In his political theory, Rousseau aimed at devising a political system that reconciled individual freedom (or autonomy) with the need for submission under a state’s authority: two concepts which inherently seem contradictory. The fact of submission acknowledges that individuals in a civil society have to obey the authority of the state, while the fact of freedom states that individuals are free beings, which should not be forced to follow the authority of anyone except themselves. Rousseau wanted to “find a form of association which will defend and protect […] the person and property of each associate, and under which each of them, uniting himself to all, will obey himself alone, and remain as free as before” . Hence, in The Social Contract, he proposes a political system in which the commands of the state are grounded in laws (general rules that apply equally to all), laws are made by the Sovereign (an assembly of all citizens), and these laws aim at promoting the common good of the citizens, which centrally consists of the common basic interests that citizens have in life, liberty, and property. However, the belief that Rousseau’s commitment to liberty might not be as he first claims is strengthened by multiple chapters throughout The Social Contract, most notably in his declaration that those subject to the general will are “forced to be free”. Thus this essay will show how Rousseau’s proposal may validly be seen as a constraint on individual autonomy when it forces an individual to accept laws which he himself has not willed, in line with Rousseau’s understanding of freedom, owing to the lack of guaranteed individual rights, the absence of checks and balances on the sovereign, and the lack of scope for disagreement in the general assembly.
For Rousseau, the primary reason for devising his theory was his recognition that "there is a point in the development of mankind at which the obstacles to men’s self-preservation in the state of nature are too great to be overcome by the strength than any one individual can exert”, making submission inevitable. Also, for Rousseau, the crucial importance of freedom cannot be disregarded, as “to renounce our freedom is to renounce our character men”. In the State of Nature (human life without the shaping influence of society) as described by Rousseau, people have physical (or negative) freedom, meaning that their actions are not restrained in any way, but, according to social contract theorists, they are little more than animals as they are slaves to their own instincts and impulses. Yet Rousseau believed that even in the State of Nature humans are freer than in most contemporary societies, where people lack even this physical freedom as they are bound to obey an absolute monarch or government that is not accountable to them in any way. By proposing a social contract, Rousseau hoped to secure the civil freedom that should accompany life in society. This freedom is tempered by an agreement not to harm one’s fellow citizens, but this restraint leads people to be moral and rational. Thus, Rousseau believes that, in this sense, civil freedom is superior to physical freedom, since people are not slaves to their impulses and hence this explains why naturally free individuals would enter into the social contract, for it enables them to achieve another, positive form of freedom: one of self-realisation.
For Rousseau, one is free when he is constrained only by laws that he willed himself. Such freedom is crucially necessary for human agency, and granting a state political authority was, for Rousseau, a necessary step as the human transition into a civil society (under a state) benefits everyone due to the reliability of the legal system, and for Rousseau, this explains why a naturally free individual would enter into the social contract.
According to Rousseau, another way in which individuals in his polity can be seen as free is through his rejection of “representative government”, specifically his rejection of the Hobbesian idea that a people’s legislative will can lie with some individual or group that then acts with their authority, but rules over them. Rousseau did not believe that any representative legislature could ever be legitimate, because “sovereignty cannot be represented […]; its essence is the general will, and will cannot be represented […]. Since the law is nothing other than a declaration of the general will, it is clear that there cannot be representation of the people in the legislative power”. He took the view that handing over one’s general right of ruling oneself to another person or body is a form of slavery, and means one is not free. On the basis of this, Rousseau devises his theory of general assemblies in which all citizens shall assembly to engage in legislating. In Rousseau’s ideal polity, the people as a whole form the ‘Sovereign’ and the sovereign promulgates laws as an expression of its general will, meaning all people take part in legislature. This means that individuals are, to some extent, freer than in a representative legislature as they dictate their own laws; not (elected) representatives on their behalf.
The first and obvious conflict with freedom under this perspective is that Rousseau limits the citizenship to a small fraction of the population. In his theory, Rousseau does not “allow the people in a political sense to be the whole adult, or even the whole adult male population” . He excludes women and those who do not own property from citizenship, based on the belief that they do not have the time which would be necessary to be politically well-informed, which for Rousseau was a necessary requirement for participation in politics. Nevertheless, whilst this is a serious concern leading to an unacceptable limitation of the freedom of those (e.g. women) who are denied this privilege that can be seen as being part of their right to self-determination, it is a problem that could be easily resolved by expanding the notion of citizenship to encompass a more contemporary and rightful understanding of it, and thus perhaps it is not the best argument against the notion that the individuals in Rousseau’s ideal polity are free.
However, the threat of Rousseau’s theory to individual freedom stretches further. As “[The Social Contract entails] the complete transfer of each associate, with all his rights, to the whole community”, it follows that in Rousseau’s theory, there is little room for individual rights as the interest of the community as a whole will always come first. This is summarised by Rousseau’s statement about property: “… the right that each individual has over his property is always subordinate to the right that the community has over everyone; otherwise, the social bond would be lacking in firmness and the exercise of sovereignty would lack true power”, depicting how in Rousseauian polity, individuals are entirely at the mercy of the community. However, this may not be as harsh as it first seems because Rousseau does say that the citizen assembly is under a duty to make laws securing each associate’s basic interests in life, liberty and property. Furthermore, Rousseau himself is not against the idea of his polity having a constitution in which basic rights against the government are defined. Yet this clarification does not help protect individual liberty in its fullest extent because no constitution can be elevated above the Sovereign for this would be inconsistent with the people retaining the power to will all laws they are required to obey.
Another issue with The Social Contract for individual freedom is that the lack of checks and balances on the sovereign mean that the polity he has devised may be susceptible to rapid shifts in public mood, which could endanger the very moral rights that Rousseau says the citizen assembly should respect. Under Rousseau’s system, the minority is supposed to be forced to comply with the decisions made by the majority. This is problematic in cases in which the majority (particularly at times of persistent majorities) uses its power to make laws discriminating against certain groups, which these groups would be forced to accept – a clear infringement of their freedom. Rousseau might have replied to this objection that in the egalitarian and homogenous society he envisaged, laws would apply equally to everyone, and that thus such discriminatory laws would not be passed in the first place because no one would agree to a law that harms himself. But here Rousseau ignores that even if laws apply equally, they do not affect everyone equally, for example if they have specific provisions that affect only members of a certain group, such as members of a minority religion. A second reply given by Rousseau is that, in decision-making, every citizen has an ultimate moral duty to protect every individual’s life, health, liberty and possessions, as the protection of these goods were the first and only reason for joining together in a civil society, and so, according to him, individuals are unlikely to see their freedom curtailed in such a targeted way.
One further pressing objection to Rousseau’s theory and the way he deals with minority opinions is that it may pave the way to a totalitarian state and endanger individual freedom. There are, clearly, different kinds of wills, and yet only one, the ‘General Will’, may prevail. As Cohen observes in A Community of Equals: “Citizens will have a particular will founded on personal interests, a corporate will (or several corporate wills) founded on the shared interests of the members of a group within the wider community, and general wills founded on the shared interests of the members of the political society” . The general will, which therefore “demands the policy that is equally in everyone’s interest” , can, according to Rousseau’s theory, be found if citizens vote on basis of what they think is morally right for the whole citizenship, not just on what they think is right for them. Rousseau is aware of the fact that there often is disagreement in instances of public deliberation, which, however, does not show that the concept of general will is in itself problematic: “The general will is always rightful and always tends to the public good; but it does not follow that the deliberations of the people are always equally right.” Also, Rousseau insists that “citizens will the general will even when they are in a minority”, which means that “when an opinion contrary to mine prevails […] it proves only that I had been mistaken […] if my particular will had prevailed, I should have done otherwise than I wished; and then I should not have been free”. Here, Rousseau disregards these individuals’ rights to freedom, and also denies that there is a restriction of freedom – on the contrary, he claims that this restriction of freedom indeed amounts to a realisation of freedom . This, however, is a problematic claim, considering the previous objection that there may not be such a thing as one clearly distinguishable general will, particularly if there is disagreement among the citizenship. It therefore follows that freedom and authority, under Rousseau’s system, are reconciled only when citizens support every law unanimously – something that will rarely ever happen, as disagreement in political deliberation is clearly commonplace. This inevitably means that some citizens will be forced to obey laws they did not subscribe to – something that will constrain their freedom.
Yet this way of thinking may be justifiable if the majority, as Rousseau assumes, are always best at determining what is promoting the common good. This belief could be supported by Condorcet’s Jury Theorem, which shows that on issues with a single right answer and with people making individual choices with a chance of getting the answer right that is over 50 percent, they are very likely to come to the right answer – however, it does so only up to the point at which one is forced to realise that in politics there is rarely one right and one wrong answer, in which case we can hardly say that the people who were in the minority all got their answer entirely wrong. This then poses a major problem for Rousseau, as he can now no longer disregard minorities as quickly as he in fact does, showing how his handling of minorities might indeed be conducive to a totalitarian claim of one absolute truth which may be imposed on the whole citizenship, even against their concern. These concerns are well summed up by Wolff when he says that “In order for Rousseau to be able to argue that democracy is instrumentally justified – that it is a highly reliable way of achieving morally correct outcomes – he has to draw the bonds of social unity very tight. So tight, in fact, that the system becomes unacceptably repressive.” Rousseau does not provide much to rebut this claim in his Theory, and hence perhaps the lack of scope for disagreement in the general assembly provides some of the clearest evidence to support the claim that individuals in Rousseau’s ideal polity are generally not free.
To conclude, in attempting to outline how state authority and individual liberty can legitimately be combined, Rousseau succeeds in many aspects. However, he does not succeed in all – and, indeed, some of those in which he does not succeed are some of the most crucial ones. The lack of scope for legitimate disagreement, for example, within his theory is an unresolved problem. Furthermore, there are practical problems in applying his theory to modern states, due to their size and heterogeneity. While one might still uphold Rousseau as a successful theorist, it is to be noted that such problems would almost inevitable occur even in the small city states Rousseau writes for, once one extends the suffrage into the way that is deemed right nowadays. There is no denying that the polity that Rousseau describes in many ways appears idealist, yet, in terms of individual freedom, it is difficult to argue that Rousseau was successful in achieving all his aims.