"Jean-Jacques ROUSSEAU" le Allan Ramsay 1766
§ 7 - AN GEUR-CHEUM SA CHÒMHSTRI EADAR IDÈAL AN T-SAIDHEINS AGUS IDÈAL NA PEARSANTACHD ANN AN ROUSSEAU.
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§ 7 - THE CRISIS IN THE CONFLICT BETWEEN THE IDEAL OF SCIENCE AND THAT OF PERSONALITY IN ROUSSEAU.
In ROUSSEAU'S philosophical world of thought the tension between the ideal of science and that of personality reached a religious crisis. In 1750, in answer to the question posed by the Academy of Dijon, which offered a prize for the best response, the Genevan autodidact sent in his treatise entitled "Discours sur les sciences et les arts". This writing at one blow established his European renown. It signified a passionate attack upon the entire Humanistic civilization which was dominated by the rationalist science-ideal, and had trampled the rights of human personality to a natural development. From the very beginning the Humanistic ideal of science had implied a fundamental problem with respect to the relationship between scientific thought, stimulated by the Faustian passion for power, and the autonomous freedom and value of human personality. In the soul of ROUSSEAU this problem attained such a tension, that he openly proclaimed the antinomy between the two polar motives of Humanist thought. He did not eschew the consequence of disavowing the science-ideal, in order to make possible the recognition of human personality as a moral aim in itself.
"If our sciences are vain in the object proposed to themselves, they are still more dangerous by the effects which they produce." So runs the judgment passed by ROUSSEAU on the science-ideal in his Discours sur les sciences et les arts (1).
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(1) Oeuvres complêts de J. J. Rousseau, 1855 (ed. H. Bechold) II, p. 126: "Si nos sciences sont vaines dans l'objet qu'elles se proposent, elles sont encore plus dangereuses par les effets qu'elles produisent."
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And his writing ends with the pathetic exhortation to return into ourselves in all simplicity. Freed from the burden of science, we may learn true virtues from the principles which are inscribed in the heart of everybody. "0 virtue! sublime knowledge of simple souls, should we need so much trouble and intellectual apparatus to know thee? Are not thy principles engraved in all hearts and does it not suffice for us in order to learn thy laws to return into ourselves and to hear the voice of conscience in the silence of the passions?" (2).
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(2) Ibid., p. 138: "0 vertu! science sublime des âmes simples, faut-il donc tant de peines et d'appareil pour te connaître? Tes principes ne
sont-ils pas gravés dans tous les coeurs? et ne suffit-il pas pour apprendre tes lois de rentrer en soi-même et d'écouter la voix de la conscience dans le silence des passions?"
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This was the passionate language of the re-awakened ideal of personality that called Humanistic thought to ultimate self-reflection, to reflection upon the religious motive of the freedom and autarchy of personality, through which the ideal of science was itself called into being.
In his Discours sur l'origine de l'inégalite parmi les hommes (Discourse on the origin of inequality among men) ROUSSEAU rejected the conception which sought the difference between man and animals primarily in thought. Only the consciousness of freedom and the feeling of moral power proves the spiritual character of the human soul: "Every animal has ideas, because it has senses; it even combines ideas up to a certain point... Consequently it is not so much the understanding which among the animals makes the specific distinction of man, but rather man's quality of a free agent. Nature commands every animal, and the beast obeys. Man experiences the same impression, but he is aware of his freedom to yield or to resist; and it is especially in the consciousness of this freedom that the spirituality of his soul manifests itself; for physics explains in some fashion the mechanism of the senses and the formation of Ideas, but in the power of willing or rather choosing, and in the feeling of that power one finds only purely spiritual acts which in no single part are to be explained in terms of mechanical laws" (3).
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(3) Oeuvres II, p. 30/1: "Tout animal a des idées, puisqu'il a des sens; il combine même des idées jusqu'à un certain point... Ce n'est donc pas tant l'entendement qui fait parmi les animaux la distinction specifique de l'homme que sa qualité d'agent libre. La nature commande à tout animal, et la bête obéit. L'homme éprouve la même impression, mais il se reconnait libre d'acquiescer ou de résister; et c'est surtout dans la conscience de cette liberté que se montre la spiritualité de son âme, car la physique explique en quelque manière le mécanisme des sens et la formation des idées; mais dans la puissance de vouloir ou plutôt de choisir, et dans le sentiment de cette puissance, on ne trouve que des actes purement spirituels, dont on n'explique rien par les lois de la mécanique."
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Thus human thought was in a sensualistic sense degraded to a mere higher level of the animal associations of sensory Ideas, in order to permit all value of human personality to be concentrated in the feeling of freedom.
Nevertheless, in his democratic-revolutionary political philosophy, ROUSSEAU did not abandon the mathematical pattern of thought. By means of the latter he sought to maintain the natural rights of human personality in the face of the despotism of HOBBES' Leviathan, although the latter was philosophically construed by the same means of mathematical-juridical thought, namely the social contract.
ROUSSEAU sharply distinguishes the "volonté générale" from the "volonté de tous", because the former can only be directed towards the common good. But in this "general will", in which "each of us brings into the community his person and all his power, in order that we may receive every member as an indivisible part of the whole" (4), personal freedom is again absorbed by the principle of majority (5).
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(4) Du Contrat Social (Oeuvres II), p. 274: "chacun de nous met en commun sa personne et toute sa puissance, afin que nous recevons encore chaque membre comme partie indivisible du tout."
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(5) 3 Op. cit., p.325: "Hors ce contrat primitif, la voix du plus grand nombre oblige toujours tous les autres; c'est une suite du contrat même." [Except for this original contract, the vote of the greatest number obliges always all the rest; this is a consequence of the very contract.]
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The state-Leviathan construed both in HOBBES and in ROUSSEAU in accordance with the mathematical ideal of science which respects no limits, devours free personality in all its spheres of life. The introduction of the Idea of the "volonté générale" was actually meant in a normative sense. And in it personality was to regain its natural autonomous freedom in a higher form construed by mathematical thought. In fact, its introduction implied the absorption of free personality into a despotic construction issued from the condemned ideal of science. It was the picture of Leviathan, with its head cut off that formed the frontispiece of the first edition of The Social Contract!
Meanwhile — and this is the point in which ROUSSEAU had decidedly outgrown the spirit of the Enlightenment — the accent in his philosophy is definitely shifted to the ideal of personality. And the latter can no longer be identified with mathematical thought.
In HUME's philosophy the ideal of personality had already begun to revolt against the science-ideal by making moral feeling independent of the theoretical Idea. In ROUSSEAU feeling became the true seat of the Humanistic ideal of personality which had been robbed of its vitality by the hypertrophy of the science-ideal.
ROUSSEAU's religion of sentiment and his estrangement from HUME.
ROUSSEAU's bitterest attacks were directed against the rationalistic view of religion of the "Enlightenment". In it he correctly saw an attack upon the religious kernel of the Humanistic ideal of personality.
His proclamation of the natural religion of sentiment (6) was directed just as much against the materialism of the French Encyclopedists as against the deism of NEWTON'S natural philosophy.
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(6) See the famous fourth book of his EMILE, where ROUSSEAU expounded his dualistic conception of human nature (sensory nature versus the feeling of freedom). I suspect that this conception influenced KANT'S dualism.
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ROUSSEAU never grew weary of telling his contemporaries that religion is not seated in the head, but in the "heart". He never grew tired contending that abstract science may not encroach upon the holy contents of human feeling. He combated the rationalistic associational psychology which had excluded the "soul" from its field of investigation. And his opposition was marked by a passionateness which can only be understood in terms of an ultimate religious reaction of the Humanistic ideal of personality against the tyranny of the ideal of science. Thus not only did he necessarily become estranged from the circle of the Encyclopedists but also from his earlier friend and protector DAVID HUME. For, no matter how ROUSSEAU could feel in agreement with HUME in his emancipation of the function of feeling from theoretical thought, yet in the final analysis, in HUME's absolutizing of the deterministic viewpoint of associational psychology, the ideal of science still dominated that of the sovereign personality.
Disillusioned, the passionate defender of the freedom of sovereign personality turned away from Western culture. The freedom of the sovereign personality ought to be recognized equally in all individuals, but Western culture was dominated in all the spheres of life by sovereign science, which was not in the first place concerned with personal freedom. ROUSSEAU sought consolation in the dream of a natural state of innocence and happiness which had been disturbed by modern culture.
Optimism and Pessimism in their new relation in ROUSSEAU.
The state of nature is no longer painted, as in HOBBES, in the shrill colours of a "bellum omnium contra omnes". On the contrary, in his representation of the original state of mankind, ROUSSEAU revived the Stoic Idea of the "golden age". Perhaps he was influenced by such idealistic pictures of primitive society as were current at his time. But his conviction of the value of the primitive had undoubtedly deeper grounds in his anti-rationalist conception of human nature. ROUSSEAU's optimistic view of the original goodness of the latter differed radically from the optimistic life- and world-view in which the ideal of science held the supremacy.
Science has not made good its promise to human personality, it has not brought freedom to man, but slavery, inequality, and exploitation. Optimism and pessimism are the light and shadow in ROUSSEAU's picture of the state of nature and of culture; however, their role is completely the reverse of what it had been in HOBBES. With respect to the culture of the science-ideal ROUSSEAU was a pessimist. He was an optimist only in his belief in the free personality which will break the strait-jacket into which it was clapped by the rationalistic culture. It will build a new culture in which the sovereign freedom of man will shine forth in greater brilliance than in the uncorrupted state of nature. This new culture will find its foundation only in the divine value of personality.
LOCKE and ROUSSEAU. The contrast between innate human rights and inalienable rights of the citizen.
In the natural state all individuals were free and equal but they remained individuals. Their inalienable human rights were formulated by LOCKE in opposition to the absolutistic doctrine of HOBBES. Nevertheless, LOCKE was a genuine figure of the "Enlightenment". He held fast to the optimistic faith that the domination of mathematical thought was the best guarantee of the freedom of personality.
Just as he resolved all complex Ideas into simple ones, so to him the free individual remained the central point of the civil state. Just as the entire preceding Humanistic doctrine of natural law, LOCKE construed the transition from the natural state to the civil state by means of the social contract. The citizens had already possessed their inalienable rights of freedom and private property in the natural state, but they needed the social contract to guarantee them by an organized power. And this was the sole intention of this contract in the system of LOCKE. The civil state is no more than a company with limited liability, designed for the continuation of the natural state under the protection of an authority. It is the constitutional state of the old liberalism, the state which has as its only goal the maintenance of the innate human rights of the individual.
ROUSSEAU broke with this liberalistic conception. Just like the Stoics he did not consider the natural state of freedom and equality to be in itself the highest ideal. This situation is forever gone. A higher destiny calls humanity to the civil state. Only within the latter can the sovereign freedom of personality completely unfold in its divine value. Natural freedom ought to be elevated to the level of a higher, a normative Idea of freedom. The innate natural rights of men must be transformed into inalienable rights of the citizens. By means of the social contract the individual must surrender all of his natural freedom in order to get it back again in the higher form of the freedom of the citizen. To that end the social contract can no longer be conceived of in a formal sense, as HOBBES, PUFENDORF and even GROTIUS had done. For with these teachers of natural law, the original contract could in the final analysis even justify the abandonment of all freedom of personality. For them the construction of the social contract was not first and foremost orientated to the ideal of personality but to the mathematical science-ideal with its domination-motive. ROUSSEAU raises his flaming protest against this subjection of the value of personality to mathematical thought: "To give up one's liberty, that is to give up one's quality of man, the rights of humanity, even one's duties. These words slavery and right are contradictory, they exclude one another mutually" (7).
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(7) Du Control Social I, chap. IV (Oeuvres II), p. 269: "Renoncer à sa liberté, c'est renoncer à sa qualité d'homme, aux droits de l'humanité, même à ses devoirs." Ces mots esclavage et droit sont contradictoires, ils s'excluent mutuellement."
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Freedom, just as equality, is an inalienable human right that only can be abandoned in its natural form, in order to be regained in the higher form of citizenship. There is only a single specific form of association which secures this freedom. Therefore, this form is the only lawful one.
Thus in ROUSSEAU the transition from the natural state to the civil state became the fundamental problem of guaranteeing the sovereign freedom of personality in the only legitimate form of association.
The ideal of personality acquires primacy in ROUSSEAU's construction of the social contract.
This is the new motive in ROUSSEAU, and therefore he could rightly oppose his doctrine concerning the social contract to the earlier Humanistic theories of natural law: the ideal of personality has acquired primacy over the ideal of science. In his famous work Du Contrat Social ou Principes du Droit Politique he formulated the problem in question as follows: "To find a form of association which with all the common power defends and protects the person and goods of every member and by means of which each one uniting himself with all, nevertheless is only obedient to himself and remains as free as before" (8).
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(8) 1 Ibid., chap. VI (Oeuvres II), p. 273: "Trouver une forme d'association qui défende et protège de toute la force commune la personne et les biens de chaque associé, et par laquelle chacun, s'unissant à tous, n'obéisse pourtant qu'à lui même, et reste aussi libre qu'auparavant."
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ROUSSEAU intended to solve this problem through his "social contract" which, in order to be valid, must include precisely the clause that each individual delivers himself with all his natural rights to all, collectively and thus through becoming subject to the whole by his participation in the "general will' gets back all his natural rights in a higher juridical form: "For in the first place, if every one gives himself entirely, the condition is equal for all; and if the condition is equal for all, nobody is interested in rendering it onerous for the others" (9).
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(9) "Car, premièrement, chacun se donnant tout entier, la condition est égale pour tous; et la condition étant égale pour tous, nul n'a intéret de la rendre onéreuse aux autres."
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According to ROUSSEAU, the inalienable right of freedom maintains itself in the inalienable sovereignty of the people, which can never be transferred to a magistrate. The sovereign will of the people is the general will, which expresses itself in legislation. As such it is to be distinguished sharply from the "volonté de tous".
For the "volonté générale" should be directed exclusively toward the general interest; it is therefore incompatible with the existence of private associations between the state and the individual, because they foster particularism. At this point ROUSSEAU appeals expressly to PLATO's "ideal state".
Public law, formed by the general will, does not recognize any counter-poise in private spheres of association. The "social contract" is the only juridical basis for all the rights of the citizens. Thus the construction of the general will becomes the lever of an unbridled absolutism of the legislator. "Just as nature gives every man an absolute power over all his limbs, so the social contract gives the body politic an absolute power over all its members; and it is this same power which, directed by the general will, bears the name of sovereignty" (10).
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(10) "Comme la nature donne à chaque homme un pouvoir absolu sur tous ses membres, le pacte social donne au corps politique un pouvoir absolu sur tous les siens; et c'est ce même pouvoir qui, dirigé par la volonté générale, porte le nom de souverainité."
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ROUSSEAU did observe indeed, that there was an inner tension between his doctrine of the "volonté générale" and the individual freedom of human personality.
WOLFF'S basic law for the state: "Salus publica supremo lex esto", was to be reconciled with LOCKE's doctrine of the inalienable human rights. WOLFF had openly acknowledged that there was an insoluble antinomy between these two poles of Humanistic political theory.
In ROUSSEAU's theory, therefore, the question as to the mutual relationship between the natural rights of man and the rights of the citizen became a problem of essential importance. "Besides the public person," so he observes, "we have to consider the private persons which compose it, and whose life and liberty are by nature independent of it. Consequently the question is that we should well distinguish the rights of the citizens and those of the sovereign, and the duties which the former have to discharge in their quality of subjects from the natural right which they ought to enjoy in their quality of men" (11).
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(11) Du Contrat Social II, IV "Des bornes du pouvoir souverain" (Oeuvres II, p. 286): "Outre la personne publique, nous avons à considerer les personnes privées qui la composent, et dont la vie et la liberté sont naturellement indépendantes d'elle. Il s'agit donc de bien distinguer les droits respectifs des citoyens et du souverain, et les devoirs qu'ont à remplir les premiers en qualité de sujets, du droit naturel dont ils doivent jouir en qualité d'hommes."
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According to him it is beyond dispute, that in the social contract every individual transfers to the state only as much of his natural power, his possessions, and freedom, as is required for "the common good" of the community.
The "common good", and so also the "general will", do not recognize any particular individuals, but only the whole.
The antinomy between the natural rights of man and the rights of the citizen. ROUSSEAU's attempt to solve it.
Proceeding from this principle ROUSSEAU thought he had discovered the way by which "natural human rights", as private rights, could also be maintained uncurtailed in the civil state.
The first principle of the "general will" that follows from the fact that the latter only can aim at the general interest, is namely the absolute equality of all citizens with respect to the demands of the community.
As soon as the sovereign lawgiver (the people) would favour certain citizens above others, so that special privileges would be accorded (recall the privileges of forum, freedom from taxation etc. of nobility and clergy under the ancient regime), the "general will" would be transmuted into a private or particular will and the sovereign would exceed the limits of its competency (12).
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(12) Op. citi III, Chap. IV (p. 286: "On voit par là que le pouvoir souverain, tout absolu, tout sacré, tout inviolable qu'il est, ne passe ni peut passer les bornes des conventions générales, et que tout homme peut disposer pleinement de ce qui lui a été laissé de ses biens et de sa liberté par des conventions; de sorte que le souverain n'est jamais en droit de charger un sujet plus qu'un autre, parce qu'alors l'affaire devenant particulière, son pouvoir n'est plus compétent." ["From this it is seen that the sovereign power, however absolute, however sacred, however inviolable it may be, does not and cannot surpass the limits of the general conventions, and that every man can completely dispose of what these latter have left him of his goods and of his liberty; so that the sovereign has never the right to charge a subject more than another, because in this case the matter becomes a particular one and his power is no longer competent"].
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For the clause of the "social contract", upon which all sovereignty in the state is based, contains unchangeably the principle of equality of all citizens with respect to the public interest. In other words, the "general will", because of its unchangeable inner nature, can never have a particular object. This is the significance of ROUSSEAU's concept of statute law which is quite different from the formal one. And it is also different from the so-called "material concept of statute law" in the sense of a positive juridical rule touching the rights and duties of the citizens, as understood by the positivistic German school of LABAND in the XIXth century.
According to ROUSSEAU, a real public statute (loi) can never regulate a particular interest. And it cannot issue from an individual by virtue of a seignorial right: "Besides, because the public statute unites in itself the universality of the will and that of the object, it is evident that an order issued by any individual whatsoever in virtue of his own right, is not at all a statute; even an order of the sovereign concerning a private object is no more a statute but a decree, nor an act of sovereignty but of magistracy" (13). In other words, not everything which possesses the form of a statute is a statute in a material sense.
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(13) "On voit encore que la loi réunissant l'universalité de la volonté et celle de l'objet, ce qu'un homme, quelqu'il puisse être, ordonne de son chef n'est point une loi: ce qu'ordonne même le souverain sur un objet particulier n'est pas non plus une loi, mais un décret; ni un acte de souverainité, mais de magistrature."
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There are formal statutes which are not real ones, and consequently which are not the expression of the sovereign general will, but are only decrees, private acts of the magistrate which as such are not binding, unless they give effect to the "loi". Thus it seems that in ROUSSEAU the inalienable human rights as private subjective rights are in no way absorbed in the general will, since within the sphere of private law they cannot be assailed by arbitrary decrees or acts of a magistrate. But as we have seen, human rights in the civil state have changed their ground of validity. Now this ground lies exclusively in the social contract. In other words, the juridical source of private and public rights is, in the civil state, one and the same, and on the condition that the formal principle of equality and generality is respected, the general will is omnipotent. Consequently, in the civil state private human rights can only exist by the grace of the general will.
All limits of competency must yield to the general will of the sovereign. ROUSSEAU himself wrote that the judgment concerning what the public interest demands belongs exclusively to the sovereign people. Moreover, he accepted the well-known construction, adhered to by the nominalistic doctrine of natural law since MARSILIUS OF PADUA up until and inclusive of KANT, according to which the general will, in which every citizen encounters his own will, cannot do any injustice to any one: volenti non fit injuria!
The limits of the competency of the legislator which ROUSSEAU constructed are not real ones, since they are neither grounded on the inner nature and structure of the different social relationships, nor on the modal structure of the juridical aspect, but have been deduced from the abstract principle of equality and generality which neglects all structural differences in social reality.
The origin of this antinomy is again to be found in the tension between the ideal of science and that of personality.
In his undoubtedly ingenious construction of the relation between public and private interest, it is once again the mathematical ideal of science that pretends to guarantee the value of personality. And in the final analysis the "sovereign personality" is again sacrificed to this science-ideal. ROUSSEAU's famous expression: "On les forcera d'être libre" (they must be forced to be free) soon would become the watchword under which the legions of the French revolution were to bring to the nations revolutionary freedom and equality, although ROUSSEAU himself was impatient of every revolution. But it was the expression of the unsoluble antinomy between the ideal of science and that of personality which in ROUSSEAU's doctrine of the social contract had reached its highest tension.
The reawakened ideal of personality had in ROUSSEAU's religion of sentiment reacted spontaneously against the science-ideal. Yet, finally it submitted again to the mathematical construction of the latter. The fulminant protest, however, that out of the religious depth of ROUSSEAU's contradictory personality sounded against the supremacy of scientific thought, was to summon mightier spirits than he to fight for the supremacy of the ideal of personality.
(Herman Dooyeweerd, New Critique of Theoretical Thought, Vol I/ Part 2/ Chapt 3/§7 pp 313-324)
