Page 134 - DPOL201_WESTERN_POLITICAL_THOUGHT_ENGLISH

Western Political Thought

Notes combine all the salient characteristics of the modern Promethean: the assertion of his
right to reject the existing order in its entirety; confidence in his capacity to refashion
it from the bottom in accordance with principles of his own devising; belief that this
could be achieved by the political process; and, not least, recognition of the huge part
instinct, institutions and impulse play in human conduct.
To some, Rousseau appeared as a great champion of individualism. Others viewed him as a
collectivist. Many like Cassirer saw him as an incomparable democrat who recognized autonomy,
though some like Cobban, Talmon and Taylor viewed him as a precursor of modern totalitarianism.
Crocker and Lindsay viewed him as a believer in guided democracy while Popper described him
as a romantic collectivist.
To many, he was an advocate of revolutionary changes while others regarded him as a defendant
of the status quo. The early socialists, with the exception of Jean B.C. Louis Blanc (1811-1882) and
the Saint Simonians like Saint Armand Bazard (1791-1832) and Barthelemy Prosper Enfantin (1796-
1864), were uncomfortable with his individualism. His name had been associated with the German
Idealists who regarded him as the originator of their political system. Kant praised Rousseau for
stating in clear terms the limits of the intellect and emphasizing the importance of immediate
sensation. He credited him for teaching him to honour human beings. This divergence in
interpretation was due to the ambiguous nature of his theory, making it possible to interpret him
in many different ways. “One could always find one’s dogma in Rousseau, whether one belongs
to the left or to the ‘Left of Left’ or to right or to the ‘Right of Right’“.
Rousseau made a passionate appeal for human equality. Paradoxically, the greatest mind of the
Enlightenment had nothing in common with his contemporaries. As a political moralist and a
constitution builder, he made Utopian demands. In the Discourses on Origins of Inequality (1755) he
described how contemporary society fell short of civilized standards. In the Social Contract (1762)
he stipulated and portrayed a decent and humane society. While the former diagnosed the disease,
the latter gave remedies and cures. He mainly focused on whether human beings could enjoy both
civilization and freedom, society and moral integrity. He propounded the notion of General Will
as the real basis of legitimate power and authority. He highlighted the importance of realizing
freedom in the modern age, and pointed to the problems of reconciling freedom with claims of
authority. He attempted to reconcile merit, liberty and equality in a society that would be consensual,
participatory and democratic. In fact, one would have to read both these works together to
understand the full implication of his ideas. The Social Contract was a part of a larger work,
Institutions Politiques, which he conceived in 1744 but abandoned and began to write the Emile
(1762). Rousseau wrote on institutional arrangements and educational practice as reflected in his
works like Project of a Constitution for Corsica (1764), Considerations on the Government of Poland
(1772) and the Emile. The last one was strongly disapproved of by the city leadership of Geneva,
making Rousseau renounce his citizenship. He sent a rejoinder in the form of Letters From the
Mountain.
In 1750, Rousseau became famous by winning an essay competition with his Discourse on the
Science and the Arts, in which he had stated that “our souls have been corrupted in proportion to
the advancement of our sciences and our arts toward perfection”. Here, he extended the arguments
of Machiavelli and Montesquieu about the relationship between luxury and affluence, growth,
moral decline and loss of human liberty. Rousseau’s severe criticism of luxury and artificiality,
rejection of sophistication, and his endorsement of simplicity, and emphasis on natural behaviour,
angered his contemporaries. He believed that the arts and sciences originated in human vices as
masks to conceal and rationalize human depravity. Contrary to what the Enlightenment professed,
progress in the material sense only increased our dependence on commodities, thereby increasing
our wants and undermining our natural independence. The less was the desire, the more the

128 LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY