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A review by hanan_sheikh
Of the Social Contract and Other Political Writings by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
4.0
Rousseau is one of those thinkers who you have to be careful with, in order to avoid throwing away the baby with the bathwater. While it is true that the irony was lost on the guy when he wrote a book about how to raise children, even though he abandoned all of his children, and that he declared that music and the arts are corrupting humanity, while making a living by composing music and writing literature. In short, Rousseau is probably the most easiest philosopher to use an ad-hominem against. But still, his ideas on political philosophy are, in my opinion, the best out of the three big social contractarian philosophers( Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau).
Firstly, the idea of the general will is brilliant. The general will can be broadly described as the collective abstraction of the wills of all the individuals in a society, aimed towards the common goal of self-preservation, and general well-being. For instance, imagine yourself stranded in an island, and you find other individuals in that island who're also stranded. All of you cooperate and work together to survive, for the common goal of self-preservation. Now, that social pact you form with the other individuals, for obtaining the common goal of survival, is the general will. Rousseau also makes an important distinction between the government and the general will. The government is bestowed the task of actualizing the general will, but it isn't the general will, in fact it has its own seperate particular will, which if given the chance will disregard the general will( something that happens most of the time).
Another point that Rousseau makes which isn't a big theme in this particular book is that property and wealth are only acquired after the social pact is made. This obvious observation disproves Locke's theory for a social contract, according to which we form societies to protect property. Now, I'm not going to discuss Locke in detail here, for obvious reasons, but will just add a remark that Locke was aware of Native Americans, who didn't have the concept of private property at all. Yet, he proposed that societies began to protect properties. It quite obvious to me that his work was just him trying to justify his political ambitions, and similarly the people who still take that main premise seriously are doing the exact same thing.
The last point I want to write about is that Rousseau was really fixated on his view that the governing bodies should not have legislative power. In fact, he even proposes that an outsider ought to write the constitution, so that no one might form the constitution in such a way that it overtly benefits their particular will.
Firstly, the idea of the general will is brilliant. The general will can be broadly described as the collective abstraction of the wills of all the individuals in a society, aimed towards the common goal of self-preservation, and general well-being. For instance, imagine yourself stranded in an island, and you find other individuals in that island who're also stranded. All of you cooperate and work together to survive, for the common goal of self-preservation. Now, that social pact you form with the other individuals, for obtaining the common goal of survival, is the general will. Rousseau also makes an important distinction between the government and the general will. The government is bestowed the task of actualizing the general will, but it isn't the general will, in fact it has its own seperate particular will, which if given the chance will disregard the general will( something that happens most of the time).
Another point that Rousseau makes which isn't a big theme in this particular book is that property and wealth are only acquired after the social pact is made. This obvious observation disproves Locke's theory for a social contract, according to which we form societies to protect property. Now, I'm not going to discuss Locke in detail here, for obvious reasons, but will just add a remark that Locke was aware of Native Americans, who didn't have the concept of private property at all. Yet, he proposed that societies began to protect properties. It quite obvious to me that his work was just him trying to justify his political ambitions, and similarly the people who still take that main premise seriously are doing the exact same thing.
The last point I want to write about is that Rousseau was really fixated on his view that the governing bodies should not have legislative power. In fact, he even proposes that an outsider ought to write the constitution, so that no one might form the constitution in such a way that it overtly benefits their particular will.