By Ethan Putterman
Including Plato's Republic, Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Social agreement is considered the most unique examples of utopian political engineering within the historical past of principles. just like the Republic, Rousseau's masterwork is best recognized at the present time for its author's idiosyncratic view of political justice than its classes on lawmaking or governance in any concrete feel. hard this universal view, Rousseau, legislation and the Sovereignty of the folks examines the Genevan's contributions as a legislator and builder of associations, referring to his significant principles to concerns and debates in twenty-first century political technological know-how. Ethan Putterman explores how Rousseau's simply kingdom would truly function, investigating how legislation will be drafted, ratified and achieved, arguing that the idea of the Social agreement is extra pragmatic and populist than many students suppose at the present time.
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Extra info for Rousseau, Law and the Sovereignty of the People
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36 Rousseau speaks of “whatever impulsion is given them” because l’opinion publique is a pluralized rather than a unitary construct in his writings. This 35 36 Rousseau, Law and the Sovereignty of the People In this passage, opinion’s vulnerability to “unforeseen circumstances” is said to give it a randomness, fickleness or variability that makes it unpredictable. Persons “drift from whim to whim” with their “tastes being constantly enslaved to opinion” (JNH, II:xvii, 209/255) above all else. In the Reveries, the Genevan attributes the cause of this to man’s natural passions transmogrified by contemporÂ� ary society into amour-propre and prejudice, for the judgments of the public are quite often equitable.
28 30 Rousseau, Law and the Sovereignty of the People The “greatest wellspring of public authority lies in the hearts of the citizens, and that for the maintenance of the government, nothing can replace good morals” (EP, 149/252). , above any of the cardinal Christian virtues. His belief is that, unlike the Christian virtues of chastity, humility, self-sacrifice or mercy, it is the classical Roman or republican virtues that are essential to corporate unity and, more significantly, inculcating the psychological attributes that each must possess to resist the enslaving lure of l’opinion.
Against Plato and the ancient mindset, Rousseau believes that what distinguishes humans from animals is not reason, but freedom, although such a weak expression of freedom in the form of path-independence from instinct is slight or meager relative to moral liberty. 14 Kaufman, “Reason, Self-Legislation and Legitimacy,” 25–52. This is not to be confused with Rousseau’s belief that the general will is incapable of being made “right” by the bulk of the citizenry. “It is never a question of correcting it,” according to the Genevan, “but it is necessary to know how to consult it appropriately” (MG, I:vii, 99/311).