Rousseau Freedom

In The Social Contract, Jean Jaques Rousseau basically presents his argument that we, as individuals who agree to form a society, are citizens and subjects, both ruling and being ruled simultaneously. When it comes to individual freedom, then, we are presented with a paradox. If we agree to give up our state of complete freedom in uncivilized nature and posit absolute power in the state over all its members in order to join civilized society, are we not merely slaves to the state with little freedom if any? Rousseau tried to resolve this paradox by arguing that individuals gain much more by being members of society than they ever could individually in the isolated chaos of nature. Rousseau argues that rights like liberty, equality, and property are not individual rights at all. They are only civil rights, that is, ones bestowed upon us by our membership in the community. However, even as Rousseau makes this argument, we see that his explanation of it is sometimes contradictory:

The social contract gives the body politic absolute power over all its members. Each man alienates, I admit by the social compact, only such part of his powers, goods and liberty as is important for the community to control; but it must also be granted that the sovereign is sole judge of what is important. But the sovereign, for its part, cannot impose upon its subjects any fetters that are useless to the community. We can see from this that the sovereign powe

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ividual who desires something that is in contrast to what the social order says he should receive is really just someone who is capricious and doesn't know what is really good for him or society. Therefore, Rousseau is trying to say when it comes to coercion that coercion is never really coercion but only seems like it to the confused individual. In other words, some might see Rousseau's argument for freedom as one that tries to say that a restriction of liberty is actually an overall increase of liberty. Still further apparent is the belief that if a man's individual moral convictions go against the prevailing moral convictions of the state or society, then that individual ought to be coerced or suppressed for the general good of the society. There would be no freedom of conscience or morals without society in Rousseau's view. The general will or the general good was always right to Rousseau and making the individual totally in agreement with the state forces him to be truly free. We can see the problem in regard to freedom that this line of thinking creates. If the general will or general good is always right, who is it, exactly, who determines the general will or general good? In a democracy the general will should be e

Category: Philosophy - R