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Unit 8: Jean Jacques Rousseau

will always, right, and why do all constantly want the happiness of each of them, if Notes
not because everyone applies the word each to himself and thinks of himself as he
votes for all (Rousseau ibid: 168).
Rousseau also distinguished between independence and liberty, separating them as exclusive of
each other. Liberty consisted in acting according to one’s wishes. It was not being subject to the
wills of other people. Anyone who was a master over others was not himself free. He regarded
liberty and equality as being interdependent. Unless people were equal they could not be free.
Rousseau rejected the idea of total surrender of powers, which made the individual submissive to
the sovereign. This would ensure social peace without liberty. In response to Hobbes, he stated:
“tranquillity is also found in dungeons; but is that enough to make them desirable places to live
in?” Liberty was quintessentially human. Rousseau’s concept of sovereignty differed from that of
Hobbes and Locke. Hobbes spoke of a total surrender of powers by the individuals to a third party
distinct from the people, and delineated the legal theory of sovereignty. Rousseau also spoke of
total surrender, but not to a third party. Instead, sovereignty was vested in the political community.
It was for this reason that Vaughan (1962) characterized Rousseau’s sovereign as similar to Hobbes’,
with its head chopped off. Hobbes’ conception of a personalized sovereign power was missing in
Rousseau.
Sovereignty, for Rousseau, was inalienable and indivisible, but vested in the body politic, thereby
expounding the concept of popular sovereignty. He was original, for he ruled out transfer of
sovereignty and accepted the idea that sovereignty originated and stayed with the people (Cranston
1986: 92-97). Unlike Hobbes, for whom the sovereign was the ruler, the legal state, Rousseau
distinguished the sovereignty of the people, the political community from that of the government.
It provided the foundation of public right. Locke, on the other hand, shunned the idea of sovereignty
for it suggested political absolutism. His conception of a limited state and individual rights led
him to the idea that people were sovereign, but their sovereignty was held in abeyance when the
government was in power, and within the government it was the legislature that was supreme.
Rousseau saw the government as an agent of the General Will, the sovereign entity in the body
politic. Like Montesquieu, he believed all forms of government were not suited to all countries. A
government had to reflect the character of a country and its people. He also proposed civil religion
for cultivating the moral foundations of the state. Civil religion enabled the citizens to fulfil their
duties. It promoted public interest:
The dogmas of the civil religion ought to be simple, few in number, precisely worded,
without explanations or commentaries. The existence of a powerful, intelligent,
beneficent divinity that foresees and provides; the life to come; the happiness of the
just; the punishment of the wicked; the sanctity of the social contract and of the laws.
These are the positive dogmas. As for the negative dogmas, I have limited them to just
one, namely intolerance. It is part of the cults we have excluded.
The sovereign could not oblige his citizens to believe these precepts, though Rousseau made belief
a condition for membership of a community. A person who did not accept could be banished not
because of impiety, but for unsociability, “for being incapable of sincerely loving the laws and
justice, and of sacrificing his life, if necessary, for his duty” (Rousseau ibid: 226). Once a citizen
had decided to abide by these precepts, he was bound to uphold them. The state could execute
anyone who acted as if he did not believe them. For Rousseau, acceptance of religion indicated the
limitations of reason.
Rousseau saw toleration as essential, but, like Locke, ruled out being tolerant towards the Roman
Catholics and the atheists. He was also critical of philosophical anarchists, for whom law was not
all that sacred. Like Machiavelli, he considered religion as necessary for providing a code of
conduct and for binding the citizens emotionally to the state. It played an important role in the

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