Starting from the origin of human inequality, Rousseau discussed the issue of social justice, put forward the theory of natural human rights and demonstrated the importance of freedom and equality. He believes that human inequality does not always exist, but only later. Before entering the social state, human beings once lived in a "natural state", when everyone lived a free, equal and happy life. It can be seen that "people are born free" and "people are equal". "Everyone's freedom is the natural result of human nature" and "natural human rights". However, with the emergence of private ownership, people entered the political society, rich and poor appeared, and human beings began an unequal civilized society. Rousseau believes that the development of human inequality has gone through three stages: the first stage is the emergence of private property and the inequality between the rich and the poor. In order to safeguard property, the rich make contracts and laws to cheat the poor. In the second stage, in order to ensure the private property of the rich, a strong government authority was established to confirm the rule of the strong over the weak. In the third stage, government agencies degenerated into autocratic power, and the autocratic rule of feudal tyrants appeared, which made inequality reach its peak. It was the brutal rule of the feudal tyrant that destroyed the natural human rights. People have the right to restore natural human rights and realize freedom and equality by violently resisting tyrants who deprive them of freedom and equality. Rousseau thinks it is natural to overthrow an autocratic tyrant. He said, "An uprising aimed at hanging or deposing a tyrant is as legitimate as the atrocities he committed yesterday when dealing with the lives and property of his subjects." . Rousseau came to a very revolutionary conclusion when he expounded the origin of inequality: people have the right to overthrow tyranny by violence.
Rousseau used the contract theory as a weapon to demonstrate the political ideal of realizing bourgeois democracy and national harmony. He believes that after overthrowing the tyrant, the people have the right to abolish unfavorable contracts, re-establish contracts in line with the interests of the people, and form a new country. He emphasized that in a democratic country, the principle of "sovereignty belongs to the people" must be adhered to, and sovereignty is supreme and inseparable. The supreme sovereignty of a country belongs to the people. Rousseau believes that legislative power, as a concrete embodiment of sovereignty, should also belong to the people. He said: "Legislative power belongs to the people, only to the people." Therefore, no one can put himself outside the constraints of the law and can only act according to the law. Leaders and officials are not the masters of the people, but the law enforcers of the people. People can entrust and replace them at any time, and officials have no right to deprive people of their decision-making power. Rousseau emphasized the rule of law. He believes that the law not only guarantees the equality of citizens' rights, but also is the cornerstone of individual freedom, and everyone is equal before the law. Rousseau's radical democratic thought became a banner of the Great Revolution.
Rousseau's political theory was published in his 1762 "On Social Contract". This book is quite different from most of his works in nature; There is not much emotional abuse in the book, but a lot of detailed rational discussion. Although its teachings focus on democratic politics, they tend to defend totalitarian countries. But Geneva and the ancient * * * prompted him to like the city-state, not the great empires such as France and Britain. He called himself a "citizen of Geneva" in the envelope. In his introduction, he said: "I was born a citizen of a free state and a member of an autonomous country, so I think it is my duty to study public affairs no matter how weak my opinion is, because I have the right to vote on public affairs." This book repeatedly mentions Sparta mentioned in Plutarch's Biography of Lekugus. He said that a small country is ideal for democracy, a small country is ideal for aristocratic politics and a big country is ideal for monarchy. But you know, in his view, small countries are particularly desirable, in part because small countries are more feasible in democratic politics. When he talks about democratic politics, he means that, as the Greeks pointed out, every citizen directly participates in politics; He called the representative regime "election aristocratic politics". Because the former can't be realized in a big country, his praise of democratic politics always implies the praise of the city-state. In my opinion, this love for the polis is not emphasized enough in most introductory texts about Rousseau's political philosophy.
Although the book as a whole is far less gorgeous and grandiose than most of Rousseau's works, the first chapter begins with a very powerful sentence: "People are born free, but there are shackles everywhere. A person who thinks he is the master of others is actually a slave more than others. " Freedom is the nominal goal of Rousseau's thought, but in fact what he cherishes is even sacrificing freedom to strive for equality.
His concept of social contract seems to be similar to Locke at first, but it soon seems closer to Hobbes' concept. In the process of advancing from the natural state, it is time for individuals to no longer maintain their original independence; At this time, we need to unite to form a self-protection society. However, how can I guarantee my freedom without harming my interests? "The problem is to find an association that will use all its collective strength to defend and protect the person and property of each member of the association. Although each of them is United with everyone, they can still obey themselves alone and maintain the same freedom as before. This is the fundamental problem of taking social contract as the solution. "
The contract is "every member of the association, together with all his rights, is completely transferred to the whole society;" Because first of all, because everyone has given himself absolutely, everyone's situation is the same; In this case, no one is interested in making their situation a burden to others. " This transfer should be unreserved: "If an individual reserves certain rights, since there is no common leader between the individual and the public to make a decision, since everyone is his own judge at a certain point, he will demand it at all points; "The state of nature will therefore continue, and this union will inevitably become invalid or authoritarian."
This statement means the complete abolition of freedom and the complete deprivation of human rights. Indeed, in the later chapters, this theory has softened to some extent. It says that although the social contract gives the state absolute power over all its members, people still have the natural right to be others. "The monarch cannot impose any bondage that is not beneficial to society on the people, or even think about it." However, the monarch is the only judge of whether it is beneficial or not to society. It can be seen that this only adds a very weak obstacle to collective tyranny.
It must be pointed out that in Rousseau's view, the "sovereign" refers not to the monarch or the government, but to the society as a collective and legislator.
The social contract can be described in the following words: "Each of us puts his own person and all his strength under the highest guidance of the general will, and we understand each member as an inseparable part of the whole as a legal person." This association has produced a moral and collective group, which is called "country" in passive occasions, "sovereign" in active occasions and "one of the great powers" in relations with other similar groups.
The concept of "general will" in the above expression of social contract occupies a very important position in Rousseau's system. I have something to say next about this concept.
Some people think that the sovereign does not have to make any guarantee to the people, because since it is composed of individuals who organize it, there can be no interests that are contrary to their interests. "Sovereignty must be the true face of other things." This argument is easily misunderstood by readers who do not pay attention to Rousseau's special terminology. The sovereign is not the government, he admits that the government may be autocratic;
Sovereignty is a somewhat metaphysical entity, which has not been fully reflected by any tangible organ of the state. Therefore, even if we admit that it is perfect, there will be no practical consequences.
This forever correct will of the monarch is "general will". As a citizen, every citizen has the general will, but as an individual, he can also have a personal will that runs counter to the general will. Needless to say, the social contract is forced to obey whoever refuses to obey the general will. "It just means that he will be forced to be free."
This concept of "forced freedom" is very mysterious. The general will of Galileo era is undoubtedly anti-Copernicus; Galileo was forced to give up his opinion by the heretical court. Was it "forced to be free"? Is it true that even criminals are "forced to be free" when they are put in prison? Think of Byron's pirates:
On the joyful waves of the deep blue sea,
Our thoughts are boundless, so are our hearts.
Free as the sea.
Will this man be more "free" in the dungeon? Strangely, Byron's aristocratic pirates are the direct result of Rousseau. But in the above paragraph, Rousseau forgot his romanticism and spoke like an unreasonable policeman. Hegel, deeply influenced by Rousseau, adopted his misuse of the word "freedom" and defined freedom as the right to obey the police, or something similar to it.
Rousseau did not have the same respect for private property as Locke and his disciples. "The state is the master of all their property in its relations with its members." He also did not believe in the separation of powers advocated by Locke and Montesquieu.
However, at this point, as at other points, his later detailed exposition is not consistent with the previous general principles. In the first chapter of the third volume, he said that the monarch's responsibility is limited to making laws, and the administrative department, that is, the government, is an intermediate group established between the nationals and the monarch to ensure that the two echo each other. He went on to say:
"If the monarch wants to be in charge of government affairs, or the chief executive wants to legislate, or citizens refuse to obey, chaos will replace order, so ... the country will fall into authoritarian politics or anarchy." Considering the differences in words, he seems to agree with Montesquieu.
Now let me talk about general will, which is very important and vague at the same time.
The total will is not equal to the will of more than half of the people, or even the will of all citizens. It seems to be understood as the will of the country itself. If we adopt Hobbes' view that civil society is a person, we must assume that it is endowed with various attributes of personality, including will. But in this way, we are faced with a difficulty, that is, to determine what is the tangible expression of this will, and Rousseau did not explain it. According to him, the general will is always justified and will always contribute to the public interest; However, the opinions of the people are not necessarily equally correct, because the will of all people is often quite different from the general will. So, how can we know what public will is? In the same chapter, there is a passage that seems to be an answer:
"When people are provided with appropriate information for discussion, if citizens don't listen to each other, the sum of small points will always generate general will and the decisions made will always be good."
Rousseau's idea seems to be this: everyone's political views are dominated by selfishness, but selfishness consists of two parts, one is unique to individuals and the other is shared by all members of society. Citizens have no chance to help each other, and their personal interests will be offset by your east and west, leaving only one result, that is, their interests; The result is that there will always be. Rousseau's concept can be illustrated by gravity. Every particle on the earth attracts every particle in the universe; The emptiness above us attracts us upward, while the earth below us attracts us downward. However, all these "selfish" gravitational forces will cancel each other as long as they are different, and what is left is a combined gravitational force towards the center of the earth. In fantasy, we might as well understand this as the role of the earth viewed by a society and as the expression of the general will of the earth.
To say that the general will is always justified is nothing more than to say that because it represents the commonness of the selfishness of citizens of all colors, it must represent the greatest collective satisfaction that society can achieve for selfishness. This explanation of Rousseau's meaning seems to be more in line with his original words than any other explanation I can always think of.
According to Rousseau, what actually hinders the expression of general will is the existence of subordinate associations within the country. These associations should have their own general will, which may conflict with the general will of the whole society. "In that case, it can be said that it is no longer how many people voted for it, but only how many clubs voted for it." An important conclusion is drawn from this: "Therefore, if we want to express the general will, there must be no selfish society within the country, and every citizen only thinks about his own thoughts: this is really a lofty and incoherent system established by the great Lekugus." Rousseau quoted Machiavelli in his footnote to support his point of view.
Let's see what is bound to happen in such a system. The state shall prohibit churches (except state churches), political parties, trade unions and all other organizations composed of people with the same economic interests. The result is obviously a totalitarian country, and individual citizens have no rights. Rousseau seems to understand that it may be difficult to ban all the associations, so he added: If there are no lower-level associations and there is no room for negotiation, the more the better, so as to neutralize each other.
When he discusses the government in the second half of the book, he realizes that the administrative department must be a society with its own interests and public will, which will probably contradict the interests and public will of the society. He said that although the government of a big country needs to be stronger than that of a small country, it also needs to restrain the government through the monarch.
Government members have three wills: individual will, government will and public will. These three should synthesize crescendo, but in fact they usually synthesize diminuendo. Moreover, "everything is working together to take away the sense of justice and rationality from those who have the right to dominate others."
Therefore, although the general will of "always firm, unchanging and pure" is infallible, all those old problems of how to avoid tyranny still exist. Rousseau wants to say about this kind of problem, either secretly repeating Montesquieu's statement or insisting on the supremacy of the legislative branch; If the legislature is a democratic legislature, it is equal to what he calls sovereignty. The general principles he first put forward, which he said seemed to have solved all kinds of political problems, disappeared when he leaned over and looked closely. At first, these principles didn't help solve the details.
Because this book was condemned by reactionaries at that time, modern readers expect to see more thorough revolutionary theories than what it actually contains. This can be illustrated by comments on democratic politics. As we have said, when Rousseau uses the word democracy, he refers to the direct democracy of ancient city-states. He pointed out that this kind of democracy can never be fully realized, because citizens can't always meet and are always busy with official business. "If there are people created by God, their government should be democratic. Such a perfect government is not a human thing. "
What we call democratic politics, he calls it "election aristocratic politics"; He said that this is the best of all regimes, but it is not suitable for all countries. The weather must be neither too hot nor too cold; Property should not exceed the necessary amount too much, because if it exceeds too much, luxury bad habits are inevitable, and this bad habit is best confined to the monarch and his court, rather than spreading to the whole people. Because of these restrictions, it has left a wide space for authoritarian regimes. However, his advocacy of democratic politics, despite various restrictions, is of course one of the reasons why the French government hates this book; Another reason is probably the denial of the divine right of kingship, because the theory of social contract as the political origin implies the denial of the divine right of kingship.
The Theory of Social Contract became the bible of most leaders in the French Revolution, but of course, like the fate of the Bible, many of its followers did not read it carefully, let alone understand it. This book recreates the habit of democratic political theorists to talk about metaphysics and abstract concepts. Through the theory of general will, a leader and his people can have a mysterious equivalence, which does not need to be proved by throwing boxes. There are many things in his philosophy that Hegel can use when defending Prussian dictatorship. In fact, its first harvest was robespierre's administration; The dictatorship of Russia and Germany (especially the latter) is partly the result of Rousseau's theory. As for what further victories will be dedicated to his spirit in heaven, I dare not predict.