Rousseau’s Philosophy: Enlightenment and Social Contract
Rousseau’s Ambiguous Figure in the Enlightenment
Jean-Jacques Rousseau stands as a complex and paradoxical figure within the Enlightenment. While recognized as a leading figure of this influential movement, he also emerges as one of its most prominent critics. This stems from his emphasis on the primacy of feeling over reason and his argument that science and culture, rather than improving humanity, tend to corrupt it.
Criticism of Society
Rousseau posits that human beings are inherently good, but it is life in society, with its accompanying civilization and culture, that has led to their corruption. He criticizes the learned for believing that progress and science inevitably lead to human happiness and moral improvement. Instead, he argues the opposite: the advancement of sciences and arts has contributed to the corruption of morals and human nature, standardizing individuals and deforming their natural feelings. In civilized societies, artificiality has replaced naturalness, hindering genuine self-expression and stifling freedom through rigid conventions. Civilization, in Rousseau’s view, has only served to promote inequality and moral degeneration.
The State of Nature and the Noble Savage
Rousseau envisions a state of nature prior to social life, where human beings were few in number and roamed freely in nature, which provided for all their needs. The natural man, often referred to as the “Noble Savage,” was characterized by innocence, equality, and freedom. This individual was kind and happy, driven by two primary feelings: self-love (which ensured survival) and pity (which fostered empathy and cooperation with others). In this state of nature, each individual lived in isolation, equal, independent, and free, in a world where language was unnecessary.
Rousseau contends that humans are naturally independent and not suited to live in society. The end of the state of nature came about with the increasing population and growing needs, leading humans to form more complex societies. This gave rise to the root causes of corruption:
- Private Property: This transformed self-love into amour-propre, an artificial passion that compels individuals to compare themselves with others and strive for superiority in all things, fostering envy and pride. This led to ambition, rivalry, and economic and social inequality.
- Despotic Power: The arbitrary and despotic power of some individuals over others resulted in the emergence of the state, created by the powerful to dominate the weak, imposing injustice and slavery.
Sciences and arts, according to Rousseau, ultimately tame human beings through the subtleties of reason and education, eliminating any remaining naturalness in their behavior. Only the moral sentiment, residing deep within the human heart and speaking through conscience, reminds individuals of the freedom and natural goodness they have lost and must strive to regain.
Rousseau’s Proposed Solutions
Rousseau acknowledges that a complete return to the original state of freedom, equality, and happiness is impossible. However, he believes it is possible to recover some of this lost goodness by removing the barriers that society and education have erected between individuals.
Natural Education
The first step towards regenerating human nature is the transformation of the individual through natural education. Rousseau views traditional education as a negative force, an instrument used by society to domesticate humans and distance them from their natural goodness. He proposes an ideal system of education based on the absence of external imposition, freedom of action for the child, and the primacy of experiential learning. Children should learn to live freely and coexist in tolerance with other human beings. To achieve this, they must be liberated from false prejudices and the useless knowledge instilled by society.
The Social Contract
The second step involves transforming society through a social contract that promotes and respects individual freedom while legitimizing power and stripping it of its arbitrary character. Rousseau argues that human beings need to associate with others to protect themselves from the dangers inherent in natural life. He proposes a form of contract between the community and the individual, and vice versa. This new model of social contract safeguards the freedom of each individual because it is based on a partnership of equals, where every member of society relinquishes their right to freedom to all other members, thereby transitioning from the state of nature to becoming a citizen.
The social contract creates the General Will, a collective, sovereign, and inalienable right that seeks the common good. The state is legitimate only when it can restore the freedom and equality that existed in the state of nature. The social contract is an agreement between free wills, and the sum of these wills constitutes the general will of the people, directly identified with the common interest and expressed through laws and political actions that promote equality and individual freedom.
Rousseau’s Critique of Representative Democracy
Rousseau opposes representative democracy, advocating for the exercise of political power by all citizens, who become sovereign in both enacting and obeying laws. He rejects the separation of powers, asserting that power emanates from the people and is sustained by them. This aligns with his thesis defending the existence of natural and inalienable rights. Only the general will can determine and establish individual rights. The general will dictates that to achieve true freedom, individuals must relinquish all individual rights for the benefit of the community. Since the general will seeks the greatest benefit for each person, the best choice for the individual is to obey this will. Rousseau argues that obeying the general will is essentially obeying oneself.
Rousseau distinguishes between the general will and the will of all (or the majority): the general will aims at the common good, while the will of all may not always do so. Perfect democracy exists when these two wills coincide, although Rousseau believes that a purely democratic government is more suitable for gods than for humans. He considers the American state as the best form of government, provided it exists within a small territory where all citizens can participate in public life.
Historical and Social Context
Rousseau’s thought is situated within the Enlightenment, an intellectual movement that reached its peak in the 18th century and culminated in the French Revolution of 1789. The Enlightenment was not merely a philosophical movement; it also had profound repercussions in politics, literature, art, and religion. It represented a new era and the ideology of the Third Estate, led by the bourgeoisie. Its primary objective was to spread the light of reason against dogmatism, superstition, and fanaticism. Reason was seen as a standardizing and unifying force, leading the 18th century to be called the “Age of Reason.”
Socially, the bourgeoisie began to emerge as the dominant class, challenging the nobility and clergy. Their rise was facilitated by the application of new technologies (such as the steam engine), marking the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. These advancements instilled confidence in progress among many Enlightenment thinkers, who envisioned a society founded on individual freedom and legal equality.
Despite this evolving social landscape, the prevailing political system in most European nations was enlightened despotism: “Everything for the people, but without the people” (as exemplified by Carlos III in Spain and Catherine the Great in Russia). The tension between the bourgeoisie and the nobility also manifested in art: while the nobility’s luxurious lifestyle found expression in Rococo, bourgeois ideals were embodied in Neoclassicism.
In the realm of religion, the Enlightenment advocated for deism: a belief in the existence of God but a rejection of religious institutions, promoting a natural religion. Deism spread through Freemasonry.
Philosophical Context
The 18th century is often regarded as the century of philosophy due to its emphasis on society. Philosophy was considered the key to the Enlightenment, guiding all other sciences and directing knowledge towards the emancipation of humanity. Generally, Enlightenment thinkers embraced Newtonian science while critiquing rationalist metaphysics.
The century began with a conflict between the rationalism of Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz (authors of the previous century) and the new empiricism of Locke, Berkeley, and Hume. Key figures in political philosophy also emerged, such as Kant, who admired Rousseau. Political philosophy grappled with the social problems facing France, seeking alternatives to the despotic regime that hindered the free development of society. Thinkers like Voltaire and the Encyclopedists laid the groundwork for future revolutions. The Encyclopedia, published in 37 volumes, was a cultural, industrial, and social endeavor aimed at liberating people from ignorance and illuminating the path of progress, upholding the principles of tolerance and cosmopolitanism.
Kant’s philosophy also deserves mention, as he sought to create a synthesis that transcended previous thought. Enlightenment philosophy was not solely concerned with theoretical issues but also with practical matters: finding solutions for humanity and creating a just world based on reason. In the field of political doctrine, Montesquieu proposed the theory of separation of powers, while contractarian conceptions about the origin of society, developed by Hobbes and Locke, spread across the continent.