rousseau on human rights.pdf

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On the general w ll and

the road to tyranny

Rousseau and

the Rights

of Man

Robert V. Andelson

S O CONFUSED and self-contradictory seem

Rousseau’s ideas on human rights that it

may be seriously questioned w he ther they

contain an y kind of unifying locus or can

be reduced to systematic form at all. In-

tellectual source of both the Jacobins and

Hegel, equally conde mn ed by Burke an d

Bentham, the works of this exasperating

thinker constitute a kind of grab-bag in

which can be found just about whatever

suits one’s fancy ogeth er with its op-

posite At present, howev er, the prevail-

ing acade mic fashion is to discover ord er

in the m idst of chaos, and num ero us

scholars profess to find some sort

of

underlying unity beneath his paradoxes.’

And it must not be forgot ten that

Rousseau himself claimed consistency for

his writings, asserting, in both his major

autobiographical works, the fundamental

co he renc e of his ideas.2

In the last analysis, however, it is hard

not to concur with the judgment of He nri

Piiyre: “Rousseau is rife with contradic-

tions, and the most ingenious men of

learning hav e not succeeded in con-

vincing us of the unity of his t h ~ u g h t . ” ~

For one thing, they are by no means

agreed as to wherein that unity lies. For

exam ple, Rousseau is see n as a pioneer in-

dividualist by Rosenkranz4 and as the

Father of State Socialism by D u g ~ i t . ~is

Calvinist connections a re stressed by Lan-

son6 an d his affinities with Catholicism by

Masson.’ Irving Babbitt views him as

a

Modern Age

romanticist,* and Ernst Cassirer, as a ra-

tionalist.9 According to Kingsley Martin,

Rousseau began a s an anarchist and e nd-

ed a s a tota1itarian;lO acco rding to C.E.

Vaughan, he began a s a follower of Locke,

shifted to Plato, and ended under the rul-

ing influence of M ontesquieu.ll Lanson ex-

plains the varying emphases of Rousseau’s

different works by interpreting his early

Discourses

as protests against all hitherto

existing societies;

Emile

and the

Nouvelle

Hkloise

as guides to the reform of the in-

dividual in th e spheres of pe rsonal morali-

ty, family relations, and education; and

th e later political writings a s adumb rations

of

th e kind of society in which the good

man can properly live.’*

Yet it

is not mere-

ly

between

but

within

his works that baf-

fling contradictions abound. In the

Social

Contract,

which Ritchie calls “the great

political treatise of his most m atu re and

sound est period,”I3 individualism a nd col-

lectivism, prudentialism and heroism, ra-

tionalism and functionalism ll appea r

to be nega ted by the affirmation of ea ch ,

dissolved into a raging ferment over

which broods the spirit of th e gen era l will,

amorphous, enigmatic, and ineffable.l4

It

is

in part precisely because of all his

inconsistencies and obscuri t ies that

Rousseau is,

par excellence,

the charac-

teristic representative

of

what may be

term ed th e “radical-humanist’’ view of

human rights

.e.,

the view that deduces

rights from an uncritical veneration of

49



man

qua

man; its ground b eing a rom antic

concep t of man,

its

end , freedom, and its

regulating principle, equality. Radical-

humanism is an empty abstraction that

resolves itself into so m e ot he r position

whenever a serious attempt is made to

give

i t

content.

It

is always on the v erg e of

going in one of se veral directions, and

what make Rousseau especially signifi-

cant is

the

fact that all of these direc tions

are strongly represented in his philos-

ophy. There have, it is true, been “pure”

radical-humanists m en like Con dorce t

whose thought is fairly unambiguous

an d free of contradiction. But these m en

can scarcely be regarded as original

creative theorists of th e first ord er ; th ey

were able to ma intain a degree of form al

consistency in their ideas because they

operated on a relatively superficial level.

An examinat ion of Rousseau’s view

of

man reveals affinities both with the hedo-

nistic utilitarians and with the ancient

classical thinkers. In opposition to the an-

cients, he does not see man as a political

animal by nature. The mental compass of

the “natural man” is

so

restricted that in

this respect he is hardly to be distin-

guished from the brute. Yet he differs

from other animals in that he has two

unique potentialities: freedom and perfec-

tibility. By freedom, Rousseau means the

consciousness of altern atives an d th e

liberty to really choose among them in-

stead of being guided by m er e impulse. By

perfectibility, he unde rstands the capa city

for psychological and moral growth.’5 But

freedo m, instead of being regard ed a s th e

condition of such growth, is seen ra ther as

its object.16 “Man is by na tu re good” o

the degree in which this nature is not ab-

sorbed in sensual instincts but lifts itself

“spontaneously and without outside help

to th e idea of freedom.”I7 This is where

Rousseau stands farthest from the classical

tradition, which never views freedom as

an e nd in itself, but only as instrum ental to

th e cultivation of rea son, i.e., to the

realization of humanity’s distinctive and

predeterminate goal. Cobban, Chapman,

Cassirer, Levine, and others18 ha ve at-

tempted, in varying degree, to make a

Kantian rationalist of Rousseau,lg and

it

is

perfectly true that he is far from the ab-

solute irrationalist that popular imagina-

tion, on the strength of a few well-known

passages, pictures him as being. He does

not reject reason but only its perverted

use; he would en list it in the serv ice of v ir-

tue. Despite all this, however, the fact re-

mains th at R ousseau is less sang uine abo ut

man’s intellectual endowm ent th an about

his innate moral capacity, an d certainly he

does not make reason either the essence

or the en d of hu man existence.

Cobban tells us th at virtue, in Rousseau’s

sen se of the word, may b e defined as “the

ab senc e of moral conflict betw een the

desires of the individual, or w ha t he need s

to render him happy, and the laws im-

posed on him by his envjronment.”*OThis

is brought out in the

Emile

where the

system of m ora l education consists basi-

cally of teach ing children “ from the first to

confine their wishes within the limits of

their powers

so

tha t they will scarcely

feel

the want of whatever is not in their

power.”21 Schinz, as a m at te r of fact, goes

so

far as to interpret the “Profession of

Faith of a Savoya rd Vicar” as an expres -

sion of pragmatic religiousness, an enun-

ciation of a do ctrine intended to prom ote

man’s temporal happinesszz;and although

Cassirer n o doubt rightly criticizes this as a

misplaced emphasis, he admits that “this

interpretation undoubtedly characterizes

a certain element in Rousseau’s funda-

m ental c o n c e p t i ~ n . ” ~ ~

Having conceded the existence of this

elem ent, howev er, we must not lose sight

of th e fact that Rousseau’s utilitarianism

was strongly qualified by classical in-

fluences, espec ially of Plato and P lutarch.

From them he derived the ideal of moral

education a s th e primary function of th e

st at e and of po litical participation a s a

necessary requisite for complete human

developm ent. This is related to a c oncept

of

man quite a t varian ce with that of t he

utilitarians. For according to Rousseau,

the nurture and exercise of moral poten-

tialities constitute not only the highest

happiness for m an , but also and m ore im-

portantly, his proper good. And this can

35

Fall

1984



take

place fully only in society. Ov er an d

asainst the above-cited passage from the

Emile,

another must be placed: “Speak the

truth a nd do th e right; the only thing th at

really matters is to do one’s duty in this

world.”z4Yet “one’s duty” consists simply

of

moral autonomy he recov ery of tha t

natural goodness vitiated by the tyranny

of destructive habits engendered by ad-

verse social influences. This is how Wright

interprets the “return to nature”:

We can give up pride. We can cease

from all comparison with other

men

and simply go about our destiny. We

can renoun ce a host of imaginary

needs and hold fast to the true things

needful; cast away a world of illusion

and rediscover our own self. We ca n be

meek, and inherit our soul. In a word,

we can return t o nature. That is all the

fam ous p hra se m e a n ~ . ~ 5

Thus R ousseau’s idea of duty

is

not real-

ly a teleological concept, since it does not

essentially relate to any referent beyond

th e self. This is not to s ay , of course, that

Rousseau rejects God; but however much

du ty, for him, may accord w ith th e will of

God,

its

criterion lies elsewhere, in the

fulfillment of the self. And this fulfillment

is seen a s the a chieve ment of a radical

au tono my , not as the pursuit of functional

goals in a cosmic setting. This is what

places Rousseau among the moderns, in

spite of his reversion to cer tain asp ects of

th e classical tradition. For in classical an d

medieval thought, a s D ’En trke s remarks,

“It is not from the individual that we are

asked to start, but from the Cosmos, from

th e notion of a world well ord ered and

graded , of which na tural law is th e expres-

sion.”26 n this connection it is significant

th at th e first dra ft of th e

Social Contract

contained a cha pte r intended to refute the

theory of natural law.27

Two ruling themes characterize Rous-

seau’s thought: the state of na tur e and th e

general will. Both these themes are

marked by ambiguity, and their relation-

ship to on e an oth er, although of crucial

imp ortance to an unders tanding of his

writings,

is

oftentimes so recondite as to

be virtually impenetrable. In his

Discourse

on the Origin of Inequality Among Men,

the st ate of nature is represented a s an

idyllic (even if hypothetical) epoch, in

which the savage “breathes only peace

and liberty,” living “within himself,” in

almost perfect equality with his fellows.

Yet th e sta te of n ature

is

lacking in both

moral and specifically human content.

The c iv i l s ta te “produces a very

remarkable change in man, by sub-

stituting justice for instinct in his conduc t,

and giving his actions the morality they

formerly la cke d .. Instead of a stupid

and unimaginable animal, it made him a n

intelligent being and a man.”28 Never-

theless, Rousseau, while accepting the

unavoidable necessity of society, rejected,

as was stat ed ea rlier, the classical concep-

tion of man as an inherently social entity.

His ans wer to the qu estion of th e good life

“ta kes on this form: the good

life

consists

in the closest approx imation to the state of

nature which is possible on the level of

h ~ m a n i t y . ” ~ g

Perhaps the most striking paradox in

Rousseau’s thinking is

the way he con-

ceives of th e relationship be tween the in-

dividual and society. On the one ha nd, the

natural m an is innocent an d good; on the

other , he is a stupid and limited animal.

On t he on e h and , society is the corrupting

influence; on the o th er , it is only in society

that h is mora l potentiality can develop. By

shifting “original sin” from the individual

to society, Rousseau doubtless felt that he

was p reservin g man’s free will. But actual-

ly, acc ord ing to his theory of p sychology,

th e sinful proclivities a re in th e individual

al l along- they merely cannot be

hatche d apa rt fro m a conscious relation to

othe rs. In sp ite of th e baneful effec ts of

civilization upon

the

individual, Rousseau

disclaims any desire to regress to bar-

barism: “Human nature does not turn

back. Once man has left it,

h e

can never

return to the time of innoce nce and equali-

Society, being necessary to man in

his present stage, is in that sense

“natural,”31 ut it is natural only insofar as

it

preserves man’s primal potentiality for

self-determination. The

Social Contract

Modern Age

35



addresse s itself to th e problem of how this

is to be achieved, but

its

solution can h ard-

ly be viewed as an unqualified success.

If one were to compress into a single

sent en ce those passages of t he

Social Con-

tract

most pertinent t o our topic, th e result

would probably rea d somew hat a s follows:

Man has the right to be compelled to

abdicate his inherent individual liber-

ties, so as to acquire genuine freedom

in order that he might, through the ex

ercise of mora l will, fulfill his destiny a s

a human being.

For we are told, to begin with, that “the

social order is

a

sacred right which

is

t he

basis of all other rights.”32 We a r e the n

given to understand that this order con-

sists of “t he total alienation

of

each

associate, together with all his rights, to

th e whole ~ o m m u n i t y , ” ~ ~n d t h a t

“whoe ver refuses to obey the gen era l will

shall be compelled to do

so

by the whole

body. This means nothing less than that

he will be forced to be free.”34Finally, this

ord er gives his actions “th e morality th ey

had formerly lacked. ” 35 Lest this

method of interpretation be dismissed as

arbitrary, we must protest that it is no

more so than an y othe r. All interpretation

is necessarily selective, and a mode of

selection th at records th e original author’s

paradoxes is, in fact, more faithful to his

thought than is a mo de th at ignores his in-

consistencies, or seeks to harm onize the m

by means of some interpretative key not

inherent in the text itself. When Cassirer

reads Kan tian catego ries in to R o u ~ s e a u , ~ ~

when Hoffding says that

it

was the “op-

position of the absolute an d th e relative

that Rousseau meant by the opposition

of na tu re and c i ~ i l i z a t io n , ”~ ~hen Chap-

man understands the

moi commun

to

refer to “the reality of man’s moral

p ~ t e n t i a l i t i e s , ” ~ ~hey are indulging in an

intellectual gam e of speculation whic h,

however shrewdly and skillfully played,

remains, in the final analysis, speculation.

Rousseau’s social teaching is not merely

paradoxical; it is pragmatically absurd. It

is, in fact, a monstrous perversion of

Luther’s doctrine of th e freedom of t h e

Christian m an, who is at the sa m e time th e

“se rvant of all” an d the “m ost fr ee lord of

There is important truth in the idea

tha t real freedom involves disciplined sub-

mission to a goal outside oneself, but this

must occur in such a way that that goal

is

personally appropriated and made the

vo lun tary ob ject of one’s will. This is to

say , such submission to be moral m ust be,

as Rousseau rightly understood, “obe-

dience to a law which we prescribe to

o u r s e l ~ e s . ” ~ ~ut this kind of o bedie nce

cannot be forced.

As

Sabine aptly puts it,

“forcing a man to be free is a euphemism

for making him blindly obedient to the

mass o r the strongest party.’I4*Rousseau’s

dan ger ou s verbal jugglery was godfather

to a long and vicious semantic tradition

passing from Robespierre and Hegel

through Hitler an d Stalin tradition in

which tyranny is baptized with the name

of liberty. To him, more than to a ny oth er ,

belong s th e dubious distinction of having

invented “New speak,” for Big Brother’s

sinister slogan, “Freedom is Slavery,”42

s

nothing but an aphoristic echo from the

Social Contract.

I f

I

may be permitted to repeat some

observations made by m e in ano the r con-

text:

Kant understood that man is inwardly

free only as he submits to moral law.

The self-mastery whereby the will

fulfills itself through obedience to the

command of duty he denominated

“positive freedom.” But he apprehend-

ed that politics

is

fitly concerned only

with “neg ative freedom” eciprocal

freedom from external constraint. In

this he displayed a perspicuity superior

alike to that of his direct philosophical

successors an d to that of his progenitor,

Rousseau. T he burden of Isaiah Berlin’s

great inaugural address at Oxford, as

also of Ta lmon’s monum ental stud ies,

is

very largely to remind us that the at-

tempt to make “positive freedom” the

immediate responsibility of th e sta te is

fraught with consequences which

reduce all freedom to a

There is but one sense in which

35

Fall 984



Rousseau w as right abo ut “forcing peo-

ple to be free .” Freedom is an unal-

ienable trust. Nobody has the right to

opt fo r an y form of se rvitude th at

is

likely to extend beyond the one who

does the opting.44

“Each

of

us,” proclaims Rousseau, “p uts

the person and all his power in common

under the supreme direction of the

gene ral will, and, in our co rporate capaci-

ty, we receive each mem ber a s an indivisi-

ble part of the whole.”45 “Each man , in

giving himself to all, gives himself

to

nobody; and as there is no associate ove r

which he does not acquire the sam e right

a s he yields others ove r himself, he gains

an equivalent for everything he loses, and

an increase of force for th e pre serv ation of

wh at he Sir Ernest Barker has ad-

mirab ly exposed the fallacy of such

reasoning:

The paradox conceals a paralogism. I

surrend er all myself nd

1

surrender

it

all to 999 others as well as myself;

I

only receive a fraction of the sove reig n-

ty of the community; and ultimately 1

must reflect that if I am the thousandth

part of

a

tyrant, I am also the whole of a

slave. Leviathan is still Leviath an, ev en

when he

is

~ o r p o r a t e . ~ ’

T he gene ral will, according to Rousseau, is

the ultimate, absolute and final authority,

a n oracle which cann ot err.48 Yet

nowhere are we given a definite and

unambiguous statement as to how it can

b e discerned.

Rousseau admits that the people may

not know its own will,49and he provides

for this contingency, at least to his own

satisfaction, by postulating a legisla-

to r a sort of medium wh o is able to

intuit that which is hidden to the

But alas Who is to intuit th e iden-

tity of th e legislator? This

is

the perennial

problem of authoritarian po litical theo ry,

an d Rousseau can scarcely be said to hav e

solved it. When the Jacobin spokesman

flatly informed the Convention that “Our

will is the general will,” his words were

pregnant with the guillotine. The two

Napoleons, Mussolini, Hitler, PCron, and

Stalin ll ma de th e sa m e ominous claim

and w ere equally ruthless in enforcing it.

Yet

th e con cep t of the legislator by no

means exhausts the totalitarian implica-

tions of Rousseau’s social teaching.

Omit the legislator altogether: the re-

sult is still there. Imagine Rousseau a

perfect democrat: his perfect democ-

racy is still a multiple autocrat. He

leaves no safeguard against the omni-

potence of the souuerain. It is signi-

ficant that the

Social Contract

ends

with t he suggestion of religious per-

secution . Rousseau was

so

far

from believing in les droits de l’homme

that he went to the other extreme.

e

was so convinced that it was enough

for the individual to enjoy political

righ ts (as a frac tion of the collectivity)

tha t he forgot the necessity

of

his enjoy-

ing th e rights of “civil and religious

liberty.”51

The sub tle imagination of Leo Strauss

se es in th e very emptiness of Rousseau’s

doctrine of t he sta te of na ture th e clue to

the riddle of his political ethic. A ccording

to this ingenious theory, Rousseau

represents the reductio ad absurdum of

the radical-humanist tradition, attributing

to man the natural right to a freedom

which has no object outside itself and no

validation apart from its connection with

the individual.

The notion th at the good life consists in

the r etu rn on the level of humanity to

th e sta te of natu re, Le., to a state which

completely lacks all human traits,

necessarily leads to the consequence

that the individual claims such an

ultimate fre edom from society as lacks

any definite human content. But this

fun dam enta l defect of th e state of

na tur e as a goal of human aspiration

made that state the ideal vehicle of

freedom . The notion of a retu rn to

th e sta te of natu re o n the level of

human ity was t he ideal basis for claim-

ing a freedom from society which is not

a freedom for something. It was the

Modern Age

5



ideal basis for an ap peal from society t o

something indefinite an d indefinable, t o

an ultimate sanctity of th e individual a s

individual, unredeemed and unjus-

tified. Every freedom which is free -

dom for something, every freedom

which is justified by reference to

something higher than th e individual o r

than man

as

mere man, necessarily

restricts freedom.

52

What Rousseau attempted was a logical

impossibility: to “graft the notion

of

un-

conditional duties an d of n on m erc en ary

virtue onto the Hobbesian notion of the

primacy of freedom o r of rights.”53 H e

agreed with Hobbes that duties are

derivative from rights and that there is no

natural law .which ante dat es th e human

will. But he departed from H obbes in seek -

ing the basic right in something more

distinctively human than self-preser-

vation, an impulse that man shares with

brutes.

If

morality or humanity were to be

understood adequately, they had to be

traced t o a right or a freedom which is

radically and specifically human.

Hobbes had implicitly admitted the ex-

istence of such a freedom. For he had

implicitly admitted that if the tradi-

tional dualism of substances,

of

mind

and body, is abandoned, science cann ot

be possible excep t

if

meaning, order or

truth originates solely

in

man’s creative

action, or if m an has the free dom

of

a

creator. W hat Hobbes ha d, in fact,

suggested

in

regard to science was ap-

plied by R ousseau to m orality.54

‘Ernst Cassirer,

The Question o f Jean-Jacques

Rousseau,

trans. with introduction by Peter Cay

N e w

Y o r k ,

1 9 5 4 ) ; J o h n W . C h a p m a n ,

Rousseau-Totalitarian or Liberal?

New York,

1956); Alfred Cobban,

Rousseau and the Modern

State

London , 1934); Lester

G.

Crocker,

Rousseau’s

“Social Contract,

” Cleveland, 1968); Stephen Ellen-

burg,

Rousseau’s Social Philosophy:

An

Interpreta-

tion from Within

Ithaca, N.Y., 1976); Charles

William Hendel, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Moralist

These ideas are so suggestive that we

must be permitted to carry Strauss’s

theory a st ep beyond his own ventu re by

relating its implications to the concept of

th e hegem ony of the gen eral will.

Remembering tha t Rousseau’s thoug ht is

gea red to the two antipodal foci of uncon-

ditional duties and nonmercenary virtue

on t he on e hand, and primacy of freedom

on the other,

is

not the general will that

element in his philosophy which satisfies

abstractly the demands of both? In its in-

sistence upon unquestioning obedience

it

calls forth sentim ents of hero ic loyalty,

while at th e sa m e time its very elusiveness

renders it the creation of its subject. The

total itarianism of the general will is as

void of content as is the anarchy of the

sta te of nature, yet the creative freedom

elicited by its vacuity is informed by vir-

tuous commitment to a non-prudential

goal, the vagueness of which permits the

individual to remain radically indep enden t

by identifying himself absolutely with it.

If

indeed (which is by no m ean s certain)

Rousseau’s political ethic is to be r ega rded

as anything but an ill-assorted pof-pourri

of rhetorical extravagances, this inter-

pretation may conceivably help us to get

at the underlying structure and meaning

of th e whole rovided that w e ar e will-

ing to ignore the law of pa rsimo ny Even

supposing that

we

have succeeded,

however, in absolving Rousseau to some

deg ree from th e charg e of reckless incon-

sistency, it needs to b e rem arked that he is

only vindicated on

a

strictly formal an d ar-

tificial level. In practice, historically, the

doctrin e of the general will ha s eve r been

a n ignis fa tuus leading m en to tyranny .

London, 1929); Harold HBffding,

Jean-Jacques

Rousseau and His Philosophy,

trans. William

Richards and

eo

E. Saidla New Hav en, 1930);

Gustave Lanson,

Histoire de la littkrature franfaise,

22nd ed . Paris, 1930); Roger D. Masters,

The

Political Philosophy

of

Rousseau

Princeton,

N . J .

1968); and Ernest Hunter Wright,

The Meaning o f

Rousseau

London, 1929).

Confessions,

Livre IX.

Rousseau juge de J eanilacques,

Troisieme Dialogue.

3“The Influence of Eighteenth Century Ideas on the

354

Fall 984



French Revolution,” in Herman Ausubel, ed., The

Making ofModern Europe (New York, 1951). I 482.

‘Karl Rosenkranz, Diderofs Leben und Werke (Leip-

zig, 1866), I I 75. 5Lbon Duguit, Rousseau Kanf et

Hegel 1918),p. 6. Quoted by Cobban, p. 42. 6Lanson,

pp.

788 f .

7Pierre-Maurice Masson, La Riligion de

Rousseau (Paris,

1916).

passim. 8Rousseau and

Romanficism (Boston,

1919).

Tassirer , p.

82

and

passim. laFrench Liberal Thoughf

in

the Eighfeenfh

Cenfury (London,

1929),

p.

196.

”The Polifical

Wrifings

o

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Cambridge,

1915),

I

77-81.

1Z“L‘Unit6de la Pensbe de Jean-

Jacq ues Rousseau,” reviewed b y Pe ter Gay in h is in-

troduction to Cassirer, pp. 18-19. I3David G. Ritchie,

Nafural Rights (London, 1894), p. 51. I4For in-

dividualism, s ee The Social Contract in Frederick

Watkins, trans. an d ed., Rousseau-Polifical Writings

(Edinburgh, 1953), p. 31; Leo Strauss, Natural Righf

and Hisfory (Chicago,

1953),

p.

298.

For co llectivism,

se e Watkins, pp. 17-18; Strauss, p. 286; George H.

Sabine,History OfPolifical Theory (New York, 1950),

pp.

587, 588-91.

For prudentialism, see W atkins, p.

31;

Strauss, pp.

266-76, 282-84.

For heroism, see

Watkins, p.

20;

Strauss, pp.

277-98.

For rationalism,

se e W atkins, p.

3;

Strauss, pp.

279-81, 293-94.

For

functionalism, see W atkins, p.

20;

an d the editor’s in-

troduction to The Social Contract in lnfroducfion o

Contemporary Civilizafion

in

the West 2 vols. (New

York, 1946), I 954. l5See Rousse au, A Discourse

on

the Origin

of

Inequality in The Social Contracf and

Discourses trans.

G.

D.

H

Cole (Everyman’s Libra ry;

London, 1947), pp. 157 f . 169 f . For a good sum ma ry

of

Rousseau‘s theo ry of human nature, see Chap-

man, Part 1 %ee The Social Contract in Cole’s

translation, p. 16. I7Cassirer, pp. 104 f . This involves

a partial misunderstanding of Rousseau. For him, the

pyrpose of the sta te is to provide just suc h help. Se e

Emile p.

437.

Iscobban, p.

223;

Chapman, pp.

113-15;

Cassirer, p.

82

and passim;Sir Ernest Barker,

lntroducfion

lo

Social Contracf: Essays by Locke

’

Hume and Rousseau (New York, 1948), p. xxxii;

Wright, p. 32; Andrew Levine, The Politics of

Aufonomy:A

Kantian

Reading

of

Rousseau “Social

Confract”(Amherst, Mass., 1976). IgRobert Dkrathb

criticizes Cassirer for overstating his case in this co n-

nection. See Le Rationalisme de

J. J.

Rousseau

(Paris,

1948). p. 188. z°Cobban, p. 135. 21Emile rans., Bar-

bara Foxley (New York,

1948),

p.

35.

zZA. Sch inz, La

Pens

de

J.-J.

Rousseau (Paris,

1929),

pp.

446, 506,

and elsewhere. Cited in Cassirer, p.

11;.

231bid.

24Emile .

257.

Z5Wright, p.

20 f.

26A. P. D’Entrirves,

Nafural Law (London,

1951),

pp.

45-46.

ZTBarker, pp.

xxix f . 28The Social Contract Bk.

I

chap. vii, in

Watkins, p. 20. 29Strauss,p. 282. 3aRousseauuge de

Jean-Jacques Troisiirme Dialogue. Cited in Cassirer,

p. 74. 31Hendel, I 134. 32The Social Contract and

Discourses (Cole’s translation), p. 3. 33/bid. p. 12.

34/bid. . 15. 35/bid.Ta ss i r e r , pp. 56-59, 126. 37Hoff-

ding, p.

103.

T h a p m a n , p.

28.

39Martin Lu ther, A

Treafise

on

Christian Liberty (Philadelphia, 1947). p.

5. 4aThe Social Contract and Discourses (Cole’s

translation), p. 16. “Sabine, p. 591. 4ZGeorgeOrwell,

Ninefeen Eighty-four (New York,

1954),

p.

23.

43Robert

V.

Andelson, lmputed Rights (Athens,

Ga.

1971).

p.

81.

Th e work s alluded to ar e Isaiah Berlin,

Two

Concepts of Liberty (London,

1958).

and J.L.

Talmon, The Origins

of

Totalitarian Democracy and

Political Messionism (New York,

1960).

44Andelson,

p. 114. 4SThe ocial Confruct and Discourses (Cole’s

translation), p. 13. .461bid. . 12. The concept o the

general will was anticipated

i?

Marsilius

of

Padua’s

Defensor Pacis 1324). See D’Entrirves, p. 75. For a

contemporary interpretation of the concept, see the

philosophy of the Dutch juristic theorist, H. Krabbe,

reviewed in Charles Grove Haines, The Revival of

Nafural Law Concepts (Cambridge, Mass., 1930), pp.

274-77. 47Barker,pp. xxxiv-v. “The Social Confract

Bk.

I

chap.

6.

49TheSocial Confract and Discourses

(Cole’s translation), pp.

22-23, 30-3 1 .

501bid. pp.

32-35.

51B arker, p. xxxviii. %Strauss, pp.

293 f .

53/bid. p.

280.

541bid.

81.

Modern

Age

55

rousseau on human rights.pdf

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