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Western Political Thought

Notes Both Rousseau and Kant denied that rational self-interest is a reputable moral motive
and excluded prudence from the list of moral virtues. The outcome might be a more
radical doctrine of equality that could be defended on grounds of reason and individual
rights, since Rousseau supposed that the moral virtues exist in the greatest purity
among the common people.
The General Will would be the source of all laws. The human being would be truly free if he
followed the dictates of the law. Civil liberty, for Rousseau, was similar to Locke’s notion of
freedom under civil law. It meant freedom from the assault of others. Individuals are free only if
they have physical security. Freedom also meant eliminating the arbitrary will of another person
and that would mean the establishment of the rule of law. None should have greater influence in
the making of the law and no one would be above the law. Dependence upon a democratic law
was liberating but dependence on the will of another person was most shameful. In the Emile
Rousseau pointed out two kinds of dependence: “dependence on things which is the work of
nature; and dependence on men, which is the work of society. Dependence on things, being non-
moral, does no injury to liberty and begets no vices; dependence on men, being out of order, give
rise to every kind of vice, and through this master and slave become mutually depraved. If there
is any cure for this society evil, it is to be found in the substitution of law for the individual; in
arming the General Will with a real strength beyond the power of any individual will”. Of course,
if one had to be free then one had to obey one’s own will which meant that one’s will and the laws
of a state would have to be in harmony. Each individual would have to be a lawmaker, consenting
to obey a law if it maximized freedom. Hence he desired that the state to be free would have to be
a consensual and participatory democracy. He was categorical that the General Will could emerge
only in an assembly of equal lawmakers. It could not be alienated. The “executive will” could not
be the “General Will”. Only the legislative will, which was sovereign, could be the General Will.
Interestingly, the legislature was supreme for both Locke and Rousseau. While Locke defended
representative majoritarian democracy within which the legislature was supreme, for Rousseau it was
direct democracy that embodied the legislative will. The individual participated in the articulation
of the General Will; for citizenship was the highest that one could aspire for. The General Will
could not be the will of the majority. In fact, it did not represent the will of all. It was the difference
between the sum of judgements about the common good and the mere aggregate of personal
fancies and individual desires. It would always aim and promote the general interests and will of
all its members.
The body politic, therefore, is also a moral being which possesses a will; and this general will,
which always tends toward the conservation and well-being of the whole and of each part, and which is the
source of the laws, is for the members of the state in their relations both to one another and to the
state, the rile of what is just and what is unjust (Rousseau 1958: 146).
Freedom, for Rousseau, was moral self-determination or the ability of the individual to exercise
his autonomy. Unlike Hobbes and Locke, he did not define freedom as merely absence of restraint
or coercion. Rousseau believed that submission to the General Will attenuated freedom. He had
faith in the educative powers of political institutions to mould people’s nature so that their “real”
selves overwhelmed their narrow selfish concerns. The General Will would work if it was general
in two respects: generality of origin, and of object. The former required that all laws be made by
all citizens. Moreover, the laws should be such that they were in the general interest of everyone.
This would ensure that the good of all was promoted:
The Sovereign cannot impose on the subjects any fetters that are of no use to the
community. It cannot even will to do so, for under the law of reason nothing takes
places without a cause.... The commitments that bind us to the body politic are obligatory
only because they are mutual, and their nature is such that in fulfilling them one
cannot work for someone else without also working for oneself. Why is the general

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