Rousseau and Kant: Social Contract and State Foundations
Rousseau’s Philosophy of the Social Contract
Rousseau is the highest representative of the philosophy of the social contract as a form of explanation of the state. He also distinguishes between the state of nature and social status. Contrary to Hobbes, Rousseau believes that man is good by nature, but social life perverts him. Given the impossibility of returning to their natural state, a renewal of the social contract is inevitable. The Social Contract is one of his most influential works.
For Rousseau, freedom and equality must prevail in a government where the sovereign is not the monarch of Hobbes, to whom he gave all the power, nor the constitutional monarch of Locke, who was delegated sovereignty but was circumstantially supported by the parliament.
For Rousseau, the socio-political contract creates a new collective body: the people. This is set as a moral and political body, as the cohesive force is the general will. The general will cannot be transferred or divided, so it is not representable. It finds its expression in law and is not to be identified with the will of all, as this would be the sum of desires or interests, but not the manifestation of the common good.
This approach is derived from the identification between the state and the people. The people are the only sovereign; rulers are only mere administrative agents or executors of the will of the people. The democratic exercise of power is direct and not made indirectly through representatives.
Kant’s Perspective on the State and the Original Contract
According to Kant, a state is a human society in which nobody, by nature, is entitled to rule and order. Its formation is due to the original contract established between individuals. Without such a contract, one could not conceive of any right. His work On Perpetual Peace elaborates on this concept.
His famous thesis of “unsocial sociability” refers to how human beings relate to each other by a kind of natural sociability, but at the same time, they tend spontaneously to oppose each other.
But nature has made humanity capable of progressing towards the better, following the general interest. Society has to be a pluralistic space in which freedoms coexist peacefully and cooperate. This is achieved by means of the law, operating according to universal principles of reason governing coexistence. Kant conceived, in this way, the state based on law as the state based on reason. Thus, Machiavelli’s reason of state is replaced by the rule of reason, according to Kant.
The state must comply with the law. Thus, the state can be established as a republic in which everyone is subject to the laws to which he himself has given his consent: only subject to the law that obliges each other. This is the way in which Kant establishes participation and equality in sovereignty as the foundational pillars of the state.
In Kant, the idea of a state as a means of ensuring the use of the freedom of individuals and the idea of the state as an expression of autonomy or participation of citizens in the creation of laws come together. In any case, the original contract, which is the Kantian way of speaking of the social contract, the foundation of the state, must be based on the consent of citizens. Therefore, legitimacy depends on the laws and the power exercised by them.
According to Kant, the social contract is no loss of freedom, as the renunciation of wild freedom without law (natural freedom) in favor of civil liberty (social freedom) is a confirmation of the legislator’s freedom (autonomy). Thus, freedom as the foundation of the state and duty is presented as an ideal of reason, which is an essential foundation of judicial legislation.
Kant’s Synthesis: Freedom and Political Participation
Kant’s concept of the state combines Locke’s emphasis on freedom with Rousseau’s concept of political participation.
Principles of Coexistence
- As men, the freedom of every member of society.
- As subjects, each is equal with respect to any other.
- As citizens, each is independent of the other components of the political community.