by Andrew Lynn
But what if the magistrate believe such a law as this to be for the public good? I answer: As the private judgment of any particular person, if erroneous, does not exempt him from the obligation of law, so the private judgment (as I may call it) of the magistrate does not give him any new right of imposing laws upon his subjects, which neither was in the constitution of the government granted him, nor ever was in the power of the people to grant, much less if he make it his business to enrich and advance his followers and fellow sectaries with the spoils of others. But what if the magistrate believe that he has a right to make such laws and that they are for the public good, and his subjects believe the contrary? Who shall be judge between them? I answer: God alone. For there is no judge upon earth between the supreme magistrate and the people. God, I say, is the only judge in this case, who will retribute unto every one at the last day according to his deserts; that is, according to his sincerity and uprightness in endeavouring to promote piety, and the public weal, and peace of mankind. But what shall be done in the meanwhile? I answer: The principal and chief care of every one ought to be of his own soul first, and, in the next place, of the public peace; though yet there are very few will think it is peace there, where they see all laid waste.
There are two sorts of contests amongst men, the one managed by law, the other by force; and these are of that nature that where the one ends, the other always begins. But it is not my business to inquire into the power of the magistrate in the different constitutions of nations. I only know what usually happens where controversies arise without a judge to determine them. You will say, then, the magistrate being the stronger will have his will and carry his point. Without doubt; but the question is not here concerning the doubtfulness of the event, but the rule of right.
But to come to particulars. I say, first, no opinions contrary to human society, or to those moral rules which are necessary to the preservation of civil society, are to be tolerated by the magistrate. But of these, indeed, examples in any church are rare. For no sect can easily arrive to such a degree of madness as that it should think fit to teach, for doctrines of religion, such things as manifestly undermine the foundations of society and are, therefore, condemned by the judgment of all mankind; because their own interest, peace, reputation, everything would be thereby endangered.
Another more secret evil, but more dangerous to the commonwealth, is when men arrogate to themselves, and to those of their own sect, some peculiar prerogative covered over with a specious show of deceitful words, but in effect opposite to the civil right of the community. For example: we cannot find any sect that teaches, expressly and openly, that men are not obliged to keep their promise; that princes may be dethroned by those that differ from them in religion; or that the dominion of all things belongs only to themselves. For these things, proposed thus nakedly and plainly, would soon draw on them the eye and hand of the magistrate and awaken all the care of the commonwealth to a watchfulness against the spreading of so dangerous an evil. But, nevertheless, we find those that say the same things in other words. What else do they mean who teach that faith is not to be kept with heretics? Their meaning, forsooth, is that the privilege of breaking faith belongs unto themselves; for they declare all that are not of their communion to be heretics, or at least may declare them so whensoever they think fit. What can be the meaning of their asserting that kings excommunicated forfeit their crowns and kingdoms? It is evident that they thereby arrogate unto themselves the power of deposing kings, because they challenge the power of excommunication, as the peculiar right of their hierarchy. That dominion is founded in grace is also an assertion by which those that maintain it do plainly lay claim to the possession of all things. For they are not so wanting to themselves as not to believe, or at least as not to profess themselves to be the truly pious and faithful. These, therefore, and the like, who attribute unto the faithful, religious, and orthodox, that is, in plain terms, unto themselves, any peculiar privilege or power above other mortals, in civil concernments; or who upon pretence of religion do challenge any manner of authority over such as are not associated with them in their ecclesiastical communion, I say these have no right to be tolerated by the magistrate; as neither those that will not own and teach the duty of tolerating all men in matters of mere religion. For what do all these and the like doctrines signify, but that they may and are ready upon any occasion to seize the government and possess themselves of the estates and fortunes of their fellow subjects; and that they only ask leave to be tolerated by the magistrate so long until they find themselves strong enough to effect it?
Again: that church can have no right to be tolerated by the magistrate which is constituted upon such a bottom that all those who enter into it do thereby ipso facto deliver themselves up to the protection and service of another prince. For by this means the magistrate would give way to the settling of a foreign jurisdiction in his own country and suffer his own people to be listed, as it were, for soldiers against his own government. Nor does the frivolous and fallacious distinction between the court and the church afford any remedy to this inconvenience; especially when both the one and the other are equally subject to the absolute authority of the same person, who has not only power to persuade the members of his church to whatsoever he lists, either as purely religious, or in order thereunto, but can also enjoin it them on pain of eternal fire. It is ridiculous for anyone to profess himself to be a Mahometan only in his religion, but in everything else a faithful subject to a Christian magistrate, whilst at the same time he acknowledges himself bound to yield blind obedience to the Mufti of Constantinople, who himself is entirely obedient to the Ottoman emperor and frames the feigned oracles of that religion according to his pleasure. But this Mahometan living amongst Christians would yet more apparently renounce their government if he acknowledged the same person to be head of his church who is the supreme magistrate in the state.
Lastly, those are not at all to be tolerated who deny the being of a God. Promises, covenants, and oaths, which are the bonds of human society, can have no hold upon an atheist. The taking away of God, though but even in thought, dissolves all; besides also, those that by their atheism undermine and destroy all religion can have no pretence of religion whereupon to challenge the privilege of a toleration. As for other practical opinions, though not absolutely free from all error, if they do not tend to establish domination over others, or civil impunity to the church in which they are taught, there can be no reason why they should not be tolerated. …
6
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on Inequality & The Social Contract
Introduction
‘Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains.’ So begins the first book of Rousseau’s The Social Contract (1762). Many people think that this is a call to arms on behalf of radicals and revolutionaries. The real position is considerably more complicated than that: the freedom to which Rousseau refers is the freedom of the original savage—a freedom to which we are unable to return; the ‘chains’ are those of man enslaved to wants and desires that cannot be satisfied independently and condemn him to depend upon others. The answer to the conundrum is neither to seek to return to our original freedom nor to accept indefinitely our subjection. Instead we must forge a higher liberty constituted by self-rule through participation in the state: for, says Rousseau, ‘the mere impulse of appetite is slavery, while obedience to a law which we prescribe to ourselves is liberty.’ This is to be ‘forced to be free’. It is Rousseau’s greatest gift: a radical politics that addresses not only the political but also the psychological and spiritual roots of our subjection.
Rousseau (1712-78) in his personal life was, admittedly, a dilettante and self-confessed rogue. He was born in Geneva—a state notionally democratic, governed by its adult male citizens, although in fact dominated by a small number of wealthy families exercising power through a twenty-five member council called the petit conseil (or ‘little council’). Rousseau’s father was a watchmaker, and poor, altho
ugh sufficiently well educated to be able to introduce his son to Plutarch’s Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans; his mother, however, died very shortly after his birth. At the age of twelve, Rousseau left school to be apprenticed to various trades, none of which suited, before fleeing several years later to Savoy (a historical territory now shared among France, Italy, and Switzerland), leaving Geneva for good. Rousseau’s career, if it can be called that, was a hodgepodge: he was at different times a servant, a secretary, and a tutor; he briefly attended a seminary with the intention of entering the priesthood; and at one time he even occupied the post of secretary to the French ambassador to Venice. His personal life was no less erratic: a lover of aristocratic women, including Madam de Warens—Rousseau called her ‘maman’ and shared her favours with the steward of her house—he nevertheless took up with a laundress by the name of Thérèse le Vasseur, with whom he had five children (all given up to a foundling hospital), and with whom he lived for the rest of his life. In spite of these vicissitudes, Rousseau’s philosophical output was striking and influential, and included his prize-winning essay on the arts and sciences for the Academy of Dijon (1750) and his Discourse on Inequality (1754), as well as his incendiary treatises on education and politics, Emile and The Social Contract (both of which appeared in 1762). Fame, however, came at a price. Emile, which set forth the principles of natural theology, enraged the religious orthodoxy. The Social Contract was perceived to be still more provocative: it triggered outright political hostility as a result of its advocacy of democracy and denial of the divine right of kings. The French government responded by ordering Rousseau’s arrest, forcing him to flee France; the Council of Geneva, in turn, ordered the two books to be burnt and for Rousseau to be arrested if he entered the territory. Obtaining temporary refuge in Prussia, he was ultimately driven out again, fleeing to England, where he resided until his paranoid delusions convinced him that David Hume, who had invited him over in the first place, was plotting against his life. Mentally ill and no longer in a position to trouble anyone, he spent the final years of his life back in France, where he died in poverty in 1778.
The central feature of Rousseau’s work is his philosophy of man. For Rousseau, man in his savage state is whole. True, says Rousseau, savage man is disadvantaged in many respects compared to civilized man: if you allow civilized man time to gather together his tools and his machines, he will defeat the savage man, in any contest between the two, with great ease. But set them together naked and unarmed, and it is a different matter: ‘you will soon see the advantage of having all our forces constantly at our disposal, of being always prepared for every event, and of carrying one’s self, as it were, perpetually whole and entire about one.’ Rousseau is at pains to stress that the differences between savage man and civilized man go to the root of his being: as horses, cats, and bulls have greater stature, are more robust, and have vigour, strength, and courage when they are allowed to run free but lose these advantages when domesticated, so the ‘effeminate’ way of life in civilized societies enervates man’s strength and courage and makes him grow weak, timid, and servile. Savage man, on the other hand, lives wholly in the present and his desires and fears are limited to those that arise from the animal state; the only goods he recognizes are ‘food, a female, and sleep’, and the only evils he fears are pain and hunger. He stands in no need of his fellow creatures nor has any desire to hurt them. Everyone is his own master: there is no dominion and submission, not because all are equal, but because all are independent.
In the state of nature such inequalities as nature imposes upon us—differences in wit, beauty, strength, skill, merit, and talent—don’t make a great deal of difference. It is when men come together in society that such qualities, as capable of commanding respect from others, become valuable, which incentivizes men to try to present themselves other than they really are. It is also when men come into society that they begin to conceive of the notion of property as something distinct from and extending beyond the land and cattle over which solitary primitive man is able to exert possession. From this moment on, estates multiply until a point is reached when they border one upon another with the consequence that men can only aggrandise themselves at the expense of others; meanwhile, the propertyless ‘supernumeraries’ find that they have ‘become poor without sustaining any loss’ because ‘while they saw everything about them change, they remained the same’.
Rousseau’s recognition of the fundamental difficulty facing mankind in society is his most profoundly philosophic insight: for he appreciates, in full agreement with the great spiritual leaders of mankind, that we are brought into our greatest subjection by our very own wants and desires. In consequence of this multitude of wants and desires, men in society are made subject not only to all nature but also, more especially, to one another. This is a subjection that is felt by all: the rich need services and the poor the assistance of others. Human life, therefore, becomes an endless effort to get others sufficiently interested to satisfy these wants and desires. We become imperious and cruel to frighten some into compliance; we are also made artful and sly in order to make others see their apparent advantage in promoting our own. Increasingly, the ambition to raise fortunes arises not so much from real want, but from a desire to surpass our fellow men. We are filled with a ‘vile propensity to injure one another’ and a secret jealousy which is all the more dangerous when it ‘puts on the mask of benevolence to carry its point with greater security’.
It is through the body politic that man rises above the difficulties and degradations that human society would otherwise subject him to. The body politic, explains Rousseau in The Social Contract (1762), is founded upon a ‘social contract’ which effects ‘the total alienation of each associate, together with all his rights, to the whole community’. This alienation is total and no rights are reserved, for if they were, there would be no common superior to determine disputes and the state of nature would persist; and, in giving himself to all, each associate gives himself to nobody, as each gains an equivalent right over the others as he surrenders to them. From the union of the individual contracting parties there arises a public person—the ‘body politic’ or republic—which acts under the supreme direction of a ‘general will’ to which the parties have surrendered their persons and their powers. Rousseau’s view differs starkly from that of Locke in one important respect: the body politic, whether in its active capacity as sovereign or passive capacity as state, is not a party to the contract; it is, rather, constituted by that contract. It cannot have any interests contrary to those of its members. ‘The sovereign,’ says Rousseau, ‘merely by virtue of what it is, is always what it should be.’
It is the great insight of Rousseau that our basic freedoms come into being as a result of our incorporation in the body politic. Liberty, of course, has always been at the heart of his philosophy: ‘To renounce liberty is to renounce being a man,’ he says, ‘to surrender the rights of humanity and even its duties.’ Civil and moral liberty, though, is obtained precisely through subjecting ourselves to the law, because obedience to a law that we ourselves prescribe is liberty, so that we become truly masters of ourselves, where we might otherwise be slaves to impulse and appetite. The exchange is a good one: civil liberty and proprietorship of all we possess in place of natural liberty and unlimited right to everything we try to gain and succeed in getting. It is true that we will not be entitled to extract private benefits at public cost by asserting rights that benefit ourselves to the detriment of the body politic. But should we be allowed to do so, the body politic would soon become unviable, and we would all be thrust back into unregulated mutual dependence with all that this would entail. It is in this respect that we must be ‘forced to be free’.
Rousseau has much to offer the modern man. His sociological and psychological insight is profound: it is through our many wants and desires that we grow dependent on others, and it is through our dependence on others that we are brought into subjection and rendered sus
ceptible to the myriad of ills that plague our social existence. But it Rousseau’s political remedy that is truly important: we must find our freedom, he insists, not by fleeing from social existence but by intensifying our engagement with the polity and thereby realizing the heightened emancipation that comes from obedience to laws that we have had a part in making. Rousseau’s republicanism is the very opposite of the totalitarianism that takes the form of a narrow political establishment or nomenklatura lording it over the politically inert masses. It is a call to reconstitute ourselves as political beings who are citizens every bit much as subjects—men in the truest, most dignified, and most self-realized state.
