The Social Contract

The more people who can access information and ideas, the more people can become politically involved and the more people are thinking critically about power.

And, you know, it used to be the case that historians would claim that the French Revolution was basically a consequence of philosophers like Rousseau publishing their anti-monarchical and, you know, sort of proto-republican ideas in books like The Social Contract.

That's probably overstated.

But I think if you look at the history of, in Britain perhaps more, you're talking about the end of the seventeenth century.

Of all these writers, however, the most influential was Rousseau.

In his works, The Origin of Inequality and The Social Contract, he taught that all men are equal, that man has only been made bad by the badness of institutions.

Thus he flattered the people and became the most quoted of all the revolutionary teachers.

Lastly, the writers in the encyclopedia, edited by d'Alembert and Diderot, inculcated in their readers a profound distrust for all existing institutions and systems of theology.

His writings were quoted and read as a new gospel by well nigh all the prominent leaders of the time.

Rousseau's doctrines were contained in an early essay on civilization, in his Emile, a treatise on education, and in the social contract, his chief work.

in his first essay rousseau maintained the superiority of the savage over the civilized state and the whole of his subsequent teaching centred in deprecation of the hollowness and artificiality of society and in an inculcation of the imperative need of a return as far as might be to a state of nature and all our relations this he especially applies to education in his emile in which he sketches the training of a hypothetical child the social contract his greatest work contains a discussion of the first principles of social and political order it is to this work the magic formulas which served as watchwords during the revolution formulas such as liberty equality and fraternity divine right of insurrection the term citizen employed as the style of address and many other things are traceable the title of the work was suggested by locke's or rather hobbes supposition of a primitive contract having been entered into between governor and governed which was set up in opposition to that of the divine right of kings this idea rousseau accepts in basis but denies the unconditional nature of the contract affirmed by the originators of the theory no original distinction existed between rulers and ruled any contract of the kind obtained was merely a political convenience strictly subject to conditions governors were merely the delegates or mandatories of the people the form of government was to rousseau more or less a minor matter although a democracy had the most advantages yet it was quite possible for the mandates of the people to be adequately carried out by a special body of men an aristocracy or even by one man a king but every form of government was bound to recognize the will of the people as sovereign in all things The classicism of the French Revolution is also largely represented in Rousseau.

The Roman Constitution is invariably the source of his illustrations and the model to be copied or amended.

As regards toleration, Rousseau would allow the civil power the right of suppressing views which were deemed contrary to good citizenship.

10 Origine, Tome 1, pages 81-82.

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a few weeks before the opening of the states-general a great riot occurred in paris in the faubourg st antoine the workmen's quarter attended by much bloodshed and loss of life paris we are told had for months past begun to fill with desperate hungry and ragged strangers drawn thither by poverty from the uttermost ends of france in some districts the leaders pretend to be acting under the orders of the king the result is everywhere at least one thing the enforcement of a maximum in the price of bread and the abolition of taxes atrocities of course occur here and there a lawyer is half roasted to make him surrender a charter supposed to be in his possession a lord is tortured to death an ecclesiastic torn in pieces thus have threatened ruin and starvation to which the financial extravagances of the court have been the occasion of giving articulate expression and the remedy for which is offered to those who can read in the social contract of rousseau become the immediate cause of the french revolution the same imminent bankruptcy of the kingdom occasioned by the extravagance of the court which led to the convocation of the states-general led also indirectly to the founding of that main spring of the revolution the jacobin club the dispute between the court and the local legal councils called parliaments led to the crippling of their powers by the king and this again to remonstrant deputations from the aggrieved provincial towns one set of these remonstrants hailing from rennes in brittany formed themselves into a club called the breton club for the ventilation of their grievances using the old convent of st jacques in the rue st honore for their meetings the original scope of the society soon became enlarged and the name changed from that of breton club to jacobin club after their meeting-place such was the origin of the vast club organization which exercised such a stupendous influence not only in paris but in france during the following years chapter three the opening in paris On the 5th of May, 1789, the royal town of Versailles was gay, gay with decorations, with music, vocal and instrumental, with epaulettes, étiquettes, fair women and fair costumes.

He was, like Marie Antoinette and like many of these French people during the time, He was obsessed with Rousseau, and Rousseau was obsessed with virtue.

In his book, The Social Contract, Rousseau expanded the definition of virtue, moral goodness, to not just the individual, but to society, to the citizen.

To be a virtuous citizen was to put the will of the citizenry above selfish ambition, and to ensure the survival of the public good goes above all else.

This is why the royals, the nobility, and the others were so evil, because they put their own self-interests above those of the collective.

All right, let's start with France.

Okay, so if you know your history, France has something called a social contract, and this was a theory developed by Jean-Jacques Rousseau in his book called The Social Contract, which is we're born free, our freedom is the mo- is, is our most precious gift from God.

We choose to surrender our freedom in order to work in society, in order to create a society.

But in return for, um, our freedom, we must be given rights.

Um, and this creates the idea of the citizen, okay? And even today, if you go to France, I'm not sure if, um, any of you are, uh, have lived in France, but they take this idea of citizenship very, very seriously, okay? And it's created a lot of conflict in, uh, in France, because, uh, there are many Muslims who want to wear the, um, uh, hi- hijab, and the French is like, "No, we are a secular nation state with a social contract.

We don't allow that.

We're not religious," okay? So but what made the social contract possible was not a piece of paper, it was through blood, specifically the French Revolution, right? And then, and then the, the Napoleonic Wars.

That's what established France as a nation state.

Of all these writers, however, the most influential was Rousseau.

In his works, The Origin of Inequality and The Social Contract, he taught that all men are equal, that man has only been made bad by the badness of institutions.

Thus he flattered the people and became the most quoted of all the revolutionary teachers.

Lastly, the writers in the encyclopedia, edited by d'Alembert and Diderot, inculcated in their readers a profound distrust for all existing institutions and systems of theology.

Emile ou de l'Education was wearily, conscientiously toiled through for the sake of posterity.

Le Contrat Social was a work which it behooved a person of fourteen who wished to understand the scheme of civilization to know.

Strange, anxious days passed in the twilight of ignorance, groping among the vain shadows with which man in his wisdom has elected to surround the future mothers of the race.

It was not, of course, till years afterward that Mary became conscious of the fine irony of the fact that man, the superior intelligence, should take his future companion, shut her within four walls, fill that dimly lighted interior with images of facts and emotions which do not exist, and then, pushing her suddenly into the blinding glare of real life, should be amazed when he finds that his exquisite care of her ethical sense has stultified her brain.

Where then did Jefferson get his ideas as to the equal rights to which men were born? Doubtless from the French philosophers of the 18th century, especially from Rousseau, who despite his shortcomings as a man, was one of the most original thinkers that his century produced and one of the most influential in shaping the opinions of civilized Europe.

In his Contrat Social, Rousseau appealed to consciousness rather than to authorities or the laws of nations.

He took his stand on the principles of eternal justice in all he wrote as to civil liberties, and hence he kindled an immense enthusiasm for liberty as an inalienable right.

But Rousseau came from Switzerland, where the passion for personal independence was greater than in any other part of Europe, a passion perhaps inherited from the old Teutonic nations in their forests on which Tacitus dilates, next to their veneration for woman, the most interesting trait among the Germanic barbarians.