2.3 Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778): Popular Sovereignty

The books:Discourse on Inequality (1755 — the diagnosis: "man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains" property's origin as the great fraud) and The Social Contract (1762 — the remedy).The argument's ladder:1. The state of nature: the noble savage, free, self-sufficient, pitying — the freest of the three authors' natures; corruption came with society (property, comparison, dependence).2. The problem: to find an association that defends each with the whole, yet leaves each asfree as before.3. The contract: each gives himself to the whole community (never to a person or faction) — an equal exchange of dependence for citizenship.4. The general will (volonté générale): the sovereign is the people collectively, always present; its will aims at the common good, and each person, as citizen, is part-author ofit — hence obeying the general law is obeying oneself: civil liberty and moral liberty (autonomy) exceed natural liberty. - The general will is not the will of all (the mere sum of private interests); it is what the people would will deliberating rightly, as a body, on common questions. Laws must be general in origin and object — no private exceptions; hence the Legislator (the law-giving guide — a fragile institution) and Rousseau's hostility to factions (partial associations distorting the general will).5. Government as agent, never sovereign: magistrates are servants with a…