western political thinkers

1. Jean Jacques Rousseau
Rousseau’s social contract, which was read by thousands of people, engendered in them ‘a
vast discontent with existing conditions, and a feeling that something radical should be
done to correct existing evils.’ It should be remembered that Rousseau was a more potent
factor in preparing the way for the great French Revolution than Diderot, Voltaire and
Montesquieu. His Discourses and Social Contract undermined the entire social system of the
old regime and prepared the way for a new democratic order; and his passionate assertion
of the sovereignty of the people and the sovereign authority of the general will were like
the thunder of lightning as compared to Locke’s defence of limited or constitutional role.
Life and works of Rousseau
Rousseau was born at Geneva in 1712 of middle class parents. His father was a skilled
watchmaker, but of rather unstable character. His mother died in giving him birth and
therefore the burden of bringing up and instructing the child devolved upon his father who
was incapable of giving him any systematic training. On the contrary, he made Jean Jacques
Rousseau the companion of his less desirable pursuits by making him read aloud for him
erotic romances which certainly had an unhealthy effect upon the son’s nascent emotions
and passions. Most of his childhood was filled with negative experiences and hardships
which had a bearing on his character. He was wholly lacking in the graces of good behaviour
and was highly sensitive, quick to give and take offence. In 1749 Rousseau found that he
was a great social misfit, a great failure, socially, economically and morally.
There occurred an event in 1749 which proved a turning point in the life of Jean Jacques
Rousseau. He happened to come across an announcement that the Academy of Dijon
offered a prize for the best essay on the question:'has the progress of sciences and arts
contributed to corrupt or purified morals?’ In a flash of inspiration the idea came to his mind
that a strong case could be made for the thesis that the progress of sciences and arts had
tended to degrade the man morally. That man is by nature good, but becomes bad on
account of the corrupt institutions which an unnatural civilization creates, was the theme of
his essay. By maintaining that everything is good as it comes from the hand of the Creator
and becomes evil in the hands of man, Rousseau secularised the problem of evil. According
to him, man himself is the author of evil; it is futile to seek its source in any outside agency.
He drew the conclusion that if man wants to recover the original happiness and innocence,
he must return to the life of nature. The essay not only won for its author the prize offered
by the Academy; it also created a great in the ``the Artificial Society of the age of the
Reason”. He began to be greatly admired in the literary circles of Paris. But in the fervour of
the new faith that had dawned upon him, Rousseau decided to renounce Society, give up
connection with the great and mix with the humble and low. He began to live with a poor
and illiterate laundress and earned a scanty living by copying music.

2. His mind was seething with new ideas, and in 1754 he competed for another prize offered
by the same Academy. This time he wrote the Discourses on the Origin and Foundation of
Inequality. It was a more thorough piece of work than the first Discourse on the Arts and
Sciences, and was an attack on the institution of private property. He held that the root
cause of inequality for which there was no justification whatsoever was private property.
The state arose to secure property to those who first seized it. The poor are,however,
taught to believe that the state exists, not to protect this usurpation but to redress their
grievances and punish the wicked few. Soon they come to see through the game and realise
the true character of the state, but find themselves powerless against it. Rousseau says
that peace is impossible so long as the state remains; the only way to gain peace is to
return to the state of nature. Thus the second Discourse was like the first, a bitter attack on
the artificial life of contemporary France though the attack was veiled in the form of
drawing a contrast between the natural and civilised society. The despotic French monarchy
was also involved in the attack insofar as it was held responsible for the misery of the
people. The essay failed to win recognition and the prize was offered to another person
whose attempt was comparatively much poorer. This embittered Rousseau against society
all the more.
Rousseau’s Idea of Nature
The opening paragraph of Chapter 1, of the Social Contract contains the key to
understanding the political philosophy of Rousseau. It runs as follows:
“Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains. Many a one believes himself the master of
others, and yet he is a greater slave than they. How has this change come out? I do not know.
What can render it legitimate? I believe I can settle this question.”
If a man is born free, how can he be in chains everywhere? And, conversely, if he is
everywhere in chains, how can it be maintained that he is born free? He can be said to be
born free only in the sense that freedom is his birth right, that freedom is the essential and
indispensable condition for the development of the various potentialities of his nature. We
can say that he is born for freedom; that he ought to be free. He is everywhere in chains in
the sense that the conventions and customs of society and the regulations of the state
impose unnecessary and artificial restraints upon him which hinder rather than promote
the development of his personality. Only that society is legitimate which provides the
greatest freedom to the individual; all other societies which stand in the way of an
individual becoming what he should be are wrong; they are illegitimate and therefore
unnatural.
Rousseau felt that the art and culture of European society at that time were not helping
man to grow and develop in accord with his true nature. Instead of making him a fuller man,
they were dehumanising him, taking him away from the right path as demanded by his
nature. His call that man should return to nature did not mean that he should crawl on all

3. fours, or remain a wild savage. To do so would have been most unnatural for man. What is
natural for him is to outgrow the state of infancy and childhood, and the savagery of the
primitive man, and to replace the dominance of instinct and desire by conscience and
fore-thought. What Rousseau wanted was that should abandon that false art and culture
which made him develop along wrong lines and thereby obstruct the fulfilment of his true
nature, and adopt the right art and culture which would aid him in perfecting it. The
question therefore arises: What is the true nature of man by which we may be able to test
whether our art is right or wrong?
In the history of political thought two different and contrasted views have been held about
the primal nature of man. On the one side, there is the view of thinkers like Machiavelli and
Hobbes that man is about as bad as can be, and therefore the right art is to rescue him from
his innately wicked nature. Plato and Rousseau may be regarded as the prophets of the
other view that man is inherently good; and therefore the right art consists in developing
his innate goodness. Rousseau that the evil and corruption and wickedness found in the
world was not the natural outcome of the fact that man was born evil; they were wholly the
outcome of wrong social institutions. In short, according to him man is not born evil, but
grows into it as the result of wrong art. Rousseau does not appeal to religion or to logic in
support of his thesis, he tries to discover our primal nature by stripping us of all those
qualities or aspect of our being which can be attributed to the art and culture to which we
have been subject during our long past, until we come to something which cannot be
possibly be regarded as the product of art but must be deemed to native to us.
Two instincts:
Rousseau found that there are two instincts which must be supposed to constitute our
original nature; they cannot possibly be considered to be the gift or art. One of them is
self-love or the instinct of self-preservation. ‘His first law is to attend to his own preservation;
his first cares are those which he owes to himself.’ If man were not endowed with this instinct
by nature, he would have perished at the very start.
The second is sympathy or the gregarious instinct, or the instinct of mutual aid. Had we not
been equipped by nature with this instinct, we would have found the struggle for existence
too stiff and perished in it. Family rests upon this instinct. Rousseau finds our natural
endowment to consist of these two instincts only; everything else can be shown to be
engrafted upon them. Since they have been shown to be good, man must be assumed to be
good by nature and not evil.
These two impulses, self-preservation and sympathy, are bound to come into conflict
sometimes. Regard for the wellbeing of the family sometimes demands a course of action
incompatible with the interests of the community. In this way, conflict between the two
sentiments –to do what is necessary for one’s preservation and to help others – creates a
problem for everyone. Since both of them cannot be satisfied, the individual is compelled to
affect a compromise between them. Out of such continual compromise is born a new

4. sentiment which is known as Conscience. It is older than reason and older than education; it
is a gift of nature. Since it comes naturally to man and is for his good; it must be good.
It arises to solve the conflicts between the two instincts of man mentioned above. It proves
sufficient for this task as long as conditions of life remain simple. As soon as life grows
complex, its inadequacy for the purpose becomes evident. After all it is a sentiment; its role
in life is to impel the individual to love the right and hate the wrong. It does not teach him
what is right; it can only move him to do the right when he comes to know it from some
other source. In short it is a moral force and not a moral guide.
For guidance it has to depend on reason. Reason teaches an individual what he should do
but cannot make him do it. It is conscience alone which impels him towards the right. In
other words, reason determines the end for us; it tells us what is right and what is wrong. It
is thus clear that for Rousseau both reason and conscience work together in enabling an
individual to establish harmony between self-love and sympathy and develop other
sentiments.
Rousseau regarded conscience as infallible in the sense that it could not but have the right
and shun the wrong. Of course, it could be terribly mistaken, but the fault was that of
reason and not its own. Because of stress on conscience he has sometimes been dubbed as
anti-rational and romantic. He assigns to reason its proper role in development of the
personality of the individual, but does not give it unlimited sway. ‘He sees safety only in a
perfect union in which sentiment and reason mutually check and control each other- in which
sentiment urges reason to the right path , and in which reason leads us along it towards
perfection’.
He further says that it is also a part of our nature to grow and develop. “Perfection of man’s
nature by his reason and through society is man’s destiny”. Insofar as an individual is able to
keep his elemental instincts intact in the course of his development, he remains natural. He
becomes unnatural when these instincts are distorted or suppressed.
Now the question arises, if man’s nature is good, if it is his destiny to perfect his nature by
his reason and through society, how is it that ordinary man is not able to fulfil it? How have
we grown bad? The natural instinct of self-preservation leads an individual to seek only
those things which satisfy his real needs; they are few and easily met. But if he goes
beyond them and seeks to have more than what is necessary or more than what his
neighbours have got, he allows self-love to degenerate into pride and takes a step which
ultimately leads him away from the life which alone would have been in complete accord
with his nature. Pride is thus the source and root cause of evil which is at present devouring
the world. The art and culture which is built up under the sway of pride denatures us.
Therefore, if we want to save ourselves, if we wish to reach the perfection of which our
nature is capable and which can be regarded as our natural destiny, we must renounce pride
and be content only with self-love and sympathy which are natural to us. Nothing more
than this is the meaning of Rousseau when he asks us to Return to nature.

5. Rousseau does not want us to retrogress; on the other hand, he passionately believes in
progress. He held that there are benefits in civil society infinitely great, greater than what
the primitive condition of mankind can afford. In other words, we can say that the natural
man of Rousseau is the ideal towards which we are to grow; he does not represent the
state from which we started and which we left behind. The condition that we have to fulfil if
we are to arrive at our destination is the renunciation of all unnecessary and imaginary
needs, i.e., the abandonment of pride. The present organisation of society and its art and
culture do not leave room for the full play of the impulses of man, much that exists in it at
the present time needs to be removed if man is to come to his own.
Freedom of Choice: Finally mention must be made to another element which Rousseau
discerns in the nature of man. Nature has endowed man not only with self-love and
sympathy whose natural growth takes place under the guidance of conscience and reason;
it has given us another gift also. This is the freedom to choose our path. It is the freedom of
choice which distinguishes man from brutes. Liberty is indispensable, if man is to reach
perfection. Rousseau begins his Social contract with the memorable words: “Man is born
free….’. Liberty is not an unchanging and invariable thing; it varies from stage to stage. Man
has one type of liberty in the pre-civil state and of a different type in the civil society. The
liberty which the child has does not differ from the freedom which the brute possesses.
Rousseau calls it independence. It can be called by this name because it is independent of
the law of the man. At this stage we have no responsibilities and may do as we please. But
this independence is far from complete; it is limited by dependence upon the law of things,
it also means bondage to our inclinations and impulses.
Man next rises to civil liberty. This comes with the establishment of civil society and
involves dependence on the law of man. With dependence on the law of man there enter
the concepts of right and duty. Independence knew no duty; liberty requires every act to be
a duty. Independence knew no rights, for there could be no rights when all did as they
would. In liberty our rights are fixed, and all the power of the group is engaged for the
security. It is that security in rights that constitutes liberty. What we have lost therefore is
the precarious freedom to do so as we please, and what we have gained is the assured
freedom to what all consider right.
There is a form of freedom even higher than civic liberty. Rousseau designates it as moral
liberty. This is the highest stage man can reach in the development of his nature; it makes
him master of himself. It is realised when man has acquired such control over his personal
desires that only one desire is left; namely, the desire to be one with reason. Man attains
the fullest freedom of which his nature is capable when he submits himself completely to
the law of reason.
We now proceed to discuss the principles on which the ideal or natural society is based in
which alone the natural man can exist and reach his destiny.
According to Rousseau it is freedom of choice which enables us to lift ourselves above
bondage to the appetites into the life of virtue. He further contends that we become capable

6. of true freedom only in and through the membership of society. He says that apart from
State we would have remained ‘stupid and limited animals’ and our actions could have
never acquired any moral quality. It is in and through membership of civil society that the
voice of duty replaces physical impulse and man learns to consult his reason before yielding
to his inclinations. Rousseau insists that the voluntary identification of the individual with
the community of which he is a member is absolutely necessary for his moral growth. It is
in the rightly ordered society alone that man acquires true freedom which comes from
mastery over desires. This in turn is made possible by submission to law. According to
Rousseau it is to law that man owes justice and liberty; it is law again that establishes
natural and moral equality between men, and teaches man to act ‘in accordance with the
maxim of his own judgement, and not to be in contradiction to himself’. In short, according to
Rousseau an individual is truly free when he identifies his will with law. How can this be
achieved?
For a proper appreciation of the argument of the Social Contract it is necessary to keep in
mind the way in which Rousseau formulated his problem. It arose out of the utter
incompatibility between the true freedom which is demanded by the inner nature of man
and the externally imposed authority of the state which was a brute fact in France during
that period. France was then governed by men and not by laws; her people were subject to
the authority of despotic masters who issued commands; they had no liberty. Rousseau, on
the other hand, was convinced that in a truly organised society there would be no despots
and no commands; all men would be genuinely free. The question thus naturally arose
whether it was possible to devise a form of political organisation which, while affording to
every citizen complete security and protection, would also give him the greatest amount of
freedom. This is the most fundamental problem of political science; this is the problem of
the relation between the State and the individual; the problem of reconciling individual
liberty with the authority of the state, the problem of determining what makes government
lawful and obedience to it a duty. Rousseau believed that he had found the key to the
solution of this difficult problem in the idea of a social pact.
Rousseau’s Argument: Only a society based on social contract, as he defines the term, is in
a position to provide to its members moral liberty which proceeds from submission to the
law of reason, as well as security and protection which result from civil law and order. A
society resting on force can give only the second but not the first. It cannot provide
freedom; for in it there can be no sense of moral obligation on the part of an individual to
obey its authority; it gives power but no right. When an individual yields to force, he yields
not because he ought but because he must. Since force can never create a right, a society
based on it would be a wrong society; it cannot be the right society of Rousseau’s
imagination which alone can lead us towards the goal of perfectibility.
According to Rousseau, it is equally futile to rest society on the will of God. He summarily
rejects the Divine Origin Theory by wittily remarking that every disease comes from God
too, but that does not prevent us from calling in a physician.

7. Rousseau saw that the only way to render the authority of the state lawful and make
obedience to it a duty is to base it on agreement among its members. Since no man has any
natural authority over his fellow men, and since force is not the source of right, conventions
remain as the basis of all lawful authority among men. Rousseau could come to this
conclusion very easily because the Social Contract Theory formed an important part of the
intellectual climate of that time; it had been familiarised and popularised by thinkers like
Hobbes and Locke. But he does not make it the basis of the rights and liberties of individuals
as against the government. He does not rest constitutional government on it as was done
by Locke. In the hands of Rousseau the Contract theory does not lead to the individualistic
conception of the state, for him the community is the chief moralising agency and therefore
represents the highest moral value.
The Social Contract: Firstly men form themselves into groups with a view to getting the
support of the community as a whole for the protection and security of their person and
property. Secondly, they desire to retain as much freedom as possible. Since these two
objectives are universal, the terms of the agreement which would fulfil them must be
equally universal.
The first point to be noted is that each member gives his all to the society. This makes the
community absolute. But this absoluteness is tempered by certain considerations. The
alienation is made on terms the same for all of them. Since the terms are the same for all, no
one has any interest in making them tyrannical or burdensome, for he will suffer from them
as much as anybody else. In other words, the community that is born as a result of the pact
cannot possibly be oppressive; it cannot possibly be opposed to freedom.
Though the surrender is total or complete and is made without any reserve, it is implicit in
the nature of the case that the ‘all’ that is surrendered means only that which concerns the
community as whole. That which is purely personal is left to the individual; the community
shall have nothing to do with it. Of course it is for the community to decide whether a thing
is of public concern or of strictly personal interest.
The second thing on which Rousseau lays stress is that under the pact no one is a loser,
while everyone is a gainer. Nobody stands to lose anything because in giving himself up to
all, he does not give himself up to anyone; and what he gives to all, he receives back as an
indivisible part of the whole. No one loses anything because there is no member of the
community over whom an individual does not acquire the same rights which he gives to
others over himself. Everyone thus recovers the equivalent of what he loses. Everybody is a
gainer because he gets the additional strength of the community in the preservation and
enjoyment of what he has.
Moreover, since the surrender of their powers by the members to the community is
complete and is made without any reservation, the union which results from it is as perfect
as possible. No person has any claims or privileges; all stand on a footing of equality. In civil
society the citizens thus secure not only liberty but equality also.

8. Thirdly it should be observed that the surrender is made, not to an irresponsible sovereign
as it is in Hobbes, but to an entity of which every individual is a constituent part and over
whose activities he has the same degree of control as any other members of the
community. As a member of the sovereign body each individual is not merely as free as he
was before, but much more so under social conditions.
The fourth point to which attention should be paid is that the ideal society is organic in
character; it is individualistic like the body politic of Hobbes’s or Locke’s conception. It is not
merely a device made by the contracting members for their mutual benefit and having no
end beyond that of contributing to the security and comfort, in a word, to their self
satisfaction. It is a moral and collective being having its own life, will and entity; Rousseau
describes it as a public person. It has a common life of its own, like that of a tree; and just as
the roots, leaves and branches contribute to the life of the tree and can have no significance
or value apart from the life of the tree in which they share, the individual members of the
state also receive all the value and significance they have from their contribution to and
participation in the common life of the community. This implies a complete abandonment of
individualism which was a pronounced feature of the Hobbesian and Lockean theories , and
the restoration of the old Greek view according to which an individual can lead a good and
happy life only in and thorough association with his fellows.
In addition to the values which the state protects and promotes, it has a value of its own.
And the reason which leads the individuals to render obedience is not enlightened
self-interest; it is the perception that it is the state and state alone which lifts them above
he life of the brute and makes them truly human, that it alone provides the conditions
necessary for the development of a full, rich and moral personality; that outside society
there is nothing like freedom and development.
Rousseau makes politics a branch of morals; the aim of politics is to enable the individual to
develop his moral being and lead a good life.it is the great merit of Rousseau, to have made
the people sovereign through his theory of general will. To have provided for a will which is
at once actual or real and general? Unfortunately, it is not easy to state precisely what the
General will be.
It would be recalled that Bodin and Hobbes located sovereignty in the ruler; they were
advocates of despotic monarchy. Locke and Montesquieu supported the cause of individual
liberty and defended the constitutional or limited government. They fought shy of the
conception of sovereignty as if it were a mortal enemy of liberty; they thought that this idea
was indivisibly mixed with the monarchist and absolutist ideas, as indeed it was in the
theories of Bodin and Hobbes. In a flash of inspiration Rousseau saw that if sovereignty was
located in the people rather than in the ruler, the theory would prove to be the most
powerful weapon against absolutism. After him the theory of popular sovereignty became
the rallying point of all democracies.
For previous thinkers, the important thing was not to discover what the people wanted but
what was best for them. For Rousseau it was not enough to show that activities of the

9. government were in the best interest of the people; the problem for him was to organise
society in such a way that the group could act without in any way frustrating the will of any
individual. This can be ensured only if the acts commanded by the sovereign are at the same
time willed by the individuals. This is best secured through the operation of the General Will.
Rousseau’s social pact is devised to achieve this objective; namely, that in obeying the
community the individual obeys himself and no external community.
The distinctive element in Rousseau’s social pact is that the community or commonwealth
which comes into existence as the result of social contract is itself the sovereign. It does not
proceed to make any power or authority outside itself sovereign, but becomes sovereign
and continues to be ever afterwards. It is thus crystal clear that unlike previous writers who
had thought of the political society or commonwealth, upon its formation by compact, as
instituting a sovereign. Rousseau thinks of the society itself becoming sovereign in the act
of its formation and ever after continuing so.
Civil liberty and Moral change of man due to the Contract: What man loses by the social
contract is his natural liberty and an unlimited right to everything he tries to get and success
in getting ; what he gains is civil liberty…which is limited by the general will….we might ,
over and above all this add that what man acquires in the civil state , is moral liberty, which
alone makes him truly master of himself ; for obedience to the mere impulse of appetite is slavery,
while obedience to a law which we prescribe to ourselves is liberty.
It is through the membership of the state that he becomes a moral agent; his acts acquire a
moral quality that they did not have before. An individual becomes capable of morality when
he learns that there is another law than that of force, that there are things which he ought
to do as distinguished from things which he might be forced to do. This consciousness can
arrive on him only in and through the membership of civil society, Apart from society a man
remains a slave to his impulses and instincts, he knows of no law of life other than physical
impulse; as a member of society he learns to regulate and control his impulses in the light of
a universal law.
Features of the Pact
● General will is disinterested and that also in two fold manner. Firstly, it always aims at
the common good; it is concerned only with those things which are common concerns,
and not at all with those which are purely personal. Secondly, in dealing with the
former it is actuated by public spiritedness. If the members of the community think of
problems of common concern but from the point of a view of personal or sectional
gain, the result cannot be called General will. In order to arrive at the General will,
members must deal not only with what concerns all, but also think about it from the
point of view of the common good.
● General will must be general not only in its purpose but also in its composition and it
must take into consideration the will of each member of the community. Every
member is received as an integral member of the society.

10. ● The pact demands unanimity but it is not fully possible and Rousseau accepts it.
● There is distinction between the General Will and Will of all. Sum total of the wills of
all individual members can never constitute the general will, because the former takes
note of the personal and private interests, while the latter deals with matters of
common concern only. General will is not a compromise between the conflicting will of
the members, but a single unitary will. The General will is unitary because the
sovereign body which expresses it is a ‘moral and collective ‘person, having a life, will
and purpose of its own.
● The manner in which a body like the British or Indian cabinet arrives at decisions on
questions of national importance approximates most closely to Rousseau’s
conception. As a result of the discussion in which every member has the right to
participate, a common view emerges which represents the largest measure of
agreement among them. Even where complete agreement is not reached, the
dissenting members accept the decision in good grace; they feel satisfied that they
have their say and have contributed in some measure to the decision that emerges.
One condition is that all the members shall lay aside personal and selfish
considerations and look at the problems confronting them from the point of view of
common good.
● Rousseau is well aware of the fact that an individual may, as a particular man, have a
particular will contrary to the general will he may have as a citizen. His particular and
personal interest may demand of him a course of action different from and opposed to
that required by the general will. The actual will of a criminal urges him to avoid
interest, but his real will demands that he surrender himself to the police and
welcome the jail sentence. If one does not voluntarily do what the real or general will
demands; it becomes the right and duty of the community to compel the disobedient
individual to obey the general will. ‘The social compact ….tacitly includes the undertaking
that whoever refuses to obey the general will shall be compelled to do so by the whole body.
This means nothing else than that he will be forced to be free; for such is the condition
which, by uniting each citizen to his community; secures him against all personal
dependence’.
● The paradoxical character of the above assertion disappears when it is realised that
there can be no clash between the true interest of the state and those of the individual
, as there can be none between the needs of the body as a whole and those of its
various organs. The state is an organic unity comparable to the body. The conflict
arises only when an individual seeks to follow a course of action opposed to the
well-being of the whole. In such a case the society has the right to compel the
individual to obey its will.
● It must be remembered that Rousseau was not engaged in describing actual states,
his purpose was to outline an ideal state which would reconcile individual sovereignty
with state sovereignty.

11. ● Rousseau says that sovereignty is indivisible and inalienable. He wants to convey the
idea that the General can and must reside in the community as a whole which alone
can embody it; it cannot be divided or split up even among the various organs of the
government like legislature or executive. To divide it would be to destroy it , for in that
case one part would assert its authority over the others, and that means that
sovereignty of the General will no longer remain the will of the entire group
functioning as unity. The legislature and the Executive cannot be sovereign; they are
nothing but subordinate agencies to carry out what the General will lay down. In a
similar manner sovereignty or General will is inalienable. The people cannot surrender
or delegate their sovereign power to an individual or a group; to delegate it to the
legislature means that the people do not continuously share in the exercise of the
sovereign authority and therefore do not remain free. Practical considerations make
representative democracy indispensable in the present era. But according to
Rousseau, after the elections are over the people are enslaved and count for nothing;
their representatives are under no obligation to reflect their opinions; they are apt to
be influenced by those who wield power and authority; Rousseau is thus against
parliamentary institutions.
● Lastly, it cannot be made executive will; its function is to make laws but not to execute
them; their execution must be entrusted to a different agency; namely, the
government. The General will not itself undertake the work of executing the laws
because it is impersonal and universal, while the decrees of government are particular
and personal. Rousseau is thus led to draw a distinction between the people who are
sovereign and the government which is subordinate and therefore responsible to the
people.
Difficulties in Rousseau’s Theory of General Will:
● The Tyranny of Majority: It is usually said that though the objective of Rousseau was
to secure individual liberty, his theory became one of the strongest defences of
majority tyranny. The individual who does not see eye to eye with the majority can be
made to submit to the view of the latter, in the oft quoted words of Rousseau he can
‘be forced to be free’. There seems to be no escape or protection to those who dissent
from the view of the majority.
● Encouragement to Individualism: He has been charged equally often for encouraging
an individualism that will end in anarchy. This anomaly can be explained in the words
of Professor Wright:“the book is neither for the individualist or absolutist. In the struggle
between the state and individual which has been the torment of political philosophy from
Aristotle down, it offers a proposal of peace. Real liberty is made possible by the State; and
the greater the power with which the State is armed, the more secure will be the liberty an
individual can enjoy in it. Rousseau realised this truth and provides for both in his theory.It is

12. failure to understand the interdependence of the two that gives rise to such lopsided
criticism
● Misuse of the Theory of General Will: The fact that the theory of General will can be
and has been used to justify suppression of individual liberty cannot be denied. It has
got to be admitted that it can be and has been converted into a powerful defence of
the right of the majority to force its views on minorities. But the answer is that such
abuse is not a legitimate conclusion from a theory of General will. Those who misuse
it forget that the General will have a basis in morality and justice. Since the state of
Rousseau is a moral state –it must be remembered that he describes the civil society
resulting from the Social Compact as a moral person…there can be no question of the
individual being made to suffer as a result of dependence upon it.
● General Will’s application to Practice is limited: The real defect inherent in Rousseau’s
theory of General Will may be said to lie in the fact that its application in practice is
very limited. The condition for its realisation in which Rousseau lays most stress,
namely, the active participation of every citizen in the exercise of sovereign authority,
can be satisfied only in a small community. It cannot be fulfilled in the large nation
states of today where representative legislatures have taken place of the sovereign
assembly. In short, Rousseau wrote for a world different from the present when life is
complicated by aggressive nationalism, individualism and continuous demand for
legislation. Rousseau objected to the representative system which has become
universal in the 20th
century.
● The theory diminishes the importance of Government: Since representative
government is ruled out; and the sovereignty lies with the people, the executive
branch becomes merely an agency to carry out the will of the people; it has the status
of a committee having only delegated powers which can be withdrawn or modified at
the will of the master.
Influence on Political Thought:
● Rousseau was the first modern thinker to revive and reassert the great truth
enunciated by Aristotle that man is a political animal who can fulfil his nature only in
the state. This had a profound effect on the conception of the nature of the state. It
was no longer possible to regard the state as divine punishment for the original sin of
man as the medievalist had taught, or to view it as a device made by man to keep
under check and control the egoistic and aggressive impulses of human nature as
Machiavelli and Hobbes had held. With Rousseau there begins a new tradition which
regards the State as a necessary condition of virtuous life and the chief instrument of
the moral progress of man.
● He occupies a prominent place in the development of the theory of sovereignty. By
locating it in the General Will he became the founder of the theory of popular
sovereignty in modern times. His originality consists in defining sovereignty with the

13. fullness and precision of Hobbes and giving it an abode which would have given great
satisfaction to thinkers of the liberal school like Locke, in making it at once absolute
and the condition of individual liberty. It can be said that General Will is Hobbes’s
Leviathan with his head chopped off.
● Some of his observations made by Rousseau about the way in which the people can
manage to retain their sovereignty show great political thought and insight. His
suggestion that the people should meet periodically and at short intervals to discuss
the question of the constitution needs any revision and a change of personnel has
received concrete shape in two important democratic institutions of the nineteenth
century. The sharp way in which he distinguishes between the sovereign people and
the executive decrees issued by the government has its parallel in the distinction we
make between the fundamental law or the law of the constitution and the acts
farmed by the legislative branch of the government.
We may summarise the chief contribution of Rousseau to political theory in the following
words of Prof. Hearnshaw, ‘ He displays the people as the ultimate source of political authority;
he proclaims the common good to be the proper end of government , he stresses the view that the
state is a social organism ; he develops the idea that, as an organism , it has a common
conscience and a general will; he maintains the doctrine that the true basis of the political
obligation is consent; he proclaims the possibility of the ultimate reconciliation of freedom and
authority …He takes a high place among political thinkers.