings going to be our good friend Immanuel Kant

Channel: Adam Rosenfeld

Views: 1,652

Rating: 4.8888888 out of 5

Keywords: History of Modern Philosophy, Early Modern Philosophy, Political Philosophy, Social Contract Theory, The General Will, Sovereign, State of Nature, Civil Society, Rousseau

Id: QmHsHmRe6Gc

Length: 74min 42sec (4482 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 29 2018