G. D. H. Cole’s introduction argues Rousseau’s works combine daring social criticism with cautious phrasing shaped by censorship. The deck covers Cole’s account of the Discourses and Social Contract, including the state of nature, inequality, political economy, and the book’s central problem of legitimate authority.
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Chapter 1 · Question
According to Cole, what is the first necessity for studying great writers of the past?
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Chapter 1 · Answer
Cole argues that historical imagination is the first necessity. Without mentally referring to the environment in which thinkers lived, we cannot penetrate below the inessential and temporary to the absolute and permanent value of their thought. He adds that great men make individual contributions but can never transcend the age in which they live.
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Section 14 cards
According to Cole, what is the first necessity for studying great writers of the past?
Cole argues that historical imagination is the first necessity. Without mentally referring to the environment in which thinkers lived, we cannot penetrate below the inessential and temporary to the absolute and permanent value of their thought. He adds that great men make individual contributions but can never transcend the age in which they live.
Chapter 1
Why does Cole say Rousseau had to moderate his language despite his daring?
Cole explains that neither the French monarchy nor the Genevese aristocracy loved outspoken criticism, so Rousseau had to be careful. Though he suffered continual persecution for subversive doctrines, he was forced to moderate his language and generally confine himself to generalisation rather than attacking particular abuses. In the eighteenth century it was safe to generalise and unsafe to particularise.
Chapter 1
How does Cole describe the double significance of Rousseau's works today?
Cole says Rousseau's works are important historically, both for insight into the eighteenth-century mind and for their actual influence on European events. He calls Rousseau the parent of the romantic movement, an influence on Goethe and the German romantics, the beginner of modern educational theory, and above all the representative of the passage from medieval traditional theory to the modern philosophy of the State.
Chapter 1
What does Cole identify as the chief obstacle to understanding the Social Contract?
Cole quotes M. Dreyfus-Brisac calling the Social Contract 'the book of all books that is most talked of and least read.' Cole argues men have accepted or rejected Rousseau's doctrines as a whole from political bias, without sifting or discriminating. He says Rousseau suffered from critics without a sense of history, cried up and down by democrats and oppressors alike.
Chapter 1
Section 24 cards
According to the chapter, why did critics wrongly conclude Rousseau was unoriginal?
The chapter argues critics wasted time proving Rousseau unoriginal because they identified originality with isolation: they studied the Social Contract alone, then found earlier works resembling it and decided everything was borrowed. A truly historical study would show his importance lies in the new use he makes of old ideas and the transition from old to new conceptions of politics.
Chapter 2
What does the chapter say about the origin and nature of Rousseau's first Discourse?
The chapter states Rousseau conceived a great work on Political Institutions around 1743 in Venice, but made little progress until 1749, when he saw the Academy of Dijon's prize question on whether arts and sciences purified or corrupted morality. His old ideas returned, and he composed a violent rhetorical diatribe against civilisation, published in 1750 after winning the prize.
Chapter 2
How does the chapter characterize the first Discourse's argument and importance?
The chapter calls it one-sided, arbitrary and rhetorically flimsy, not a serious contribution to thought, and quotes Rousseau's own Confessions judgment that it is weakest in argument. Its plan moves from the misery of modern nations to departure from a natural state, blaming arts and sciences. The chapter says its importance is as a key to Rousseau's development, not for positive doctrine.
Chapter 2
What does the chapter say about the state of nature in the Discourse on Inequality?
The chapter says Rousseau explicitly declares he does not suppose the state of nature ever existed; it is a pure idea of reason, a working concept reached by abstraction from society, and the natural man is man stripped of what society confers. The Discourse's conclusion favours an intermediate state of savagery, and Rousseau denies wishing modern society to return to nature.
Chapter 2
Section 34 cards
What does Rousseau say distinguishes his aim from Montesquieu's in political theory?
Rousseau states in Emile that Montesquieu did not treat the principles of political right but was content to treat the positive right of established governments, and that no two studies could be more different. Rousseau's object is to lay down the essential principles forming the basis of every legitimate society, not to describe actual institutions of existing States.
Chapter 3
Why does Rousseau insist that facts do not concern him?
The text explains that when Rousseau remarks that the facts, the actual history of political societies, do not concern him, he is not contemptuous of facts. He asserts the principle that a fact can in no case give rise to a right. His desire is to establish society on a basis of pure right, disproving his attack on society generally and reinforcing his criticism of existing societies.
Chapter 3
What does the Discourse on Political Economy contribute to Rousseau's political theory?
It is important as giving the first sketch of the theory of the General Will. It demolishes the exaggerated parallel between State and family, showing the State cannot be patriarchal, and holds that the State's real being consists in the General Will of its members. It also treats taxation: necessaries untaxed, superfluities supertaxed, heavy imposts on luxury.
Chapter 3
What fundamental problem does the Social Contract claim to solve?
It seeks a form of association able to defend and protect with the whole common force the person and goods of every associate, and of such a nature that each, uniting himself with all, may still obey only himself and remain as free as before. This problem of political obligation includes all other political problems, which fall into place in a system based upon it.
Chapter 3
Section 44 cards
What does Rousseau mean by saying 'man is born free'?
The author argues Rousseau means 'man ought to be free' or 'man is born for freedom,' not a literal historical fact. The phrase appeals to an imaginary golden age, since the freedom men are born to is bound, for most, to be lost. Rousseau elsewhere says slaves born in slavery are born for slavery, but if slaves exist by nature, it is because slaves were made against nature.
Chapter 4
What role does the 'state of nature' play in the Social Contract?
The author argues its space is very small. Rousseau uses it only in controversial chapters refuting false theories of social obligation; once those are dismissed, he drops the idea and focuses on giving society a rational sanction. In political matters the state of nature is only a term of controversy, and Rousseau effectively abandons the theory of a human golden age.
Chapter 4
How does Rousseau's mature view of 'nature' differ from the Discourses?
The author argues that in the Social Contract Rousseau is no longer merely cataloguing the faults of actual societies but seeking a rational society that leaves men 'as free as before.' He moves toward 'nature' as the full development of capacity and higher human freedom. Even in the Discourse on Inequality, amour de soi seeks reasonable satisfaction with benevolence, not self-aggrandisement.
Chapter 4
What three conceptions does Rousseau use to work out his theory?
The author identifies three general and to some extent alternative conceptions: the Social Contract, Sovereignty, and the General Will, each to be examined in turn. Rousseau's object is to inquire whether in civil order there can be a sure rule of administration, taking men as they are and laws as they might be—unlike Montesquieu, who took laws as they were.
Chapter 4
Section 53 cards
What are the two main forms of Social Contract theory described?
The chapter distinguishes two forms: a contract between the people and the government, of medieval origin and used by writers like Buchanan, Grotius, and Sidney; and a contract between all the individuals composing the State, found in Hooker, Milton, Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau. Historically, modern theory passes from the first form to the second.
Chapter 5
How does Hobbes use the second contract theory to support absolutism?
Hobbes agrees the original contract is among all individuals, with government not a party to it. But he holds the people agree to invest a person or persons with government, alienating Sovereignty wholly and forever. Once the State is set up, the government becomes the Sovereign, leaving only passive obedience regardless of whether the ruler governs well or ill.
Chapter 5
Why does Hobbes leave the government outside the contract?
Hobbes's aim is to make the government Sovereign and absolute. By leaving the government outside the contract, he avoids submitting it to any obligation whatsoever, keeping it absolute and irresponsible. The chapter concludes his theory secures not merely a State with unbounded rights against the individual but a determinate authority with the right to enforce them—pure despotism, not mere Statism.
Chapter 5
Section 64 cards
How does Rousseau's active agreement differ from Locke's consent?
The chapter states that Rousseau substitutes an active agreement periodically renewed for Locke's theory of tacit consent. Locke makes government depend on the consent of the governed and treats popular consent as essentially tacit and assumed, providing no machinery short of revolution to express it. Rousseau sees the necessity, if popular consent is to be more than a name, of giving it some constitutional means of expression.
Chapter 6
Why did Rousseau think self-government was impossible beyond a city?
The chapter says Rousseau saw no case in his day where representative government worked democratically, and could not conceive how active agreement could be given effect in a nation-state. He therefore held self-government impossible except for a city, admired ancient Greek city-states and Swiss free cities like Berne and Geneva, and wished to break up European nation-states into federative leagues of independent city-states.
Chapter 6
What does the chapter say the Social Contract really is for Rousseau?
The chapter argues Rousseau bases no vital argument on the contract's historical nature and clearly does not believe in it, answering that he does not know how the change from nature to society came about. His Social Contract means the fundamental principle of political association, found at work in every legitimate society and in abeyance in despotism, presented in quasi-historical form only because of the accident of his time and place.
Chapter 6
Why does the chapter reject Austin's definition as political theory?
The chapter says Austin defines the Sovereign as a determinate human superior receiving habitual obedience from the bulk of society, making sovereignty a question of fact, never of right. It replies that such a determinate superior is rarely found, asking whether England's Sovereign is the King, Parliament, the electorate, the population, or the Cabinet. The search may be a valuable legal conception, but it has nothing to do with political theory.
Chapter 6
Section 73 cards
How does Rousseau distinguish Sovereignty from government?
Rousseau sharply separates the supreme power from the government, so that even a completely democratic government is not the Sovereign; its members are sovereign only in a different capacity and as a different corporate body. Sovereignty is absolute, inalienable, indivisible, and indestructible, while government is secondary and derivative, existing only at the Sovereign's pleasure and always revocable by the sovereign will.
Chapter 7
How does Rousseau's Sovereign differ from Hobbes's?
Both derive power from the Social Contract, a popular act, but Hobbes makes the people alienate their supreme power in that first corporate action, while Rousseau regards it as inalienable. The author argues Hobbes accepts popular supremacy in name only to destroy it in fact, whereas Rousseau asserts the theory in its only logical form. Rousseau also separates Sovereign and government, unlike Hobbes, who identifies them.
Chapter 7
What is Rousseau's division of powers in the State?
Rousseau adapts the doctrine of the three powers but gives only two, making one wholly dependent on the other. The legislative power, or Sovereign, is always supreme; the executive, or government, is always secondary and derivative; and the judicial power is merely a function of government. The division is one of will and power: government carries out the decrees of the Sovereign people.
Chapter 7
Section 84 cards
What distinction does Rousseau draw between the will of all and the general will?
Rousseau holds that the will of all is merely the sum of particular wills and takes private interest into account, while the general will considers only the common interest. The agreement of all interests is formed by opposition to each. A citizen may vote for his own good rather than the State's, but from the standpoint of the general will such a vote is negligible.
Chapter 8
What role does Rousseau assign to the Legislator, and does he exercise legislative power?
The author explains that Rousseau's Legislator is the spirit of institutions personified; in a developed society the whole complex of custom, organization and tradition takes his place. The Legislator does not exercise legislative power—he merely submits suggestions for popular approval. This shows that will, not force, is the basis of the State.
Chapter 8
How does Rousseau define law, and what is its source?
Rousseau defines laws as acts of the general will, agreeing with Montesquieu that law is the condition of civil association. Laws can proceed only from the body of citizens who constituted the State. Though a universal justice emanates from reason alone, without natural sanctions the laws of justice are ineffective among men; the General Will is the source of the reign of mutual justice.
Chapter 8
What does the Social Contract create, and what does the author identify as the weakness in Rousseau's account of the general will?
The act of association creates a moral and collective body with its unity, common identity, life and will. The author argues Rousseau goes too far in claiming the common will always tends to the welfare of the whole, and in holding that in a city-state without particular associations, self-interested votes cancel out so majority voting yields the general will. Rousseau only claims this under his ideal conditions.
Chapter 8
Section 94 cards
How does Rousseau answer critics who say the General Will excludes public immorality?
The author explains that Rousseau answers in two ways. First, an act of public immorality is merely a unanimous instance of selfishness, no different from less unanimous selfish acts, so it forms no part of a General Will. Second, mere ignorance of our own or the State's good, unprompted by selfish desire, does not make the will anti-social or individual.
Chapter 9
What does Rousseau mean by saying the people is never corrupted but often deceived?
Rousseau holds that the general will is always right and tends to the public advantage, but the people's deliberations are not always equally correct. Our will is always for our own good, yet we do not always see what that is. So the people is never corrupted, but it is often deceived, and only then does it seem to will what is bad.
Chapter 9
How does the Political Economy describe lesser general wills within the State?
Every political society contains smaller societies, some with external or authorized form and others tacit, each with its own interest and rules. Their will is general for their own members but particular for the great society, and is often right for the first object and wrong for the second. The most general will is always the most just.
Chapter 9
Why does the author say Rousseau's claim about majority will is inconsistent?
The author argues Rousseau oscillates between treating the General Will as an ideal to approximate and as actually realized in every republican State. Book IV, chap. ii says a prevailing contrary opinion proves I was mistaken. But on Rousseau's own principles this proves nothing unless voters were guided by the general interest; there is no security the majority's will is the General Will.
Chapter 9
Section 104 cards
According to the chapter, how does Rousseau's view of freedom ground his political doctrine?
The chapter argues Rousseau bases politics on human freedom: because man is a free agent capable of being determined by a universal law he prescribes to himself, the State can likewise realize the General Will and prescribe a similar universal law to itself and its members. The General Will is thus the application of human freedom to political institutions.
Chapter 10
Why does Rousseau reject limited sovereignty, and how does he answer the objection that the State may enslave members?
Rousseau holds that if individuals retained certain rights there would be no common superior to judge between them and the public, so the state of nature would continue; hence the total alienation of each associate to the community. Limited Sovereignty is a contradiction in terms. The Sovereign is sole judge of what is important, and the General Will, being always in the right, intervenes only when proper.
Chapter 10
How does the chapter answer critics who say Rousseau sacrificed individual liberty to the State?
The chapter argues liberty is not merely negative absence of restraint. Once securing liberty is admitted, State interference need not lessen freedom: members may be freer when all are restrained from mutual damage than when one is left free to enslave another. The precise amount of interference is decided case by case; in right the Sovereign is omnipotent or subject only to reason.
Chapter 10
How does the chapter reconcile the Social Contract's alienation of rights with the revolutionaries' 'rights of man'?
The chapter argues the Contract rests on human freedom, which is inalienable and indestructible and guarantees its own permanence. When government becomes despotic it has no more right over subjects than a master over slaves; appeal may then be made to the Contract's terms or, equivalently, to the natural right of human freedom. This natural right is not inconsistent with complete alienation, since the Contract reposes on it and guarantees its maintenance.
Chapter 10
Section 114 cards
What two points does the chapter say Rousseau asserts about the Sovereign's interest?
The chapter states Rousseau asserts first that the Sovereign as such cannot have an interest contrary to that of the citizens as a whole, which is obvious; and second, that it cannot have an interest contrary to that of any individual. Rousseau proves the second by showing the Sovereign's omnipotence is essential to preserving society, which is necessary for the individual, though the argument really rests on the General Will.
Chapter 11
How does the chapter describe the General Will's relation to voting and the Will of All?
Critics object that if the General Will is not the Will of All and cannot be reached by majority vote or any voting system, it is nothing—a mere abstraction, neither general nor a will. The chapter concedes the General Will does not form the whole actual content of every citizen's will and must always be qualified by 'in so far as,' but argues this is precisely its value.
Chapter 11
What does the chapter say the General Will demands beyond good government?
The chapter argues the General Will is realized not merely when what is best for the community is done, but when the community as a whole has willed the doing of it. It demands not only good government but self-government, not only rational conduct but good-will. The chapter notes there is no General Will unless the people wills the good, and the will must be general in object and generally held.
Chapter 11
How does the chapter distinguish Rousseau's General Will from Kant's moral imperative?
The chapter says both hold essentially similar views on the nature and function of the will, but differ in moving force: Kant's moral imperative is purely rational, while Rousseau finds the sanction of the General Will in human feeling itself. The General Will remains purely rational—a pure act of understanding—but Rousseau feels it needs an external motive power, since reason alone cannot guide most actions.
Chapter 11
Section 124 cards
According to Cole, where does Rousseau's dogma of man's natural goodness appear in the Social Contract?
Cole states that the fundamental dogma of the natural goodness of man finds no direct place in the Social Contract, but lurks behind the whole of Rousseau's political theory and is throughout his master-conception. Cole argues Rousseau's educational, religious, political and ethical ideas are all inspired by a single consistent attitude.
Chapter 12
How does Cole's footnote explain Rousseau's term 'general will'?
Cole's footnote says the term 'general' in Rousseau means not so much a will held by several persons as a will having a general or universal object. Cole notes this is often misunderstood, but the mistake matters less because the General Will must in fact be both.
Chapter 12
What does Cole say about the present and future influence of Rousseau's political ideas?
Cole argues Rousseau's political influence is not dead but increases every day. He predicts new generations and classes studying Rousseau will build a new political philosophy on his conceptions, often hazy and undeveloped but nearly always of lasting value. This philosophy, rooted in Rousseau, will stretch back into the past and be relatively permanent yet ceaselessly progressive.
Chapter 12
Which English work does Cole call the best treatment of Rousseau's politics?
Cole says there are few good books in English on Rousseau's politics, and by far the best treatment is Bernard Bosanquet's Philosophical Theory of the State. He calls Morley's Rousseau a good life but not much use as criticism, and notes Boyd's educational theory book has some fairly good chapters on the political views.
Chapter 12
Section 133 cards
According to Rousseau, what makes the social order legitimate?
Rousseau states that the social order is a sacred right which is the basis of all other rights, but it does not come from nature. It must therefore be founded on conventions. He acknowledges he does not know how the change from freedom to chains came about, but claims he can answer what can make such subjection legitimate.
Chapter 13
How does Rousseau use the family as a model for political societies?
Rousseau calls the family the most ancient and only natural society, but notes children stay attached to the father only while needing him for preservation. Once that need ceases, the bond dissolves and any continued union is voluntary, maintained by convention. He calls the family the first model of political societies, with ruler as father and people as children, all born free and equal.
Chapter 13
What method does Rousseau criticize in Grotius, and why?
Rousseau says Grotius's usual method of reasoning is constantly to establish right by fact, and that while a more logical method is possible, none could be more favourable to tyrants. Grotius denies all human power is established in favour of the governed and cites slavery as an example. Rousseau links this to Hobbes's view that the human race is divided into herds with rulers guarding them to devour them.
Chapter 13
Section 144 cards
What does Rousseau claim about Aristotle's view that some are born for slavery?
Rousseau says Aristotle was right in observation but took the effect for the cause. He argues that every man born in slavery is born for slavery, since slaves lose even the desire to escape and love their servitude. If there are slaves by nature, it is only because there have been slaves against nature: force made the first slaves and cowardice perpetuated the condition.
Chapter 14
Why does Rousseau reject the 'right of the strongest'?
Rousseau argues force is a physical power with no moral effect; yielding to it is necessity or prudence, not duty. If force created right, every greater force would succeed to that right, and disobedience would be legitimate once resistance is possible. A right that perishes when force fails is meaningless, so force does not create right and we obey only legitimate powers.
Chapter 14
Why does Rousseau say a people cannot legitimately sell itself to a king?
Rousseau argues that to alienate is to give or sell, and a people selling itself gains nothing: the king draws his subsistence from them rather than providing theirs. The despot's promised tranquillity is no gain, since it resembles the tranquillity of prisoners awaiting death. Madness creates no right, and renouncing liberty is renouncing being a man, incompatible with human nature.
Chapter 14
Why can a father not irrevocably alienate his children's liberty?
Rousseau holds that children are born men and free, and their liberty belongs to them alone. Before years of discretion a father may lay down conditions for their preservation and well-being in their name, but he cannot give them away irrevocably and without conditions, since that exceeds the rights of paternity and contradicts nature's ends. Legitimizing arbitrary government would require each generation to accept or reject it.
Chapter 14
Section 153 cards
For Rousseau, between whom does war exist, and who are enemies in it?
The author argues war is a relation between things, not persons: it exists between State and State, not man and man. Individuals are enemies only accidentally, as soldiers defending their country, not as men or citizens. Private war, duels and individual combats cannot constitute a state of war, and each State can have as enemies only other States.
Chapter 15
Why does Rousseau reject the claim that victors may kill the conquered?
The author argues the supposed right to kill the conquered cannot be deduced from the state of war. The object of war is destroying the hostile State, so defenders may be killed only while bearing arms; once they lay them down and surrender they become merely men again, whose lives no one has a right to take. War gives no right not necessary to its object.
Chapter 15
What is Rousseau's argument against founding slavery on the right of conquest?
The author argues the right of conquest rests only on the right of the strongest. If war gives no right to massacre the conquered, the right to enslave them cannot rest on a right that does not exist. Killing is permitted only where enslavement is impossible, so slavery cannot derive from the right to kill; founding each on the other is a vicious circle.
Chapter 15
Section 164 cards
What problem does the social contract claim to solve?
The fundamental problem is to find a form of association that defends and protects with the whole common force the person and goods of each associate, and in which each, while uniting with all, may still obey himself alone and remain as free as before. Rousseau presents this as the problem to which the Social Contract provides the solution.
Chapter 16
To what single clause does Rousseau reduce the social compact?
Rousseau reduces the compact to the total alienation of each associate, together with all his rights, to the whole community. Because each gives himself absolutely, conditions are the same for all, so no one has an interest in making them burdensome to others. The alienation being without reserve, the union is as perfect as it can be.
Chapter 16
Why must the law of majority voting presuppose prior unanimity?
Rousseau argues that if there were no prior convention, the minority would have no obligation to submit to the majority's choice unless the election were unanimous. He asks how a hundred men who wish for a master have the right to vote on behalf of ten who do not. Majority rule is itself established by convention and presupposes unanimity at least once.
Chapter 16
How does Rousseau distinguish State, Sovereign, citizen, and subject?
The public person formed by the union is called the body politic or Republic. It is called State when passive, Sovereign when active, and Power when compared with others like itself. Members collectively are the people; severally they are citizens as sharing in sovereign power, and subjects as being under the laws of the State. Rousseau warns these terms are often confused.
Chapter 16
Section 174 cards
Why can the Sovereign not bind itself to an outsider or alienate part of itself?
The Sovereign draws its being wholly from the sanctity of the contract, so any act derogatory to the original act—such as alienating part of itself or submitting to another Sovereign—would be self-annihilation. Rousseau states that violation of the act by which it exists destroys it, and that which is itself nothing can create nothing.
Chapter 17
Why does the Sovereign need no guarantee to give its subjects, unlike subjects to the Sovereign?
The Sovereign is formed wholly of the individuals composing it, so it neither has nor can have an interest contrary to theirs; it is impossible for the body to wish to hurt all its members. But subjects, each with a particular will possibly contrary to the general will, offer no security of fidelity without some means of assurance.
Chapter 17
What does the social compact tacitly include about those who refuse to obey the general will?
The compact tacitly includes the undertaking that whoever refuses to obey the general will shall be compelled to do so by the whole body—meaning he will be forced to be free. This condition, by giving each citizen to his country, secures him against personal dependence and alone legitimizes civil undertakings, which without it would be absurd, tyrannical, and liable to frightful abuses.
Chapter 17
What three conditions does Rousseau give for the right of the first occupier over land?
First, the land must not yet be inhabited; second, a man must occupy only the amount he needs for his subsistence; and third, possession must be taken not by an empty ceremony but by labour and cultivation, the only sign of proprietorship that should be respected by others in default of a legal title.
Chapter 17
Section 184 cards
What two grounds does Rousseau cite for the right of first occupancy?
Rousseau asks whether granting the right of first occupancy to necessity and labour is not already stretching it as far as it can go, and whether such a right can be left unlimited. He doubts that merely setting foot on common ground, or having the momentary strength to expel others, establishes a lasting right of mastery over it.
Chapter 18
How does Rousseau use Balboa's claim to mock territorial seizure?
Rousseau asks whether Nuñez Balboa, standing on the sea-shore and taking possession of the South Seas and all South America for Castille, was thereby entitled to dispossess its actual inhabitants and shut out all other princes. He concludes such ceremonies are idly multiplied, since the Catholic King could as well take possession of the whole universe from his apartment.
Chapter 18
What paradox does Rousseau note about the community taking over individuals' goods?
Rousseau says the community, far from despoiling individuals when it takes over their goods, only assures them legitimate possession, changing usurpation into a true right and enjoyment into proprietorship. Possessors, regarded as depositaries of the public good, gain back all they gave up, since their rights are respected by all members and defended against foreign aggression.
Chapter 18
What does Rousseau conclude the fundamental compact does to natural inequality?
Rousseau ends the chapter remarking that instead of destroying natural inequality, the fundamental compact substitutes for the physical inequality nature may have set up between men an equality that is moral and legitimate. Men unequal in strength or intelligence become equal by convention and legal right. A footnote adds that under bad governments this equality is only apparent, serving to keep the pauper poor and the rich man in his usurped position.
Chapter 18
Section 194 cards
Why does Rousseau deny that declaring war and making peace are acts of Sovereignty?
Rousseau argues these acts are not law but merely the application of a law—particular acts deciding how the law applies. He says the error comes from lacking exact notions of Sovereign authority and mistaking emanations from it for parts of it. When Sovereignty seems divided, he claims, it is an illusion: the supposed parts are subordinate and imply supreme wills whose execution they only sanction.
Chapter 19
How does Rousseau distinguish the will of all from the general will?
Rousseau argues the general will considers only the common interest, while the will of all takes private interest into account and is merely a sum of particular wills. Subtract the pluses and minuses that cancel each other out, and the general will remains as the sum of the differences. He adds that the general will is always right, but the people's deliberations are not always equally correct.
Chapter 19
What happens to the general will when factions or partial associations form?
Rousseau argues that when partial associations form at the expense of the great association, each association's will is general to its members but particular to the State, so votes count by associations rather than men and the result grows less general. If one association prevails over all the rest, the outcome is a single particular difference, and there is no longer a general will.
Chapter 19
What limits does Rousseau place on the Sovereign's power over citizens?
Rousseau argues each man alienates by the social compact only the part of his powers, goods and liberty important for the community to control—but the Sovereign is sole judge of what is important. Still, the Sovereign cannot impose fetters useless to the community, nor even wish to, since nothing occurs without a cause by the law of reason or nature.
Chapter 19
Section 204 cards
What makes a will general, according to Rousseau?
Rousseau argues that what makes a will general is less the number of voters than the common interest uniting them. Under this system each person submits to the conditions he imposes on others, and this agreement between interest and justice gives common deliberations an equitable character that vanishes when a particular question is discussed without a common interest to unite ruler and party.
Chapter 20
When does the general will lose its natural rectitude?
The general will, to be truly general, must be general in object as well as essence: it must come from all and apply to all. Rousseau argues it loses its natural rectitude when directed to some particular and determinate object, because then we judge something foreign to us and have no true principle of equity to guide us.
Chapter 20
What is an act of Sovereignty, strictly speaking?
It is not a convention between a superior and an inferior but a convention between the body and each of its members. It is legitimate because based on the social contract, equitable because common to all, useful because its only object can be the general good, and stable because guaranteed by public force. Subjects obey only their own will.
Chapter 20
Why does the Sovereign never lay more charges on one subject than another?
Because the sovereign power, absolute and sacred as it is, cannot exceed the limits of general conventions. If it charged one subject more than another, the question would become particular and cease to be within its competency. Rousseau argues each man may dispose at will of the goods and liberty these conventions leave him.
Chapter 20
Section 214 cards
According to Rousseau, when may the State require a citizen to die?
The author argues the citizen is no longer judge of the dangers the law imposes; when the prince declares it expedient for the State that he die, he ought to die, since he has lived in security only on that condition and his life is a conditional gift of the State, not merely a bounty of nature.
Chapter 21
How does Rousseau justify the death penalty for criminals?
The author argues we consent to die if we become assassins so we are not victims of assassins. A malefactor attacking social rights becomes a rebel and traitor, making war on the State; the trial proves he broke the treaty. He is removed by exile as a violator or by death as a public enemy, slain as an enemy rather than a citizen.
Chapter 21
What does Rousseau say about frequent punishments and pardons?
The author argues frequent punishments signal government weakness or remissness, and no ill-doer is beyond turning to good; the State may not kill anyone it can safely leave alive, even as an example. Pardoning belongs only to the Sovereign, above judge and law, though its right is unclear and cases rare. Few punishments mark a well-governed State because criminals are rare.
Chapter 21
What is a law, and what is its object, for Rousseau?
The author argues a law exists when the whole people decrees for the whole people, considering only itself, so the matter and the decreeing will are both general. Law considers subjects en masse and actions in the abstract, never a particular person or action: it may decree privileges or classes but cannot name who holds them, and cannot choose a king.
Chapter 21
Section 224 cards
According to Rousseau, what makes a command a law rather than a decree?
Rousseau argues that law requires universality of will combined with universality of object. Whatever a man commands of his own motion cannot be law, and even what the Sovereign commands regarding a particular matter is only a decree, an act of magistracy rather than sovereignty. Law is properly the register of the general will.
Chapter 22
Why does Rousseau call every legitimate government republican, including monarchy?
Rousseau gives the name 'Republic' to every State governed by laws, whatever its form of administration, because only then does the public interest govern and the res publica become a reality. He clarifies that by 'republican' he means any government directed by the general will, which is the law—so even a monarchy is a Republic if legitimate.
Chapter 22
Why does Rousseau say a legislator is necessary?
The people wills the good but does not always see it; the general will is always right, but the judgment guiding it is not always enlightened. Individuals see the good they reject, while the public wills the good it does not see. Both need guidance, so public enlightenment must unite understanding and will—which makes a legislator necessary.
Chapter 22
What makes the legislator's office extraordinary and separate from magistracy and Sovereignty?
The legislator's office sets up the Republic but enters nowhere into its constitution; it is an individual and superior function with nothing in common with human empire. Rousseau argues that he who commands men ought not to command the laws, and he who commands the laws ought not to command men—else his laws would serve his passions and perpetuate his injustices.
Chapter 22
Section 234 cards
Why can the people not surrender the right to legislate, according to Rousseau?
Rousseau argues the people cannot, even if it wishes, deprive itself of this incommunicable right, because under the fundamental compact only the general will can bind individuals. There is no assurance that a particular will conforms to the general will until it has been put to the free vote of the people. He notes he has said this before but considers it worth repeating.
Chapter 23
What two incompatible things does Rousseau find in the task of legislation?
Rousseau says legislation combines an enterprise too difficult for human powers with, for its execution, an authority that is no authority. The legislator draws up laws but has or should have no right of legislation himself. So the work exceeds human capacity while the one who performs it must command without commanding.
Chapter 23
Why must the legislator appeal to divine authority rather than force or reason?
Rousseau argues the legislator cannot appeal to force or reason, so he needs an authority that constrains without violence and persuades without convincing. Wise men speaking the common herd's language cannot be understood, and individuals resist the privations good laws impose. So the fathers of nations credit the gods with their own wisdom, letting peoples obey freely.
Chapter 23
What does Rousseau say about a people that has lost its civic vigour?
Rousseau argues such a people can make itself free while still barbarous, but not once the civic impulse has lost its vigour. Then disturbances may destroy it, but revolutions cannot mend it: it needs a master, not a liberator. He ends with the maxim that liberty may be gained but can never be recovered.
Chapter 23
Section 244 cards
According to Rousseau, why will Russia never be truly civilized?
The author argues Russia was civilized too soon, before its people were ripe for it. Peter had a genius for imitation but lacked creative genius. He tried to make his people Germans or Englishmen instead of Russians, and persuaded them they were what they were not, preventing them from becoming what they might have been. Rousseau predicts Russia will be conquered by the Tartars.
Chapter 24
Why does Rousseau hold that a small State is proportionally stronger than a great one?
Rousseau argues every extension of the social tie relaxes it. Long distances make administration more burdensome, since each city, district, and province adds its own costly officials, all paid for by the people. The people feel less affection for distant rulers and unknown fellow-citizens, uniform laws cannot suit diverse provinces, and a body too big for its constitution collapses under its own weight.
Chapter 24
What is the right relation between a State's territory and its population?
Rousseau says the land should suffice for the maintenance of the inhabitants, and there should be as many inhabitants as the land can maintain. Too much land is troublesome to guard and gives rise to wars of defence; too little makes the State depend on neighbours and gives rise to wars of offence. In this proportion lies the maximum strength of a given number of people.
Chapter 24
How does Rousseau weigh reasons for expansion against reasons for contraction?
He says reasons for expansion are merely external and relative, while reasons for contraction are internal and absolute, so expansion should be subordinate to contraction. A strong, healthy constitution comes first; it is better to rely on the vigour of good government than on the resources of a great territory. He notes some States were constituted to expand ceaselessly, which marks the moment of their fall.
Chapter 24
Section 254 cards
What two factors prevent fixing a relation between territory and population?
Rousseau says no fixed relation can be stated because of differences in land quality, fertility, products, and climate, and because of the different tempers of inhabitants—some in fertile countries consume little, others on ungrateful soil consume much. Fecundity of women, conditions favouring population growth, and the legislator's institutional influence must also be counted.
Chapter 25
Why does Rousseau say the legislator should look to foresight rather than observation?
The legislator should not go by what he sees but by what he foresees, stopping not at the population as he actually finds it but at that to which it ought naturally to attain. Local circumstances may also demand or allow acquiring more territory than seems necessary, so present conditions are a poor guide to sound lawgiving.
Chapter 25
What conditions make a people fit for legislation, according to Rousseau?
Rousseau lists: unity of origin, interest, or convention without having felt law's real yoke; no deep customs or superstitions; no fear of sudden invasion; ability to resist neighbours alone or with allies; members mutually known; burdens bearable; self-sufficiency; neither rich nor poor; and the consistency of an old people with the docility of a new one. Such conditions rarely unite.
Chapter 25
What does Rousseau identify as the greatest good of all legislation?
Rousseau argues the greatest good, the end of every legislative system, reduces to two objects: liberty and equality. Liberty, because particular dependence takes force from the State; equality, because liberty cannot exist without it. Equality means power never suffices for violence and no citizen is rich enough to buy another or poor enough to sell himself.
Chapter 25
Section 264 cards
According to Rousseau, what makes a State's constitution truly solid and lasting?
The due observance of what is proper, so that natural relations always agree with the laws on every point, with law serving to assure, accompany and rectify them. If the legislator adopts a principle contrary to what circumstances naturally direct, the laws insensibly lose influence, the constitution alters, and the State has no rest until destroyed or changed and nature resumes her sway.
Chapter 26
What does Rousseau say about rich men and beggars in relation to the State?
He argues that to give the State consistency the two extremes should be brought as near each other as possible, allowing neither rich men nor beggars. These two estates, naturally inseparable, are equally fatal to the common good: from the one come friends of tyranny, from the other tyrants. Public liberty is always auctioned between them, one buying and the other selling.
Chapter 26
How does Rousseau divide laws into four kinds?
Political laws regulate the relation of the Sovereign to the State and are called fundamental laws. Civil laws govern relations of members to one another and to the body. Criminal laws concern disobedience and its penalty, being the sanction behind all the rest. A fourth, most important kind is morality, custom and above all public opinion, engraved on citizens' hearts, forming the real constitution.
Chapter 26
What is government, and how does Rousseau describe the magistrates' power?
Government is an intermediate body set up between subjects and Sovereign to secure their mutual correspondence, charged with executing the laws and maintaining civil and political liberty. Its members are magistrates or kings, the body called prince. Rousseau argues the people's submission to a prince is not a contract but a commission or employment; rulers are mere officials of the Sovereign, which can limit, modify or recover that power at pleasure.
Chapter 26
Section 273 cards
In Rousseau's proportion, what role does government play between Sovereign and State?
Rousseau calls government the mean proportional in a continuous proportion between the Sovereign and the State: it receives orders from the Sovereign and gives them to the people. For the State to be balanced, the power of the government taken in itself must equal the power of the citizens, who are at once sovereign and subject.
Chapter 27
What happens to a subject's liberty as the State grows larger?
Each subject remains a single unit wholly under the laws, but his vote shrinks to a smaller fraction of sovereign authority as citizens increase. Rousseau concludes that the relation between subject and Sovereign grows more unequal, so the larger the State, the less the liberty.
Chapter 27
What distinguishes the State's existence from the government's, and what dissolves the body politic?
The State exists by itself, while government exists only through the Sovereign. The prince's will should be nothing but the general will, and his force only concentrated public force. If the prince acts on an absolute independent authority, or sets a particular will above the Sovereign's and uses public force for it, the social union evaporates and the body politic dissolves.
Chapter 27
Section 284 cards
According to Rousseau, how does the number of magistrates affect a government's strength?
Rousseau argues that the more numerous the magistrates, the weaker the government. The government's total force is always that of the State and is invariable, so the more force it expends on its own members, the less remains to employ on the whole people. He calls this principle fundamental and says it must be made clear.
Chapter 28
What three wills does Rousseau distinguish in the person of the magistrate?
Rousseau distinguishes three essentially different wills: the private will of the individual, tending only to personal advantage; the corporate will common to the magistrates, relative solely to the advantage of the prince; and the sovereign or general will of the people, general in relation both to the State as a whole and to the government as part of it.
Chapter 28
Which form of government does Rousseau call the most active, and why?
Rousseau argues the most active government is that of one man. When the whole government is in one man's hands, the particular and corporate wills are wholly united, so the corporate will reaches its highest intensity. Since the use of force depends on the degree reached by the will, and absolute force is invariable, a single ruler yields the most active government.
Chapter 28
How does Rousseau define democracy in the division of governments?
Rousseau says the Sovereign may commit the charge of government to the whole people or to the majority of the people, so that more citizens are magistrates than are mere private individuals. This form of government, in which the many rule, is what he calls democracy.
Chapter 28
Section 293 cards
According to Rousseau, which form of government suits states of different sizes?
Rousseau argues that if the number of supreme magistrates is in inverse ratio to the number of citizens, then generally democratic government suits small states, aristocratic government suits middle-sized states, and monarchy suits great ones. He says this rule follows from his principle but adds that innumerable circumstances may furnish exceptions.
Chapter 29
Why does Rousseau say there has never been a real democracy?
Rousseau argues it is against the natural order for the many to govern and the few to be governed. It is unimaginable that the people remain continually assembled for public affairs, and they cannot set up commissions for that purpose without changing the form of administration. He also notes that when functions are shared by several tribunals, the less numerous sooner or later acquire the greatest authority.
Chapter 29
What conditions does Rousseau say democracy presupposes, and what does he conclude about it?
Rousseau lists a very small state where citizens can easily assemble and know one another, great simplicity of manners, a large measure of equality in rank and fortune, and little or no luxury. He concludes that were there a people of gods, their government would be democratic, but so perfect a government is not for men.
Chapter 29
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According to Rousseau, what advantage does elective aristocracy have over popular government?
Rousseau argues that in popular government all citizens are born magistrates, but in aristocracy magistracy is confined to a few chosen by election. This means uprightness, understanding, experience, and other claims to public esteem become guarantees of wise government. Assemblies are also more easily held, affairs better discussed and carried out with more order, and the State's credit abroad is better sustained by respected senators than by an unknown multitude.
Chapter 30
What danger does Rousseau say corporate interest creates in aristocracy?
Rousseau warns that in aristocracy corporate interest begins to direct the public power less under the regulation of the general will, and a further inevitable propensity takes away from the laws part of the executive power. He also says aristocracy demands moderation from the rich and contentment from the poor, since thorough-going equality would be out of place, as it was not found even at Sparta.
Chapter 30
Why does Rousseau say election of magistrates must be regulated by law?
Rousseau states it is of great importance that the form of electing magistrates be regulated by law, because if it is left to the prince's discretion, hereditary aristocracy is unavoidable. He cites Venice and Berne as republics that actually fell into this. Venice he calls a dissolved State; Berne survives only through the extreme wisdom of its senate, an honourable and highly dangerous exception.
Chapter 30
Section 314 cards
Why does Rousseau rank monarchical below republican government?
The author argues that in a republic the public voice rarely elevates men who are not enlightened and capable, while in monarchies those who rise are often petty blunderers, swindlers, and intriguers whose small talents win high office at Court but only reveal their ineptitude once installed. He claims the people err less often in choosing than the prince does.
Chapter 31
What condition does Rousseau give for a monarchical State to be well governed?
Its population and extent must be proportionate to the abilities of its governor. If the State is too large for the prince, he cannot sustain it; if too small for him, he pursues great designs and neglects the people's interests. A kingdom should expand or contract with each reign, whereas a senate's abilities are more constant, allowing permanent frontiers.
Chapter 31
Why is hereditary succession preferred, and at what cost?
Rousseau says crowns were made hereditary and an order of succession set up to prevent disputes on a king's death. This substitutes the disadvantages of regency for those of election: apparent tranquillity is preferred to wise administration, and men risk children, monstrosities, or imbeciles as rulers rather than dispute over choosing good kings.
Chapter 31
What does Rousseau say about educating princes to reign?
He argues that everything conspires to strip a man set over others of justice and reason, and that teaching young princes the art of reigning does them no good. It would be better to begin with the art of obeying: reigning is a science best acquired by obeying rather than commanding, and the greatest kings were not brought up to reign.
Chapter 31
Section 324 cards
How does Rousseau explain the apparent contradiction between Machiavelli's Prince and his other works?
The author argues Machiavelli was a good citizen who, attached to the Medici court, veiled his love of liberty under his country's oppression. The choice of Cæsar Borgia as his hero reveals his hidden aim, and the contradiction between the Prince and the Discourses on Livy and History of Florence shows he has been studied only by superficial or corrupt readers. The Court of Rome prohibited his book because it most clearly portrays that Court.
Chapter 32
According to Rousseau, when is a simple government better, and how are its defects cured?
Simple government is better in itself because it is simple. But when the executive is insufficiently dependent on the legislative—when the prince is closer to the Sovereign than the people are to the prince—this lack of proportion must be cured by dividing the government, since the parts keep authority over subjects while being jointly weaker against the Sovereign. Intermediate magistrates can also balance the powers, making government moderated rather than mixed.
Chapter 32
What does Rousseau mean by saying liberty is not a fruit of all climates?
Adopting a principle he credits to Montesquieu, the author argues liberty is not within reach of all peoples. The civil State subsists only while labour returns more than needs; the size of this excess varies by climate, soil, products, and inhabitants. Since tribute grows more burdensome the farther it travels from the people, democracy suits small poor states, aristocracy middling ones, and monarchy wealthy nations.
Chapter 32
Which form of government does Rousseau assign to each kind of land?
Barren lands should stay desert or be peopled by savages; lands yielding only the bare minimum of subsistence suit barbarous peoples, where all polity is impossible. Middling surplus suits free peoples; abundant, fertile soil yielding much for little labour calls for monarchy, so the prince's luxury absorbs the excess. The author notes exceptions but says they confirm the rule by producing revolutions that restore the natural order.
Chapter 32
Section 334 cards
According to Rousseau, why does a tract producing less yield a larger surplus?
Rousseau compares two equal tracts, one producing five and one ten. If inhabitants of the first consume four and of the second nine, the first surplus is a fifth and the second a tenth. The ratio of surpluses is inverse to that of products, so the tract producing only five gives a surplus double that of the tract producing ten.
Chapter 33
How does climate affect consumption and luxury, according to Rousseau?
Rousseau argues that nearer the equator people live on less, hardly touching meat and eating rice, maize and cassava. He cites Chardin on Persian sobriety and notes a Spaniard lives a week on a German's dinner. In more voracious countries luxury turns toward consumption: England shows a well-filled table, Italy feasts on sugar and flowers.
Chapter 33
Why does Rousseau say hot countries favor despotism?
Rousseau argues hot countries need fewer inhabitants and can support more, a double surplus favoring despotism. Tyrannical government benefits from acting at great distances, its strength growing like a lever; the people's strength acts only when concentrated and evaporates when spread. Thus the least populous countries are fittest for tyranny: fierce animals reign only in deserts.
Chapter 33
What does Rousseau say about identifying a well-governed people?
Rousseau holds that 'What absolutely is the best government?' is unanswerable, since answers vary with each nation's situation. But whether a given people is well or ill governed is a question of fact admitting an answer. He notes subjects extol public tranquillity while citizens extol individual liberty, and that agreement on the mark does not mean agreement on valuation.
Chapter 33
Section 344 cards
According to Rousseau, what is the surest mark of a government's success?
Rousseau argues the surest mark of a government's preservation and prosperity is the numbers and population of its citizens. All else being equal, the government under which citizens increase and multiply most, without external aids, naturalisation or colonies, is the best; the one under which a people wanes is the worst. He calls on 'calculators' to count, measure and compare.
Chapter 34
How does Rousseau judge the prosperity of an age, and what does he say about flourishing arts?
Rousseau argues ages should be judged by human prosperity, not by the flourishing of letters and arts, which he says have been too much admired because their hidden object and fatal effects were not fathomed. He cites Tacitus that fools called 'humanity' what was part of slavery, and insists a depopulated country is not well off however renowned, or however rich its poets.
Chapter 34
What two general courses of degeneration does Rousseau identify for government?
Rousseau says government degenerates in two ways: by contraction, or by dissolution of the State. Contraction is the passage from the many to the few—democracy to aristocracy to royalty—which he calls government's natural propensity. Dissolution occurs when the prince usurps the Sovereign power, or when magistrates severally usurp power meant to be exercised only as a body.
Chapter 34
How does Rousseau distinguish a tyrant from a despot?
Rousseau notes that in vulgar usage a tyrant is a king who governs violently and without regard for justice and law, but in the exact sense a tyrant is one who arrogates royal authority without right—so tyrant and usurper are synonymous, as the Greeks used the term. Rousseau reserves 'tyrant' for one who usurps royal authority and 'despot' for one who usurps sovereign power, concluding the tyrant cannot be a despot but the despot is always a tyrant.
Chapter 34
Section 354 cards
How does Rousseau respond to the claim that Rome followed the opposite course?
Rousseau denies the objection. He argues Romulus set up a mixed government that soon deteriorated into despotism; the expulsion of the Tarquins was the Republic's real birth, but it left half its work undone by not abolishing the patriciate. Only with the establishment of the tribunate, as Machiavelli proved, was the government fixed and a true democracy formed. Roman history, he concludes, confirms rather than invalidates his principle.
Chapter 35
What distinction does Rousseau draw between the legislative and executive powers?
Rousseau holds that the life-principle of the body politic lies in the sovereign authority. The legislative power is the heart of the State, while the executive power is its brain, which moves all the parts. The brain may become paralysed and the individual still live, but as soon as the heart ceases to function, the animal is dead. The State therefore subsists by the legislative power, not by the laws.
Chapter 35
Why does Rousseau say old laws command so much respect?
Rousseau argues that nothing but the excellence of old acts of will could have preserved them so long; if the Sovereign had not recognised them as salutary throughout, it would have revoked them a thousand times. Thus in a well-constituted State laws continually gain new strength, and the precedent of antiquity makes them daily more venerable. Where laws grow weak as they age, this proves there is no longer a legislative power and the State is dead.
Chapter 35
What evidence does Rousseau offer that popular assemblies are not a chimera?
Rousseau argues the bounds of possibility in moral matters are less narrow than we imagine, confined by our weaknesses, vices and prejudices. He cites the Roman Republic: the last census showed four hundred thousand citizens capable of bearing arms in Rome, and over four million in the Empire excluding subjects, foreigners, women, children and slaves. Yet few weeks passed without the Roman people assembling, exercising sovereignty and part of government.
Chapter 35
Section 364 cards
What happens to government authority when the people assemble as sovereign?
The author asserts that the moment the people is legitimately assembled as a sovereign body, the jurisdiction of the government wholly lapses and the executive power is suspended. The meanest citizen becomes as sacred and inviolable as the first magistrate, because in the presence of the person represented, representatives no longer exist. He attributes Roman comitia tumults to ignorance or neglect of this rule.
Chapter 36
What does the author say about citizens substituting money for personal service?
The author argues that when public service ceases to be the citizens' chief business and they prefer serving with money rather than their persons, the State is near its fall. Through commerce, greed for profit, and love of amenities, personal services are replaced by money payments. He holds that enforced labour is less opposed to liberty than taxes, and calls finance a slavish word.
Chapter 36
How does the author propose handling a State with several towns?
The author rejects dividing sovereign authority, which is one and simple, and rejects subjecting one town to another, since the body politic reconciles obedience and liberty. He calls uniting several towns in a single city always bad. If the State cannot be reduced to right limits, he suggests allowing no capital, moving the seat of government from town to town, and assembling the Provincial Estates in each by turn.
Chapter 36
What does the author say about the frequency of lawful assemblies?
The author says no exact rules can be given for how often lawful assemblies should occur, since this depends on many considerations. He states generally that the stronger the government, the more often the Sovereign should show itself. Assemblies not summoned by the appointed magistrates according to prescribed forms are unlawful, and their acts are null and void.
Chapter 36
Section 373 cards
Why can sovereignty not be represented, according to Rousseau?
Rousseau argues sovereignty cannot be represented for the same reason it is inalienable: it lies essentially in the general will, and will does not admit of representation—it is either the same or other, with no intermediate possibility. Deputies are therefore only stewards of the people, not representatives, and can carry through no definitive acts. Any law the people has not ratified in person is null and void, not a law at all.
Chapter 37
What does Rousseau claim about English freedom and elections?
The author argues the English people are grossly mistaken in thinking themselves free: they are free only during the election of members of parliament. As soon as those members are elected, slavery overtakes them and they are nothing. He adds that the use England makes of its short moments of liberty shows it deserves to lose them.
Chapter 37
Where does the idea of representation come from, and how were ancient republics different?
Rousseau argues representation is modern, coming from feudal government, which he calls iniquitous and absurd. In ancient republics and even monarchies the people never had representatives and the word was unknown. In Rome the tribunes, though sacrosanct, never usurped the people's functions or passed a plebiscitum on their own authority, even when citizens had to vote from rooftops during the Gracchi.
Chapter 37
Section 383 cards
What two components make up the complex act instituting government?
Rousseau says the act is complex, composed of two others: the establishment of the law and its execution. By the first, the Sovereign decrees a governing body be established in this or that form, which is clearly a law. By the second, the people nominates the rulers entrusted with that government, a particular act that is merely a consequence of the first and a function of government.
Chapter 38
How does Rousseau illustrate the conversion of Sovereignty into democracy?
Rousseau points to the English Parliament, where the Lower House on certain occasions resolves itself into Grand Committee for better discussion of affairs. It thus passes from being a sovereign court to a mere commission, then reports to itself as House of Commons the result of its proceedings and debates again under one name what it already settled under another.
Chapter 38
What two propositions should open the periodical assemblies?
Rousseau says the assemblies, whose sole object is maintaining the social treaty, should always open with two propositions voted on separately. First: 'Does it please the Sovereign to preserve the present form of government?' Second: 'Does it please the people to leave its administration in the hands of those who are actually in charge of it?' He adds that no fundamental law, not even the social compact, cannot be revoked.
Chapter 38
Section 393 cards
What happens to the general will when the State declines, according to Rousseau?
The author argues the general will is not destroyed but subordinated to particular wills that encroach on it. Each person still wills the general good in his own interest, even when selling his vote; he merely eludes the general will rather than extinguishing it. The fault lies in changing the question and answering something other than what is asked.
Chapter 39
How does Rousseau read unanimity in an assembly?
The author argues that the more unanimity and concert reign in assemblies, the greater the dominance of the general will. Long debates, dissensions and tumult signal particular interests and the State's decline. But unanimity also recurs at the opposite extreme, when citizens in servitude have lost liberty and will, and fear and flattery turn votes into acclamation.
Chapter 39
Which law alone requires unanimous consent, and why?
The social compact alone needs unanimous consent, because civil association is the most voluntary of acts. Every man is born free and his own master, so no one, under any pretext, can subject another without his consent. To decide that the son of a slave is born a slave, Rousseau says, is to decide he is not born a man.
Chapter 39
Section 404 cards
Under Rousseau, what binds a citizen who voted against a law that passes?
Rousseau argues the citizen consents to all laws, even those passed despite his opposition and those punishing him for breaking them. The general will is the constant will of all members; voting asks whether a proposal conforms to it. When the contrary opinion prevails, this proves the dissenter was mistaken about the general will, not that he was coerced.
Chapter 40
What two rules govern how large a majority is needed for a vote?
Rousseau gives two general rules. First, the graver and more important the question, the closer the prevailing opinion should approach unanimity. Second, the more the matter calls for speed, the smaller the permitted difference in votes may be; where instant decision is needed, a majority of one suffices. He says the first suits laws, the second practical affairs, and their combination gives the best proportions.
Chapter 40
Why does Rousseau say election by lot suits democracy?
Rousseau argues that electing rulers is a function of government, not Sovereignty, and that in a real democracy magistracy is a burdensome charge, not an advantage, so it cannot justly be imposed on one person rather than another. The law alone can assign it, and the lot, depending on no human will, preserves the law's universality. He notes real democracy is only an ideal.
Chapter 40
How does Rousseau distinguish Venice's government from a true aristocracy?
Rousseau argues it is an error to take Venice for a real aristocracy. If the people has no share in government, the nobility is itself the people; the poor Barnabotes never reach magistracy, and their nobility is an empty title plus a seat in the Great Council. He claims Geneva's bourgeoisie equals Venice's patriciate, so Venice's government is no more aristocratic than Geneva's, size aside.
Chapter 40
Section 414 cards
Under monarchy, who chooses the monarch's lieutenants?
The monarch alone, by right, since he is sole prince and only magistrate. Rousseau says neither lot nor vote has any place in monarchical government. He cites the Abbé de Saint-Pierre's proposal for multiplying the King of France's Councils with ballot-elected members as failing to see that this would change the form of government.
Chapter 41
How did Servius reform Rome's tribes and why?
The foreigner tribe (Luceres) kept growing and soon surpassed the Alban and Sabine tribes in strength. Servius abolished the racial division and substituted four urban tribes based on the hill or quarter inhabited, forbidding inhabitants to migrate between quarters to prevent mingling of races. He also doubled the three old centuries of Knights and added twelve more, keeping the old names.
Chapter 41
Why were rural tribes honored and urban tribes disdained in Rome?
Early Romans prized country life, which their founder linked with liberty and military labor. Illustrious citizens lived in the fields, so the rustic life was honored; Varro says the ancestors made the village a nursery of sturdy men. Pliny states country tribes were honored for their members, while cowards were transferred to town tribes as public disgrace. Freedmen always entered urban, never rural, tribes.
Chapter 41
How did the rural/urban tribe distinction eventually break down?
Censors, after long claiming the right to transfer citizens arbitrarily, allowed most persons to enroll in whatever tribe they pleased, robbing the censorship of a great resource. The great and powerful joined country tribes while freedmen stayed in town tribes, so both lost local meaning and became confused except by registers. The word tribe became personal rather than real, and town tribes, being on the spot, often dominated the comitia and sold the State to vote-buyers.
Chapter 41
Section 424 cards
How did Servius distribute the Roman people in his third division?
Servius divided the whole Roman people into six classes distinguished neither by place nor person but by wealth: the first included the rich, the last the poor, and those between persons of moderate means. These classes were subdivided into 193 bodies called centuries, arranged so the first class alone comprised more than half of them while the last comprised only one.
Chapter 42
Why were proletarians distinguished from capite censi in the last class?
Proletarians, not quite reduced to nothing, at least gave the State citizens and sometimes soldiers when need was pressing. Those who had nothing at all and could be numbered only by counting heads were regarded as of absolutely no account. Marius was the first who stooped to enrol them.
Chapter 42
What three conditions made the comitia lawful and their acts legally binding?
First, the body or magistrate convoking them had to possess the necessary authority; secondly, the assembly had to be held on a day allowed by law; thirdly, the auguries had to be favourable. The second was a matter of policy, since comitia could not be held on festivals or market-days when country-folk lacked time.
Chapter 42
What does the author argue about the durability of Servius's third arrangement?
The author argues it could have been made practicable only by the simple morals, disinterestedness, liking for agriculture, and scorn for commerce and gain that characterised the early Romans. He asks where a modern people could let such a system last twenty years without turning the State upside down, and notes morality and the censorship corrected its defects at Rome.
Chapter 42
Section 434 cards
Why did the Comitia Centuriata favor the aristocracy, and how was this modified?
Voting went by centuries, and the first class held ninety-eight of the hundred and ninety-three centuries, so it alone had a majority; when all centuries agreed, the rest were not even counted. This was modified because many tribunes and plebeians belonged to the rich class, counterbalancing the patricians, and because a century chosen by lot voted first, with the election repeated later by rank.
Chapter 43
How did the Comitia Tributa differ from the other Roman assemblies?
The Comitia Tributa were properly the council of the Roman people, convoked by the tribunes alone, who were elected there and passed their plebiscita. The senate had no standing and not even the right to be present, so senators had to obey laws they could not vote on. Rousseau calls this injustice ill-conceived and enough to invalidate the body's decrees.
Chapter 43
Which assembly did Rousseau consider most favorable to popular government, and which to aristocracy?
Rousseau states that the Comitia Tributa were the most favourable to popular government and the Comitia Centuriata to aristocracy. The Comitia Curiata, where the populace of Rome formed the majority, suited only tyranny and evil designs, so it fell into disrepute. He holds that the whole majesty of the Roman people lay solely in the Comitia Centuriata, which alone included all.
Chapter 43
Why did Rousseau disagree with Cicero about secret voting?
Voting was originally aloud and recorded by a clerk, which worked while honesty prevailed and men were ashamed to vote publicly for unjust proposals. When the people grew corrupt and votes were bought, secret ballots with tablets became fitting, so purchasers could be restrained by mistrust. Cicero attributes the Republic's ruin partly to this change, but the author argues that, for want of such changes, the State's destruction is hastened.
Chapter 43
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What does the tribunate do, and what powers does Rousseau say it should not hold?
Rousseau describes the tribunate as a special magistracy that restores right relations between the parts of the State when no exact proportion can be established. It is not a constituent part of the city and should share in neither legislative nor executive power. Precisely because it can do nothing, it can prevent anything from being done, and it serves as preserver of the laws and of the legislative power.
Chapter 44
Into what does the tribunate degenerate, and what historical examples does Rousseau give?
Rousseau argues the tribunate degenerates into tyranny when it usurps the executive power it should only restrain, or tries to dispense with the laws it should protect. He cites the Ephors of Sparta, whose immense power hastened corruption once morality declined, and Rome, where the tribunes' excessive power, usurped by degrees, ultimately served the emperors who destroyed liberty.
Chapter 44
What remedy does Rousseau propose for preventing usurpations by the tribunate?
Rousseau argues the best method, though no government has yet used it, is not to make the tribunate permanent but to regulate periods during which it remains in abeyance. These intervals should be short enough that abuses cannot grow strong, and may be fixed by law so they can be shortened at need by extraordinary commissions. Since the tribunate forms no part of the constitution, it can be removed without affecting it.
Chapter 44
When may the laws be suspended by a dictator, and what limits does Rousseau set?
Rousseau argues the sacred power of the laws should never be arrested except when the existence of the country is at stake, in rare and obvious cases. A supreme ruler may then silence all the laws and suspend the sovereign authority for a moment. He dominates the legislative power but cannot represent it: he can do anything except make laws.
Chapter 44
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Why does Rousseau attack the early, frequent use of the dictatorship?
Rousseau argues the danger is not abuse but cheapening: if the supreme magistracy is used freely for elections, dedications, and purely formal functions, it may grow less formidable in time of need, and men grow accustomed to treating as empty a title used only for empty ceremonial.
Chapter 45
What mistake does Rousseau say Roman fear of the dictatorship caused in the Catilinarian conspiracy?
The Romans failed to nominate a dictator. Rousseau argues the dictator's unlimited authority would have made short work of the conspiracy, which was stifled only by lucky chances human prudence had no right to expect. Instead the senate gave its power to the consuls, forcing Cicero to exceed his powers.
Chapter 45
Why does Rousseau insist a dictatorship's term be very brief?
In such crises the State is soon lost or soon saved; once the need passes, the dictatorship becomes tyrannical or idle. At Rome dictators held office six months and most abdicated early; a longer term might tempt prolongation, as the decemvirs did when chosen for a year. The dictator has time only to meet the need, not to form further projects.
Chapter 45
What does Rousseau say the censorship can and cannot do for morality?
The censorship declares public opinion rather than arbitrating it; its decisions are void once the two part company. Rousseau argues it may preserve morality by preventing opinion from growing corrupt, but can never restore it: set up censors while laws are vigorous, since once laws lose vigour no legitimate power can retain force.
Chapter 45
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According to Rousseau, why did national divisions lead to polytheism?
Rousseau argues that because God was set over every political society, it followed that there were as many gods as peoples. Strangers and enemies could not recognize the same master, and armies in battle could not obey the same leader. National divisions thus produced polytheism, which in turn gave rise to theological and civil intolerance, which he says are by nature the same.
Chapter 46
Why does Rousseau say pagan times had no wars of religion?
Rousseau answers that each pagan State had its own cult as well as its own government, making no distinction between its gods and its laws. Political war was therefore also theological, and the provinces of the gods were fixed by national boundaries. The god of one people had no right over another, and the pagan gods were not jealous but shared the empire of the world.
Chapter 46
What did Jesus's spiritual kingdom change, according to Rousseau?
Rousseau argues that Jesus set up a spiritual kingdom which separated the theological from the political system, making the State no longer one and producing internal divisions that have never ceased to trouble Christian peoples. Pagans, to whom the idea of a kingdom of the other world never occurred, saw Christians as rebels feigning submission; this was the cause of the persecutions.
Chapter 46
What does Rousseau say about Hobbes and the two powers?
Rousseau says that of all Christian writers, Hobbes alone saw the evil and dared to propose reuniting the two heads of the eagle and restoring political unity, without which no State is rightly constituted. But Rousseau argues Hobbes should have seen that the masterful spirit of Christianity is incompatible with his system, and that priestly interest would always be stronger than the State's.
Chapter 46
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How does Rousseau classify religion in relation to society?
Rousseau divides religion into three kinds: the religion of man (purely internal worship of God and morality, with no temples or rites), the religion of the citizen (codified in one country with its own gods, dogmas, and laws, viewing outsiders as infidels), and a third mixed kind giving men two codes and two countries, exemplified by Roman Christianity, which he calls the religion of the priest.
Chapter 47
What are Rousseau's objections to civil religion?
Rousseau says civil religion is good because it unites divine worship with love of the laws and makes dying for one's country martyrdom. But it is bad because it is founded on lies and error, makes men credulous and superstitious, drowns true worship in ceremony, and when tyrannous and exclusive makes a people bloodthirsty and intolerant, placing them in a natural state of war with all others.
Chapter 47
Why does Rousseau argue a society of true Christians would not be a society of men?
The author argues that Gospel Christianity, being entirely spiritual and concerned with heavenly things, detaches citizens from earthly matters and so fails to bind them to the State. Such a society, though perfect, would lack a bond of union; a single hypocrite like Catiline or Cromwell could exploit their charity, and they would rather submit than resist, knowing better how to die than to conquer.
Chapter 47
How does Rousseau contrast Christian soldiers with those of Sparta or Rome?
Rousseau claims Christian citizens would march to battle and do their duty but have no passion for victory, knowing better how to die than to conquer, since they are indifferent to whether they win or lose. Facing a proud, passionate enemy like Sparta or Rome, they would be beaten or owe safety only to contempt. He cites the soldiers of Fabius, who swore to return victorious rather than conquer or die.
Chapter 47
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Why does Rousseau call a Christian republic a contradiction in terms?
The author argues Christianity preaches only servitude and dependence, and its spirit is so favourable to tyranny that it always profits by such a regime. True Christians, he claims, are made to be slaves and do not much mind, since this short life counts for too little in their eyes. He therefore treats "Christian republic" as mutually exclusive terms.
Chapter 48
How does Rousseau answer the claim that Christian troops are excellent?
He denies it and asks for an instance, saying he knows of no Christian troops. He addresses the Crusades by arguing the Crusaders were not Christians but the priests' soldiery, citizens of the Church fighting for a spiritual country made temporal. Since the Gospel sets up no national religion, he concludes a holy war is impossible among Christians.
Chapter 48
What does the social compact allow the Sovereign to require regarding subjects' opinions?
The right the social compact gives the Sovereign does not exceed the limits of public expediency. Subjects owe an account of their opinions only so far as those opinions matter to the community. It matters much that each citizen have a religion that makes him love his duty, but dogmas concern the State only as they bear on morality and duties to others.
Chapter 48
What is the civil profession of faith, and what are its dogmas?
It is a set of social sentiments the Sovereign fixes, not religious dogmas, without which a man cannot be a good citizen or faithful subject. The Sovereign can compel no belief but can banish unbelievers as anti-social, and punish by death anyone who publicly accepts the dogmas then behaves as if he disbelieves. The dogmas are few, simple, and exactly worded: a mighty, intelligent, beneficent Divinity with foresight and providence, the life to come, happiness of the just, punishment of the wicked, and the sanctity of the social contract and laws; the sole negative dogma is intolerance.
Chapter 48
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Why does Rousseau say clergy control over marriage threatens the prince's authority?
Rousseau argues that if clergy claim the sole right to permit marriage, they effectively decide who may marry and thus who counts as a legitimate citizen. Since the Church could refuse marriage based on doctrine, piety, or acceptance of a formula, it would control inheritances, offices, and citizens, leaving the prince only as many subjects as the clergy allow. The State, he says, could not subsist if composed entirely of bastards.
Chapter 49
How does Rousseau respond to the objection that abuses can be appealed or temporalities seized?
Rousseau dismisses this objection as sad. He argues that the clergy, with even a little sense rather than courage, will simply ignore appeals, summonses, decrees, and seizures and continue on its way. In the end, the clergy remains master. He adds that giving up a part is no great sacrifice when one is sure of securing all.
Chapter 49
What does Rousseau say he has accomplished and what does he leave aside in the Conclusion?
Rousseau states that he has laid down the true principles of political right and tried to give the State a basis of its own to rest on. He says he ought next to strengthen it through external relations: the law of nations, commerce, the right of war and conquest, public right, leagues, negotiations, and treaties. But he calls this a new subject far too vast for his narrow scope and says he should have kept to a more limited sphere.
Chapter 49
What question did the Academy of Dijon set for the Discourse that won the prize in 1750?
The Academy of Dijon proposed the question: whether the restoration of the arts and sciences has had a purifying effect upon morals. Rousseau's Discourse, which won the prize, addresses this question. In the preface he says he did not expect the honor, had enlarged the work after submitting it, but felt bound to publish it as it was when it received the prize, adding only a few notes and leaving two recognizable alterations.
Chapter 49
Section 504 cards
According to the chapter, what effect do arts and sciences have on liberty?
The author argues that arts, literature, and sciences, though less despotic than government, fling garlands of flowers over the chains weighing men down. They stifle the sense of original liberty for which men seem born, cause them to love their own slavery, and thereby make them what is called a civilised people.
Chapter 50
How does the chapter contrast ancient and modern morals?
The author argues that before art moulded behaviour, morals were rude but natural, and people could see through one another easily, which prevented many vices. Now a refined taste has reduced the art of pleasing to a system, producing servile and deceptive conformity, so that people no longer dare seem what they really are.
Chapter 50
What vices does the chapter say hide beneath modern politeness?
The author argues that beneath the uniform veil of politeness lie jealousy, suspicion, fear, coldness, reserve, hate, and fraud. Sincere friendship, real esteem, and perfect confidence are banished. People no longer brag of their own deserts but decry others', and hatred of other nations diminishes while patriotism dies with it.
Chapter 50
What examples does the chapter give linking progress in arts to loss of virtue?
The author argues the effect is certain and depravity actual: minds are corrupted in proportion as arts and sciences improve, and this pattern holds in all times and places. He cites Egypt, first school of mankind and mother of philosophy and fine arts, which was then conquered successively by Cambyses, the Greeks, the Romans, the Arabs, and finally the Turks.
Chapter 50
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What examples does Rousseau cite of learned nations that fell into vice and slavery?
Rousseau cites Greece, corrupted by letters and then subjected to the Macedonian yoke, and Rome, which began to degenerate after Ennius and Terence and became a theatre of vice after Ovid, Catullus and Martial. He also names Constantinople, a refuge of arts and sciences, as a place whose history is woven from debauchery, plots and murders.
Chapter 51
How does Rousseau use Sparta and Athens to argue against the sciences?
The author argues Sparta, famous for the happy ignorance of its inhabitants and the wisdom of its laws, drove out artists and the learned, while Athens became the seat of taste, orators and philosophers. He presents Sparta as eternal proof of the vanity of science, and claims its people left only the memory of heroic actions, which he values above Athenian marble.
Chapter 51
What judgment does Socrates pass on poets and artists in this chapter?
Rousseau quotes Socrates saying he considered the poets people whose talents impose on themselves and others, who give themselves out as wise but are not. Turning to the artists, Socrates found they shared the same misconception: because they excelled in their particular craft, they thought themselves wiser than everyone else, which spoiled their skill in his eyes.
Chapter 51
Which nations does Rousseau praise for virtue preserved from useless knowledge?
Rousseau contrasts learned nations with the early Persians, who taught virtue as the sciences are taught now; the Scythians, praised in eulogies; and the Germans, whose simplicity and virtue contrasted with an enlightened, opulent and voluptuous nation. He also names early Rome in its poverty and ignorance, and a rustic nation of his own times.
Chapter 51
Section 524 cards
What does Socrates claim is the basis of his superior wisdom?
Socrates says that none of us—sophists, poets, orators, artists, or himself—knows the true, the good, or the beautiful. The difference is that others think they know something, while he is at least in no doubt of his ignorance. His superiority, per the oracle, is simply being fully convinced that he is ignorant of what he does not know.
Chapter 52
What happened to Rome when culture and philosophy prevailed, according to the author?
The author argues that Cato inveighed against the subtle Greeks who corrupted virtue and courage, but culture prevailed. Rome filled with philosophers and orators, military discipline was neglected, agriculture was held in contempt, men formed sects and forgot their country. Epicurus, Zeno, and Arcesilaus replaced liberty and law, and it was said that since learned men appeared, honest men had been in eclipse.
Chapter 52
What does the author claim nature intended by hiding secrets and making knowledge difficult?
The author argues that nature would have preserved men from science, as a mother snatches a dangerous weapon from a child. All the secrets she hides are evils from which she protects them, and the very difficulty of acquiring knowledge is not the least of her bounty. Men are perverse, but would have been far worse if they had the misfortune to be born learned.
Chapter 52
How does the author use Fabricius's imagined speech to criticize Rome?
The author imagines Fabricius, revived, lamenting thatched roofs and rustic hearths replaced by fatal splendour, foreign effeminacy, statues, paintings, and buildings. He says Romans became slaves of the frivolous nations they subdued, governed by rhetoricians, and that spoils of Carthage went to a flute-player. He urges them to demolish amphitheatres, burn paintings, and prize conquering the world and making virtue its ruler.
Chapter 52
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According to Rousseau, what is the origin of the arts and sciences?
The author argues that the arts and sciences owe their birth to human vices rather than virtues: astronomy was born of superstition, eloquence of ambition, hatred, falsehood and flattery, geometry of avarice, physics of idle curiosity, and even moral philosophy of human pride. He concludes we should be less doubtful of their advantages if they had sprung from our virtues.
Chapter 53
What does Rousseau claim are the effects of the sciences on society?
The author argues the sciences are dangerous in their effects: being the effect of idleness, they generate idleness in turn, causing irreparable loss of time. He holds that to live without doing good is a great evil, and that every useless citizen should be regarded as a pernicious person. He also says luxury seldom comes without the arts and sciences.
Chapter 53
How does Rousseau respond to the claim that luxury contributes to the splendour of States?
The author argues this is a paradox contradicting the experience of all ages. He asks whether rectitude of morals is essential to the duration of empires and whether luxury is diametrically opposed to such rectitude. He contrasts ancient politicians who spoke of morals and virtue with modern ones who speak only of commerce and money, valuing men like droves of oxen.
Chapter 53
What does Rousseau say about the dangers of pursuing truth through philosophy?
The author argues many wrong paths and perils surround the investigation of the sciences, and that falsehood admits infinite combinations while truth has only one manner of being. He asks who sincerely desires to find truth, by what marks one may know it amid infinite opinions, and who would make right use of it even if found.
Chapter 53
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What examples does Rousseau give of poor peoples defeating rich empires?
Rousseau cites Cyrus's monarchy conquered by thirty thousand poor men, Scythians resisting powerful monarchs, Rome falling to peoples ignorant of riches, Franks conquering Gauls, Saxons conquering England, and the heir of Charles V broken by a few herring-fishers. He argues money buys everything except morals and citizens.
Chapter 54
According to Rousseau, how does luxury affect artists and taste?
The author argues that artists seeking applause lower their genius to the age, preferring mediocre works admired in their lifetime to sublime achievements admired after death. He claims Voltaire sacrificed masculine beauties to false delicacy, and that artists like Vanloo and Pigal must prostitute their talents or die in indigence.
Chapter 54
What does Rousseau claim about the effect of arts and sciences on military courage?
Rousseau argues that as conveniences increase and arts perfect, true courage flags and virtues disappear. He cites the Goths sparing libraries to keep enemies indolent, Charles VIII's easy conquest of Italy attributed to scholarly princes, and Romans losing military virtue as they cultivated fine arts. He claims modern warriors lack endurance for fatigue and weather.
Chapter 54
How did ancient Greek republics treat sedentary occupations, per Rousseau?
Rousseau says the ancient republics of Greece, with conspicuous wisdom, forbade citizens from pursuing inactive and sedentary occupations, which enervate and corrupt the body and diminish mental vigour. He asks how men overwhelmed by the smallest want could face hunger, thirst, fatigue, dangers, and death in war.
Chapter 54
Section 554 cards
What does Rousseau claim education teaches children instead of duty?
The author argues that an absurd system of education adorns wit and corrupts judgment: children learn foreign languages no one speaks, compose verses they barely understand, and use specious arguments without distinguishing truth from error. Meanwhile magnanimity, equity, temperance, humanity, and courage become words they do not know, and the name of country never reaches their ears.
Chapter 55
What does Rousseau say children should be taught?
Rousseau holds that children must be kept occupied, since idleness is their greatest danger, but insists the key question is what to teach them. His answer: teach them what they will practice as men, not what they ought to forget. This follows his claim that education should prepare for adult duty rather than mere ornament.
Chapter 55
What does Rousseau say public art galleries display to children?
The author argues that gardens adorned with statues and galleries with pictures do not show great defenders or benefactors of the country. Instead they display images of every perversion of heart and mind, carefully selected from ancient mythology and presented to children's early curiosity — so that representations of vicious actions appear before children can even read.
Chapter 55
What does Rousseau say is the most dangerous effect of studies?
Rousseau argues that studies produce the fatal inequality introduced by differences of talent and the cheapening of virtue. The question becomes whether a man is clever rather than honest, and whether a book is well-written rather than useful. Wit and ingenuity receive rewards and prizes, while virtue goes unhonoured, with a thousand prizes for fine discourses and none for good actions.
Chapter 55
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What does Rousseau claim printing has done to pernicious writings?
The author argues that printing has made pernicious writings immortal: the impious works of Leucippus and Diagoras perished with their authors because the ancient world lacked printing, but thanks to printing and its use, the pernicious reflections of Hobbes and Spinoza will last forever. He presents this as a shameful monument of the gospel's reign.
Chapter 56
Whom does Rousseau say should be allowed to study the arts and sciences?
The author argues that only those able to walk alone in the footsteps of Bacon, Descartes and Newton, and to outstrip them, should study the arts and sciences. These self-taught geniuses needed no masters; ordinary masters would only have cramped their intelligence. Those incapable of real progress should have been turned away at the entrance toward socially useful arts.
Chapter 56
What does Rousseau recommend for ordinary men who lack great talents?
The author advises ordinary men, not destined for glory, to remain in obscurity rather than covet unattainable reputation. He asks why we should build happiness on others' opinions when it can be found in our own hearts, and says virtue's principles are graven on every heart: we need only examine ourselves and listen to conscience when passions are silent.
Chapter 56
Section 574 cards
What does Rousseau claim about the relationship between knowledge and certainty?
The author argues that the less we know, the more we think we know. He cites the peripatetics, who doubted nothing, and Descartes, who constructed the universe with cubes and vortices, as examples. He asks whether any European physicist does not boldly explain the mysteries of electricity, which may forever remain the despair of real philosophers.
Chapter 57
What does Rousseau say about women's influence over men and their education?
The author argues that women's ascendancy over men is not an evil in itself but a gift of nature for the good of mankind, which if better directed could produce as much good as it now produces evil. He claims men will always be what women choose to make them, so women should be taught greatness of soul and virtue. He says Plato's reflections on this deserve fuller development.
Chapter 57
How were Persian heirs educated according to Plato as quoted by Montaigne?
The heir was committed at birth not to women but to eunuchs of high authority and virtue, who made his body beautiful and healthy. At seven he learned to ride and hunt; at fourteen he was placed with four men — the wisest, most just, most temperate and bravest — who taught religion, truth, mastery of passions and fearlessness. All taught him to be a good man, none to be learned.
Chapter 57
What does Rousseau predict about printing and how does he use the Caliph Omar story?
The author argues that given the frightful disorders printing has caused in Europe, sovereigns will later try to banish the art as eagerly as they once encouraged it, citing Sultan Achmet's press at Constantinople being destroyed. He notes men of letters mock Omar's reasoning about burning the Alexandrian library, but argues that if Gregory the Great had been in Omar's place with the Gospel, the library would still have burned.
Chapter 57
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What condition does Rousseau say makes Sovereign and people's interests identical?
The author argues that the interest of the Sovereign and that of the people must be single and identical so all movements of the machine tend to the general happiness. He adds this cannot happen unless the Sovereign and the people are one and the same person, concluding he would wish to be born under a democratic government, wisely tempered.
Chapter 58
Why does Rousseau reject living in a newly founded republic, however excellent its laws?
He fears the government may be framed differently than circumstances require, clashing with new citizens and risking overthrow almost at birth. He compares liberty to solid foods and generous wines that nourish robust constitutions but ruin weak ones. Peoples accustomed to masters cannot do without them; shaking off the yoke, they mistake license for freedom and hand themselves to seducers.
Chapter 58
According to Rousseau, who should hold the right to propose new laws, and why?
The author argues the right to propose new laws should belong exclusively to the magistrates, not to each man at pleasure, to prevent self-interested projects and dangerous innovations like those that ruined the Athenians. The people should be reserved in consenting, and promulgation solemn, so time allows conviction that great antiquity makes laws sacred and venerable.
Chapter 58
What kind of republic does Rousseau say he would have chosen for his country?
He would seek a peaceful, happy republic of antiquity lost in the night of time, experiencing only shocks that strengthened courage and patriotism, with citizens long accustomed to wise independence. It should be diverted from conquest, secured from being conquered, a free city between nations with no interest in attacking it, and one where legislation is vested in all citizens.
Chapter 58
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What does Rousseau say is the only prayer and precaution left for his republic?
He prays the republic may last forever as an example to other nations and for its citizens' happiness. The only precaution remaining is for citizens to make that happiness lasting through wisdom in enjoying it, constant union, obedience to the laws, and respect for their ministers. He says the future depends on themselves alone, since their ancestors already secured their happiness.
Chapter 59
What does Rousseau warn against as an accursed leaven that could ruin the State?
He urges citizens to destroy even the smallest trace of bitterness or distrust among themselves, calling it an accursed leaven that must sooner or later bring misfortune and ruin on the State. He also warns, as his last piece of advice, against sinister constructions and venomous rumours, whose secret motives are often more dangerous than the actions they target.
Chapter 59
How does Rousseau describe his father's education and station?
He recalls his father, a virtuous citizen who lived by the work of his hands and fed his soul on sublime truths, with works of Tacitus, Plutarch and Grotius lying among his tools. He says his father was in no way distinguished among fellow-citizens, being only such as they all are, and argues that whatever propensity one may have to vice, an education mingled with love is not easily entirely thrown away.
Chapter 59
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What does Rousseau praise Geneva's clergy for, unlike most divines?
Rousseau praises Geneva's ministers for practising what they preach: he says they combine holiness of manners, severity toward themselves and indulgence toward neighbours, and that Geneva alone shows a perfect union between clergy and men of letters. He builds hopes of the State's tranquillity on their wisdom, moderation and zeal, and notes their detestation of those who use pretended rights of God for their own interests.
Chapter 60
What role does Rousseau assign to the women of Geneva?
The author argues that women of Geneva should govern men through chaste influence confined to conjugal union, exerted for the State's glory and public happiness, as women commanded at Sparta. He asks them to perpetuate respect for law, harmony among citizens, reunite divided families through marriages, and correct young people's foreign-acquired extravagance through modest conversation and persuasive lessons.
Chapter 60
What does Rousseau say Geneva will lack compared with other places?
Rousseau admits Geneva will not shine with the lustre that dazzles most men's eyes, calling a puerile and fatal taste for it the mortal enemy of happiness and liberty. He tells dissolute youth and pretenders to taste to admire elsewhere palaces, equipages, sumptuous furniture and public entertainments, while Geneva boasts nothing but men—a sight he says has its own value.
Chapter 60
Why does Rousseau invoke the statue of Glaucus in the Preface?
Rousseau compares the human soul to the statue of Glaucus, so disfigured by time, seas and tempests that it looked more like a wild beast than a god. He argues the soul has been altered in society by countless causes—acquired truths and errors, bodily changes, clashing passions—so it is hardly recognisable, showing passion mistaking itself for reason instead of fixed principles.
Chapter 60
Section 614 cards
Why does Rousseau say studying man makes knowledge of him harder?
The author argues that every advance of the human species removes it further from its primitive state, so the more discoveries we make, the more we deprive ourselves of the means of making the most important discovery of all. Thus, in one sense, it is by our very study of man that knowledge of him is put out of our power.
Chapter 61
What two principles prior to reason does Rousseau find in the human soul?
Rousseau claims to perceive two principles prior to reason: one deeply interesting us in our own welfare and preservation, and the other a natural repugnance at seeing any other sensible being, especially our own species, suffer pain or death. From their combination, without introducing sociability, he derives all rules of natural right.
Chapter 61
What problem does Rousseau pose about discovering the natural man?
Rousseau asks what experiments would have to be made to discover the natural man, and how those experiments are to be made in a state of society. He declines to solve it, declaring that our greatest philosophers would not be too good to direct such experiments and our most powerful sovereigns to make them — a combination he has little reason to expect.
Chapter 61
How do modern writers define natural law, according to Rousseau?
Rousseau says modern writers begin by inquiring what rules would be expedient for men to agree on for their common interest, then call that collection natural law, with no proof beyond the good that would result from universal practice. He calls this a simple way of making definitions and of explaining the nature of things by almost arbitrary conveniences.
Chapter 61
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For Rousseau, why are animals owed a duty under natural law?
Rousseau argues animals lack intelligence and liberty, so they cannot recognize natural law. However, because they are sentient and share in some measure our nature, they ought to partake of natural rights. He concludes we are bound to avoid injury less because beings are rational than because they are sentient, so beasts deserve at least not to be wantonly ill-treated.
Chapter 62
What two kinds of inequality does Rousseau distinguish among humans?
Rousseau conceives two kinds. Natural or physical inequality is established by nature and consists in differences of age, health, bodily strength, and qualities of mind or soul. Moral or political inequality depends on convention, is established or authorized by consent of men, and consists of privileges some enjoy to the prejudice of others, such as being richer, more honored, more powerful, or able to exact obedience.
Chapter 62
What error does Rousseau attribute to philosophers studying the state of nature?
Rousseau claims philosophers felt the need to return to the state of nature but none arrived there. They ascribed to natural man ideas like justice, property, and authority that are only acquired in society, constantly dwelling on wants, avidity, oppression, desires, and pride. In speaking of the savage, they described the social man. He also notes Scripture implies the first man was not in such a state.
Chapter 62
What does Rousseau say is the subject of his discourse on inequality?
Rousseau states his subject is to mark, in the progress of things, the moment when right took the place of violence and nature became subject to law. He aims to explain by what sequence of miracles the strong came to submit to serve the weak, and how peoples came to purchase imaginary repose at the expense of real felicity.
Chapter 62
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How does Rousseau frame his account of the state of nature methodologically?
Rousseau sets facts aside and says his investigations are not historical truths but conditional and hypothetical reasonings, meant to explain the nature of things rather than establish actual origins, like physicists' hypotheses about the world's formation. He notes religion commands belief that God took men out of the state of nature after creation, but does not forbid conjectures about what might have become of humans left to themselves.
Chapter 63
What does Rousseau claim about the savage man's body versus civilized man's tools?
Rousseau argues the savage's body is the only instrument he knows, so he uses it for purposes civilized people cannot manage for want of practice; industry deprives us of the force and agility necessity forces him to acquire. He asks whether an axe, sling, ladder, or horse would match naked-arm strength, stone velocity, climbing nimbleness, or speed of foot, and says naked and unarmed the savage wins.
Chapter 63
How does Rousseau describe the physical constitution of early humans in the state of nature?
Accustomed from infancy to harsh weather and seasons, inured to fatigue, and forced naked and unarmed to defend themselves or flee, men would acquire a robust and almost unalterable constitution. Children inherit their parents' excellent constitution and fortify it through the same exercises. Rousseau compares nature to Sparta, strengthening the well-formed and destroying the rest, unlike modern states that burden parents and so kill children indiscriminately before birth.
Chapter 63
What does Rousseau say he reads human history in, and what does he ask the reader to feel?
Rousseau addresses man of whatever country or opinion, saying he has read his history not in books by lying fellow-creatures but in nature, which never lies; whatever comes from her is true unless he has involuntarily added something of his own. He writes the life of the species, and says the reader's wish to go back should be a panegyric on the first ancestors, a criticism of contemporaries, and a terror to future unfortunates.
Chapter 63
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How does Rousseau respond to Hobbes and Cumberland on man's natural fearfulness?
Rousseau rejects both extremes. He says fear of the unknown may be real, but such novelties rarely occur in the uniform state of nature. Savage man, living among animals, soon compares his strength with theirs and, finding he surpasses them in adroitness, learns to fear them no longer; wild beasts in turn learn not to attack him.
Chapter 64
Why does Rousseau think wild beasts seldom make war on man in nature?
He argues no animal naturally wars on man except in self-defence or excessive hunger, and none shows the violent antipathies suggesting one species is meant as another's food. Man is swift, can refuge in trees, and can fight or flee at will. He cites Correal's report that armed Caraibs of Venezuela live in security without being devoured.
Chapter 64
What does Rousseau say about sickness and medicine in the state of nature?
He asks whether solid observations show shorter mean lifespans where medicine is most neglected, and suggests we bring on more diseases than medicine cures. He blames inequality, idleness, overwork, rich foods, poor food, late nights and passions, arguing most ills are self-made. He ventures that a thinking man is a depraved animal.
Chapter 64
How does Rousseau treat infancy and old age as natural infirmities?
He calls infancy, old age and illness proofs of weakness. A mother carrying her child can nurse it more easily than animals that must travel to feed young; if she dies the infant is endangered, but that risk is common to other species, and longer infancy is offset by longer life. In old age, needs diminish with activity, and the savage dies almost unnoticed.
Chapter 64
Section 654 cards
How does Rousseau compare domesticated animals to wild ones?
Rousseau argues that animals left to nature—horse, cat, bull, even ass—are generally larger, more robust, and more vigorous in the wild than when bred in the stall. Domestication makes them lose half these advantages, and he claims our care to feed and treat them well only serves to deprave them. He extends this to man: becoming sociable and a slave makes him weak, timid, and servile.
Chapter 65
What does Rousseau say about the savage's senses compared to civilized man's?
Rousseau argues the savage's senses are divided: touch and taste remain coarse because those organs are perfected only by softness and sensuality, while sight, hearing, and smell become exceedingly fine and subtle. He cites travellers' reports that Hottentots see ships at sea as far as the Dutch with telescopes, and that American savages track Spaniards by smell as well as the best dogs.
Chapter 65
What distinguishes man from brute according to Rousseau?
Rousseau argues it is not understanding that constitutes the specific difference, since every animal has ideas and combines them to a degree. Rather, man is a free agent who chooses and refuses by free-will, while the brute acts by instinct and cannot deviate from nature's rule even when deviation would help it. Rousseau holds that consciousness of this liberty displays the spirituality of the soul, inexplicable by mechanism.
Chapter 65
What is perfectibility and what does Rousseau say it causes?
Rousseau identifies the faculty of self-improvement as the specific quality distinguishing men from brutes: it gradually develops all our other faculties, whereas a brute is all it will ever be within months and its species unchanged after a thousand years. The author argues this almost unlimited faculty is the source of all human misfortunes, drawing man from peaceful original state and making him a tyrant over himself and nature.
Chapter 65
Section 664 cards
According to Rousseau, what are the first operations of the savage man's soul?
Rousseau argues that savage man begins with purely animal functions: seeing and feeling are his first condition, shared with all animals. To will and not to will, to desire and to fear, are the first and almost only operations of his soul until new circumstances develop his faculties. His desires never exceed his physical wants: food, a female, and sleep.
Chapter 66
What role do the passions play in improving human reason, per Rousseau?
Rousseau argues that the understanding is greatly indebted to the passions, and the passions to the understanding. It is by the activity of the passions that reason is improved, since we desire knowledge only because we wish to enjoy. A person with neither fears nor desires would never bother to reason, so passions originate in wants and progress with knowledge.
Chapter 66
Why does Rousseau claim knowledge of death separates humans from animals?
Rousseau argues that no animal can know what it is to die. The knowledge of death and its terrors is one of the first acquisitions man makes in departing from the animal state. Savage man, lacking intelligence, fears only pain and hunger, not death, since his desires never exceed his physical wants and he has no idea of the future.
Chapter 66
Why does Rousseau argue agriculture could only arise after the state of nature ended?
Rousseau argues agriculture requires labour, foresight, and dependence on others, so it could only be practised in a society already begun. No one would cultivate a field that the first comer, man or beast, might strip of its crop. People would only cultivate the earth once it was regularly parcelled out among them, abolishing the state of nature.
Chapter 66
Section 674 cards
Why does Rousseau reject the parent-child explanation for the origin of language?
The author argues it imports social-state ideas into the state of nature: primitive men had no houses or property, lived nomadically, and the child, having more wants to explain, would have borne the task of invention. Each child's language would be his own device, making languages equal in number to speakers, with roving life preventing any idiom from becoming constant.
Chapter 67
What circular difficulty does Rousseau raise about speech and thought?
He argues that if men need speech to learn to think, they must have needed the art of thinking even more to invent speaking. Even granting that articulate sounds became conventional interpreters of ideas, it remains unclear what could interpret those ideas answering to no sensible objects, which gesture or voice cannot indicate.
Chapter 67
According to Rousseau, what was the first language and why was it limited?
The first language was the simple cry of nature, the most universal and vivid, the only language man needed before persuading assembled multitudes. But it was excited only by instinct on urgent occasions—imploring aid in danger or relief in suffering—so it was of little use in ordinary life, where more moderate feelings prevail.
Chapter 67
How did early words and grammar differ from those of formed languages?
Rousseau supposes early words had far more extensive signification, each single word carrying the sense of a whole proposition before discourse was divided into parts. Distinguishing subject and attribute, noun and verb, was no common effort of genius; substantives were proper names, the present infinitive the only tense, and adjectives, being abstractions, developed with great difficulty.
Chapter 67
Section 684 cards
Why must early vocabularies have contained many proper names rather than general terms?
Rousseau argues primitive people named each object individually because they could not distinguish genus or species; each thing appeared isolated in their minds. Since general ideas require words and propositions, and defining distinguishing properties demands developed natural history and metaphysics, the first substantives could only be proper names. The narrower their knowledge, the more copious their dictionary had to be.
Chapter 68
How does Rousseau use the monkey and the triangle to argue animals lack general ideas?
The monkey moving between nuts has only memory and sensation, not a general idea of that fruit compared against an archetype. Similarly, any triangle you imagine has particular lines and colors; only its definition gives a true idea. Rousseau concludes general ideas are purely intellectual, formed only with the help of words and propositions, which is why animals cannot acquire them.
Chapter 68
What does Rousseau claim about misery in the state of nature versus civil society?
The author argues that calling natural man miserable is an accusation against nature, not the being. Misery means painful privation or suffering of body or soul; a free man with an easy heart and healthy body suffers no such misery. He notes people in civil society lament existence and even kill themselves, while no savage at liberty was known to complain of life or do so.
Chapter 68
Why does Rousseau call the origin of language almost demonstrably impossible by human means alone?
He lists what had to be discovered after physical substantives: numbers, abstract terms, verb tenses including aorists, particles, syntax, and the logic of speech. These require much time and knowledge. He is aghast at the growing difficulties and leaves open which came first, society or language, inferring that nature did little to make mankind sociable.
Chapter 68
Section 692 cards
What natural virtue does Rousseau attribute to man, and what role does it play?
Rousseau holds that compassion is the only natural virtue, an innate repugnance at seeing a fellow-creature suffer that moderates egoism and the desire for self-preservation before reflection arises. He calls it universal, useful, and prior to all reflection, and notes animals show signs of it. He argues generosity, clemency, humanity, benevolence, and friendship are all compassion applied to particular objects.
Chapter 69
How does Rousseau contrast compassion in savage and civilized man?
Rousseau argues compassion is stronger the more the observer identifies with the sufferer, and such identification was more perfect in the state of nature than in reason. Reason engenders self-respect and turns man back upon himself; philosophy isolates him and lets him say 'Perish if you will, I am secure.' Uncivilized man, lacking reason, obeys the first promptings of humanity, while the wise man prudently withdraws.
Chapter 69
Section 704 cards
According to Rousseau, what role does compassion play in the state of nature?
The author argues compassion is a natural feeling that moderates each person's self-love and helps preserve the whole species. In the state of nature it supplies the place of laws, morals and virtues, and prevents a strong savage from robbing a weak child or feeble old man of hard-won sustenance when he could provide for himself otherwise.
Chapter 70
How does Rousseau distinguish the physical and moral parts of love?
The physical part is the general desire urging the sexes to union. The moral part fixes that desire exclusively on one particular object, or gives it greater energy toward that object. The author argues the moral part is a factitious feeling born of social usage, enhanced by women to establish their empire, and nearly non-existent for a savage lacking ideas of beauty and merit.
Chapter 70
Why does Rousseau argue love causes fewer disputes in the state of nature?
The author argues savages are confined to the physical in love, ignorant of the refinements that whet appetite while increasing difficulty. Imagination, which causes ravages in society, never speaks to them; they await nature's impulses, satisfy want, and lose desire. He cites the peaceable, least-jealous Caribbeans in a hot climate as contrary evidence to the view that savages constantly cut throats.
Chapter 70
Why does Rousseau reject drawing conclusions about humans from animal mating battles?
He says species where nature established different power relations between the sexes must be excluded, so fighting cocks prove nothing about men. In better-proportioned species, battles stem from scarcity of females or intervals of female refusal, and some species have a universal seasonal passion. Neither applies to humans, whose females usually outnumber males and lack stated seasons of passion.
Chapter 70
Section 714 cards
In the state of nature, why could the strong not enslave the weak?
The author argues servitude requires mutual dependence and reciprocal needs, which do not exist in the state of nature. Without possessions or ties, a man driven from one place simply moves elsewhere, and an idle master would have to guard a captive constantly. Since no one needs others' help, each is his own master and the law of the strongest has no effect.
Chapter 71
What does the author say about the origin of differences among men?
The author argues many differences are effects of habit and different social methods of life, not original nature. Robust or delicate constitutions often reflect hardy or effeminate education, and education increases differences among the cultured in proportion to their culture, like the gap between a giant and a dwarf widening with each step. Social institutions greatly increase natural inequality.
Chapter 71
Why does the author dwell at length on the primitive state?
He says he had many ancient errors and inveterate prejudices to eradicate, so he dug down to their root. By presenting a true picture of the state of nature, he aims to show how far even the natural inequalities of mankind are from having the reality and influence modern writers suppose. He admits his account rests on conjectures.
Chapter 71
What does the author claim about man's faculties developing in the state of nature?
The author argues human perfectibility, the social virtues, and other faculties natural man potentially possessed could never develop of themselves. They require the fortuitous concurrence of many foreign causes that might never arise, without which man would remain forever in his primitive condition. He then traces the accidents that improved understanding while depraving the species.
Chapter 71
Section 724 cards
In the state of nature, how does Rousseau distinguish egoism from self-respect?
The author argues self-respect is a natural feeling leading every animal to self-preservation, guided by reason and modified by compassion, creating humanity and virtue. Egoism is a purely relative, factitious feeling arising in society that makes each person value himself above others, causes mutual damage, and is the real source of the "sense of honour." In the true state of nature, egoism did not exist.
Chapter 72
Why could natural man feel neither hatred nor desire for revenge?
The author argues these passions spring only from a sense of injury, and injury consists in contempt or the intention to hurt, not the harm done. Men who neither valued nor compared themselves could do violence when it suited them without feeling injured. Regarding fellows almost as animals of different species, they saw violence as mere natural occurrences, feeling only joy or grief at success or failure.
Chapter 72
What does Rousseau call the real founder of civil society, and what warning follows?
The author argues the first man who enclosed a piece of ground, said "This is mine," and found people simple enough to believe him was the real founder of civil society. He adds that pulling up the stakes or filling the ditch and warning others not to listen to this impostor could have saved mankind from many crimes, wars, murders, and misfortunes.
Chapter 72
What did early humans learn about fire, and what did they do with it?
The chapter states that lightning, a volcano, or some lucky chance acquainted humans with fire as a new resource against the rigours of winter. They next learned how to preserve this element, then how to reproduce it, and finally how to prepare with it the flesh of animals which before they had eaten raw.
Chapter 72
Section 734 cards
What first prompted humans to feel pride and seek pre-eminence, per Rousseau?
Rousseau argues that new intelligence made humans sensible of their superiority over other animals. They began to ensnare animals and play tricks on them, becoming master of some and scourge of others. The first time a human looked into himself, he felt the first emotion of pride, and by viewing his species as the highest order, he prepared the way for assuming pre-eminence as an individual.
Chapter 73
How did early humans form associations, and what limited them?
Taught by experience that love of well-being is the sole motive of human actions, humans joined in herds or loose associations only when mutual interest justified relying on others. Such groups laid no restraint on members and lasted only as long as the transitory occasion that formed them. When interests conflicted, each sought private advantage by open force if strong, or by cunning if weak.
Chapter 73
What does the deer-and-hare example illustrate about early cooperation?
Rousseau argues early humans had gross ideas of mutual undertakings only as far as present interest concerned, being strangers to foresight and hardly thinking of the morrow. If a deer was to be taken, each saw he must keep his post to succeed. But if a hare came within reach, he pursued it without scruple, caring little that his companions missed theirs.
Chapter 73
What was the first revolution, and what did it introduce?
Rousseau describes the building of huts from branches plastered with mud as the epoch of a first revolution, which established and distinguished families and introduced a kind of property, itself the source of a thousand quarrels and conflicts. The weak found it easier and safer to imitate the strong who built huts than to dislodge them, and none had inducement to seize a neighbour's hut since it was of no use without a desperate battle.
Chapter 73
Section 744 cards
According to Rousseau, what first gave rise to inequality and vice?
The author argues that when people began assembling, singing, and dancing together, each began to consider others and wish to be considered. Public esteem acquired value: whoever sang or danced best, was handsomest, strongest, or most eloquent gained most consideration. From these first distinctions arose vanity and contempt on one side, shame and envy on the other, producing combinations fatal to innocence and happiness.
Chapter 74
How does Rousseau explain the cruelty of savage nations?
The author argues that savage nations known to him have already left the state of nature. Because men began to value one another, contempt became an affront more insupportable than the injury itself, and each man avenged contempt in proportion to his self-opinion, making revenge terrible. He insists this is not natural cruelty: primitive man is gentle, restrained by natural compassion, and, citing Locke, no injury exists where there is no property.
Chapter 74
Why does Rousseau call this middle period the happiest epoch?
The author argues this period of expansion of human faculties kept a just mean between the indolence of the primitive state and the petulant activity of egoism, making it the happiest and most stable epoch, least subject to revolutions. Men were free, healthy, honest, and happy while they undertook only what one person could accomplish. He claims humanity departed from it only through some fatal accident that, for the public good, should never have happened.
Chapter 74
What two arts does Rousseau say produced the great revolution?
The author argues metallurgy and agriculture produced the great revolution. The poets say gold and silver, but for philosophers it was iron and corn that first civilised men and ruined humanity. American savages knew neither and remained savage; nations practising only one stayed barbarous. He suggests Europe is more constantly and highly civilised partly because it is most abundant in iron and most fertile in corn.
Chapter 74
Section 751 cards
How does Rousseau think humans first discovered and used iron?
Rousseau argues it is hard to conjecture, since people would not dig ore without knowing the result, and mines lie in barren places, suggesting nature hid the secret. He concludes only a volcano ejecting molten metal could have suggested imitation, requiring uncommon courage and foresight beyond early humans.
Chapter 75
Section 764 cards
Before signs represented riches, what did wealth consist of, according to Rousseau?
Rousseau argues that before the invention of signs to represent riches, wealth could hardly consist in anything but lands and cattle, the only real possessions men can have. Once inheritances multiplied and covered all the land, one man could aggrandise himself only at the expense of another, and the poor were forced to receive subsistence from the rich or steal it.
Chapter 76
What did the rich man's 'profoundest plan' consist of?
Rousseau argues the rich man, unable to justify his titles or defend himself against bandits, conceived the profoundest plan: to employ in his favour the forces of those who attacked him, make allies of his adversaries, inspire them with different maxims, and give them institutions as favourable to himself as the law of nature was unfavourable. He proposed rules of justice and peace to guard the weak and secure property.
Chapter 76
How does Rousseau describe the origin of society and law?
Rousseau argues society and law bound new fetters on the poor and gave new powers to the rich; they irretrievably destroyed natural liberty, eternally fixed the law of property and inequality, converted clever usurpation into unalterable right, and subjected all mankind to perpetual labour, slavery and wretchedness for the advantage of a few ambitious individuals.
Chapter 76
Why did people accept the proposed political institutions so readily?
Rousseau argues far fewer words would have sufficed to impose on men so barbarous and easily seduced, especially as they had too many disputes to do without arbitrators and too much ambition and avarice to go long without masters. All ran headlong to their chains in hopes of securing their liberty, having wit enough to see the advantages of institutions but not experience enough to foresee the dangers.
Chapter 76
Section 774 cards
According to Rousseau, what first effects followed the division of mankind into communities?
The author argues that bodies politic, remaining in a state of nature among themselves, suffered worse inconveniences than individuals had: national wars, battles, murders, and reprisals that shock nature and outrage reason. He adds that horrible prejudices classed the honour of shedding human blood among the virtues, and that men massacred thousands without knowing why.
Chapter 77
Why does Rousseau reject conquest and association of the weak as origins of political society?
He argues the right of conquest is no right at all, so it cannot found a society; victor and vanquished remain in a state of war unless the vanquished freely choose the victor as chief. He also says strong and weak really mean rich and poor before laws, and that the poor would absurdly surrender their only good, freedom, for nothing.
Chapter 77
Why were chiefs and magistrates established only after the first confederacy, according to the chapter?
Rousseau argues early society was only general conventions, with the whole body as security and witness. Experience showed such a constitution was weak and easily infringed, since the public alone judged faults and laws were eluded. Disorders multiplied until it became necessary to entrust public authority to private persons and enforcement to a magistrate.
Chapter 77
What does Rousseau argue about the natural disposition of mankind toward slavery?
The author argues people set up chiefs to protect their liberty, not enslave them, citing Pliny to Trajan. He contends we cannot judge man's nature by the servility of enslaved nations, since liberty, like innocence and virtue, is valued only by those who possess it; free peoples' efforts to escape oppression and caged animals' rage show the innate impatience of captivity.
Chapter 77
Section 784 cards
According to Rousseau, how long does paternal authority over a child last by nature?
The author argues that by the law of nature a father is the child's master only as long as his help is necessary. After that, father and son are equal: the son is perfectly independent and owes the father only respect, not obedience. Gratitude is a duty owed but not a right that can be exacted.
Chapter 78
How does Rousseau answer Puffendorf's claim that liberty can be transferred like property?
Rousseau calls the argument weak. Property I alienate becomes foreign to me, but my liberty concerns me closely, since I could be compelled to commit crimes as an instrument of crime. Property is only a human convention; life and liberty are essential gifts of nature, and no temporal good can compensate for renouncing them.
Chapter 78
What does Rousseau conclude about the origin of government and arbitrary power?
He regards it as certain that government did not begin with arbitrary power. Arbitrary power is rather the depravation and extreme term of government, bringing it back to the law of the strongest, which government was originally designed to remedy. Being illegitimate in itself, such power could not serve as a basis for society's laws or the inequality they instituted.
Chapter 78
How does Rousseau describe the fundamental contract between people and their chiefs?
He adopts the common opinion that establishing the political body is a real contract between the people and the chiefs they choose. Both parties bind themselves to observe the laws expressed therein. The people concentrate their wills into fundamental laws obligatory on all members, including articles regulating the choice and power of magistrates, who must prefer the public interest to their own.
Chapter 78
Section 794 cards
Why does Rousseau argue the social contract cannot be irrevocable?
Rousseau argues that without a superior power to enforce fidelity, the contracting parties become sole judges in their own cause. Each may renounce the contract when the other violates its terms or when it no longer suits his convenience. He says the right of abdication may rest on this principle, and that the people, who suffer for their chief's faults, have a stronger right to renounce dependence than the magistrate has to renounce authority.
Chapter 79
What three stages does Rousseau trace in the progress of inequality?
Rousseau identifies three terms: first, the establishment of laws and the right of property, authorizing the condition of rich and poor; second, the institution of magistracy, authorizing powerful and weak; third, the conversion of legitimate into arbitrary power, producing master and slave. This last is the final degree of inequality, where things remain until government is dissolved by new revolutions or restored to legitimacy.
Chapter 79
According to Rousseau, what determined whether a state became monarchy, aristocracy, or democracy?
Rousseau says the forms of government owe their origin to differing degrees of inequality among individuals at the time of institution. If one man was pre-eminent in power, virtue, riches, or influence, he became sole magistrate and the state was monarchy. If several nearly equal stood above the rest, they were elected jointly, forming aristocracy. Where people had deviated less from the state of nature, democracy formed.
Chapter 79
Why does Rousseau say religion was expedient for public tranquillity?
Rousseau argues that the quarrels and disorders arising from the privilege of renouncing authority show human governments needed a firmer basis than reason alone. He says it was expedient for public tranquillity that the divine will invest sovereign authority with a sacred, inviolable character, depriving subjects of the fatal right of disposing of it. He claims religion has saved more blood than fanaticism has spilt.
Chapter 79
Section 804 cards
According to Rousseau, what are the four principal kinds of inequality among men in society?
Rousseau identifies riches, nobility or rank, power, and personal merit as the principal distinctions by which men estimate each other in society. He argues that personal qualities originate all the others, but wealth ultimately reduces them all, since riches are easiest to communicate and are used to purchase every other distinction.
Chapter 80
What does Rousseau call the final term of inequality, and what does it resemble?
Rousseau calls despotism the last term of inequality, the extreme point that closes the circle and returns to the starting point. Under despotism all private persons return to first equality because they are nothing, and there is a complete return to the law of the strongest — a new state of nature born of excessive corruption, not original purity.
Chapter 80
How does Rousseau characterize the right to overthrow a despot?
Rousseau argues that since the despot is master only while he remains strongest, the contract of government is dissolved by despotism. A popular insurrection ending in the death or deposition of a Sultan is as lawful as the acts by which he disposed of his subjects' lives and fortunes, since force alone maintained him and force alone overthrows him.
Chapter 80
What does Rousseau claim is the source of both virtues and vices, science and errors?
The author argues that the universal desire for reputation, honours, and advancement inflames us all and drives comparison of our faculties. This unremitting rage to distinguish ourselves creates competition and rivalry, and to it we owe the best and worst things we possess — our virtues and vices, our science and errors, our conquerors and philosophers.
Chapter 80
Section 813 cards
According to the chapter, what distinguishes the savage from civilized man at heart?
The author argues the savage lives within himself, desiring only peace, liberty, and freedom from labour, while social man lives constantly outside himself, knowing how to live only in the opinion of others and receiving consciousness of his existence from their judgment. Their inclinations differ so much that what makes one supremely happy would reduce the other to despair.
Chapter 81
What does the chapter say all prevailing inequality owes its strength and growth to?
The author concludes that hardly any inequality exists in the state of nature; all inequality now prevailing owes its strength and growth to the development of our faculties and the advance of the human mind, becoming permanent and legitimate through the establishment of property and laws. Moral inequality authorized by positive right clashes with natural right when not proportionate to physical inequality.
Chapter 81
Why does the chapter say Cato died with Rome and liberty?
The author argues Cato did not fit the age in which he lived; the greatest of men served only to astonish a world he would certainly have ruled had he lived five hundred years sooner. Similarly, Diogenes could not find a man because he sought among his contemporaries a man of an earlier period.
Chapter 81
Section 824 cards
Why does Rousseau claim civilized life yields more pain than the state of nature?
The author argues that a famous writer's tally of pains over pleasures drew only on man in civilization. Had he considered the state of nature, he would have found humans subject to few evils not of their own making. Rousseau says it cost us much trouble to make ourselves wretched, and deplores the disproportion between mankind's vast works and the real advantages gained.
Chapter 82
What does Rousseau say about natural goodness versus actual wickedness?
Rousseau concedes that continual experience proves men are actually wicked, but argues he has shown man is naturally good. He asks what depraved him except changes in his constitution, his advances, and his acquired knowledge. He claims society necessarily leads men to hate each other as interests clash, and to perform apparent services while doing real mischief.
Chapter 82
How does Rousseau contrast savage man and civilized man over a meal?
Savage man, having dined, is at peace with all nature. If a dispute over a meal arises, he rarely fights without weighing the difficulty of beating his opponent against finding food elsewhere; pride plays no part, so it ends in a few blows, the victor eats, the loser seeks provisions, and peace returns. Civilized man, by contrast, moves from necessities to superfluities, delicacies, wealth, subjects, and slaves, never at rest.
Chapter 82
What does Rousseau say about gaining from others' misfortunes in society?
The author argues that in society each person's interest dictates rules opposite to public reason, and every man profits from his neighbor's misfortune. He cites greedy heirs wishing a comfortable man's death, merchants glad of a lost ship, and the great fire of London enriching thousands. He notes Montaigne censured Demades for punishing a workman who profited from coffins, and says Montaigne's reason confirms his point.
Chapter 82
Section 834 cards
What does Rousseau claim about commissariat and hospital contractors in armies?
The author argues that frauds by contractors for commissariat and hospitals are monstrous and poorly concealed, crippling the finest armies quickly. He wishes knowledgeable people would publicize these details, claiming such frauds cause greater destruction among soldiers than enemy swords do.
Chapter 83
How does Rousseau link property and society to executions for crimes?
The author argues that property and society bring assassinations, poisonings, and highway robberies, plus the punishments for them. Punishing a murderer may cost two or more lives, which, though meant to prevent greater evils, doubles the loss to the human race.
Chapter 83
What does Rousseau say about fathers constraining their children's talents?
The author argues paternal rights often offend against humanity: talents are thrown away and inclinations forced by unwise paternal constraint. Men suited to one estate die dishonoured in another they had no taste for, and unequal marriages arranged for money dishonour chaste wives and punish ill-assorted spouses.
Chapter 83
What does Rousseau claim about luxury and the profitability of useful arts?
The author argues luxury depopulates the State and is worse than the disease it claims to cure. From agriculture's nature, the most necessary produce is least lucrative; arts are more lucrative as they are less useful, so the most useful becomes most neglected, and the husbandman abandons fields for towns.
Chapter 83
Section 843 cards
Why does Rousseau reject the analogy between family and State government?
Rousseau argues they differ too much in extent to share rules: a father sees everything himself, while a ruler sees only through others' eyes. Paternal authority rests on nature and physical superiority; political authority, among naturally equal members, rests only on conventions and laws. In the family, property belongs to the father; in the State, government exists to secure property that is antecedent to it.
Chapter 84
What four reasons does Rousseau give for the father's command in the family?
Rousseau gives four reasons: authority should be single, with one preponderant voice to decide; women's periodic inactivity is sufficient reason to exclude them from supreme authority; the husband must superintend his wife's conduct to be assured the children he acknowledges are his; and children owe obedience first from necessity, then gratitude, while servants serve in exchange for provision and may break the bargain.
Chapter 84
What does Rousseau advise those who cannot recover primitive innocence?
Rousseau tells those who think man destined only for this little life, and who can resign their fatal acquisitions and corrupt hearts, to retire to the woods and regain primitive innocence, since it depends on themselves. For men like him, whose passions destroyed original simplicity, he instead recommends respecting community bonds, loving fellow-citizens, obeying laws and magistrates, and honoring wise princes — while still contemning constitutions needing many splendid characters.
Chapter 84
Section 854 cards
How does Rousseau distinguish public economy from sovereignty?
Rousseau distinguishes public economy, which he calls government, from supreme authority, which he calls Sovereignty. Sovereignty holds the right of legislation and in certain cases binds the body of the nation itself. Public economy holds only the right of execution and binds only individuals. He asks readers to keep this distinction in mind throughout his discussion.
Chapter 85
Why does Rousseau say nature is a false guide for a magistrate?
Rousseau argues the voice of nature counsels a father well but misleads a magistrate, since natural inclinations themselves corrupt the magistrate. A father need only guard against depravity and consult his heart; the magistrate becomes a traitor the moment he listens to his own. The magistrate must follow public reason, which is the law, and even suspect his own reason.
Chapter 85
What distinction does Rousseau draw between citizens and foreigners regarding justice?
Rousseau holds that the general will, though a sure rule of justice toward a state's own members, may be defective toward foreigners. In relation to other states it becomes a particular and individual will, whose rule is the law of nature. He adds that in this case the great city of the world becomes the body politic, whose general will is always the law of nature.
Chapter 85
What does Rousseau mean by saying particular societies have two relations of will?
Rousseau says every political society contains smaller societies with their own interests and rules. The will of each particular society is general for its own members but particular for the great society, so it may be right toward the first and wrong toward the second. Thus one may be a devout priest, brave soldier, or zealous senator and yet a bad citizen.
Chapter 85
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According to Rousseau, when does a democracy's council condemn the innocent?
Rousseau argues this never happens unless the people is seduced by private interests, which the credit or eloquence of some clever persons substitutes for those of the State. In that case the general will is one thing and the result of public deliberation another. He cites Athens as not truly a democracy but a tyrannical aristocracy governed by philosophers and orators.
Chapter 86
How does Rousseau explain honest people who are scoundrels in other respects?
He argues that a secret division or tacit confederacy for particular ends can set aside the assembly's natural disposition, so society is divided into smaller bodies whose members acquire a general will that is just toward those bodies but unjust toward the whole. Thus even robbers pay respect to the shadow of public faith in their caves.
Chapter 86
What two kinds of public economy does Rousseau distinguish?
Rousseau distinguishes popular economy, where unity of interest and will reigns between people and rulers, from tyrannical economy, where government and people have different interests and opposing wills. He says the latter's rules are written in history and Macchiavelli's satires, while the former's are found only in philosophers who proclaim the rights of humanity.
Chapter 86
What is the first rule of legitimate or popular government for Rousseau?
The first and most important rule is to follow the general will in everything. But to follow it one must know it and distinguish it from the particular will, beginning with one's own — a distinction Rousseau calls always very difficult, requiring the most sublime virtue for illumination. He also notes that to will, one must be free.
Chapter 86
Section 874 cards
According to Rousseau, what does the severity of legal punishments actually prove?
The author argues that severe penalties are a vain resource of little minds substituting terror for respect. He claims it has constantly been observed that where legal punishments are most severe they are also most frequent, so cruelty of punishment proves only the multitude of criminals; punishing everything equally induces the guilty to commit crimes to escape punishment for their faults.
Chapter 87
What is the greatest talent Rousseau ascribes to a ruler?
The author argues the greatest talent a ruler can possess is to disguise his power so as to render it less odious, and to conduct the State so peaceably as to make it seem to have no need of conductors. The true statesman prevents crimes rather than punishing them, extending his rule over the wills even more than the actions of his subjects.
Chapter 87
How does Rousseau say the general will can be known when it has not expressed itself?
He says the whole nation need not assemble at every unforeseen event; it ought the less to be assembled because its decision might not express the general will, and the method is impracticable in a great people. Rulers well know the general will is always on the side most favourable to the public interest, so it is needful only to act justly to be certain of following it.
Chapter 87
What two infallible rules does Rousseau give for the government's conduct in administrative details?
First, the spirit of the law ought to decide in every particular case that could not be foreseen; second, the general will, the source and supplement of all laws, should be consulted wherever they fail. He adds that the first rule of public economy is that the administration of justice should conform to the laws, since the legislator's first duty is making laws conformable to the general will.
Chapter 87
Section 883 cards
According to the chapter, what is the worst of all abuses concerning laws?
The author argues the worst abuse is paying apparent obedience to the laws only in order to break them with security. In that case the best laws become the most pernicious, and it would be a hundred times better that they should not exist. Adding edicts and regulations only introduces new abuses without correcting old ones.
Chapter 88
What does the chapter say happens when laws multiply and officials are appointed to supervise them?
The author argues that the more laws are multiplied, the more they are despised. New officials appointed to supervise them become so many more people to break them, either sharing the plunder with predecessors or plundering on their own. The reward of virtue soon becomes that of robbery, and the vilest men rise to the greatest credit.
Chapter 88
How does the chapter contrast Socrates and Cato?
The author argues Socrates was the greater philosopher but had no country other than the world, since Athens was already ruined. Cato had his country's cause always at heart, lived for it alone, and could not outlive it. A worthy pupil of Socrates would be most virtuous, but a worthy follower of Cato would be one of the greatest.
Chapter 88
Section 893 cards
How does Rousseau respond to the saying that one should perish for all?
Rousseau says he admires it only when a virtuous patriot voluntarily sacrifices himself for his country. But if it means government may lawfully sacrifice an innocent man for the multitude, he calls it an execrable rule of tyranny, a falsehood, and a contradiction of society's fundamental laws. He argues all pledged their lives to defend each, not the reverse.
Chapter 89
What Roman practices does Rousseau cite as honoring the life of a citizen?
Rousseau claims nothing was so sacred at Rome as a citizen's life: only an assembly of the whole people could condemn one, not the Senate or Consuls. The Lex Porcia commuted death to banishment for those willing to survive losing their country. A citizen's crime and punishment were treated as a public calamity.
Chapter 89
What does Rousseau say is most necessary and difficult in government regarding justice?
Rousseau argues government most needs rigid integrity in doing strict justice to all, especially protecting the poor against the tyranny of the rich. He says the greatest evil has come when there are poor to defend and rich to restrain, and that law's force falls on the middle classes, who are powerless against both rich and poor.
Chapter 89
Section 904 cards
According to Rousseau, how should government prevent extreme inequality of fortunes?
Rousseau argues government should not confiscate wealth from its possessors, but should deprive all men of the means to accumulate it. Rather than building hospitals for the poor, it should secure citizens from becoming poor. He lists causes of inequality including unequal distribution of inhabitants, encouragement of luxury arts over useful crafts, sacrificing agriculture to commerce, and venality so extreme that public esteem and virtue are rated at a cash price.
Chapter 90
What chain does Rousseau give linking patriotism, liberty, virtue, and citizens?
Rousseau argues there can be no patriotism without liberty, no liberty without virtue, and no virtue without citizens. Create citizens and you have everything; without them you have only debased slaves, from rulers downward. Forming citizens is not the work of a day, and men must be educated as children. He concedes a man without passions would be a bad citizen, but insists men must be taught to love some things to prefer one object over another.
Chapter 90
Why does Rousseau say education is more important to the State than to fathers?
Rousseau argues that by nature a father's death often deprives him of the final fruits of education, but the country sooner or later perceives its effects. Families dissolve, but the State remains. Therefore government should not indiscriminately abandon children's education to fathers' intelligence and prejudices. Public education under government regulations and magistrates established by the Sovereign is, he argues, a fundamental rule of legitimate government.
Chapter 90
What does Rousseau say makes public education succeed or fail?
Rousseau says if children are raised in common in equality, imbued with the laws and precepts of the general will, surrounded by examples reminding them of the mother-country's benefits, they will learn to cherish one another as brothers and become defenders and fathers of the country. But where the lesson is not supported by authority and the precept by example, all instruction is fruitless, and virtue loses credit in the mouth of one who does not practise it.
Chapter 90
Section 914 cards
Which three peoples once practised public education, and with what result?
Rousseau names the Cretans, the Lacedæmonians, and the ancient Persians as the only peoples who practised public education. He claims it met with the greatest success and, he argues, did wonders among the two last. He adds that since the world divided into nations too great to be well governed, the method has become impracticable, and no modern people has attempted it.
Chapter 91
How did the Romans manage without public education, according to Rousseau?
Rousseau argues Rome was a five-hundred-year miracle the world cannot expect again. Roman virtue, produced by horror of tyranny and tyrants' crimes plus innate patriotism, made every house a school of citizenship. The unlimited power of fathers over children made paternal authority so rigid that the father was feared more than the Magistrate, serving as censor of morals and avenger of laws within his family.
Chapter 91
Why does Rousseau call property the most sacred right of citizenship?
Rousseau asserts the right of property is the most sacred of all rights of citizenship, even more important in some respects than liberty. His reasons: it more nearly affects preservation of life; property is more easily usurped and harder to defend than life, so law should attend to it more; and it is the true foundation of civil society and guarantee of citizens' undertakings, since without it duties could be evaded and laws mocked.
Chapter 91
What does Puffendorf's point about property and death let the Sovereign do?
Rousseau cites Puffendorf to show that the right of property by its nature does not extend beyond the proprietor's life: the moment a man dies his goods cease to belong to him. Therefore prescribing conditions for disposing of goods by will is really less an alteration of the right than an extension of it in fact, which removes many difficulties about the Sovereign's regulation of succession.
Chapter 91
Section 924 cards
What two forms can a fund for maintaining magistrates and public expenses take?
Rousseau says the fund is called œrarium or fisc if it consists of money, and public demesne if it consists of lands. He prefers the demesne, citing Bodin, who regards public demesne as the most reputable and certain means of providing for the State's needs. Rousseau notes Romulus set apart a third of the land division for the State, and concedes bad management can reduce demesne produce to nothing, though that is not essential to demesnes.
Chapter 92
What must happen to public funds before they are used, and what effect does this have?
Before any use is made of the fund, it should be assigned or accepted by an assembly of the people or of the country's estates, which determines its future use. After this solemnity the funds become inalienable and their revenues sacred, so that misapplying or perverting them is not only infamous theft but actual treason. Rousseau says this makes the integrity of the magistrate the only real check on avarice.
Chapter 92
According to Rousseau, what is the most important rule in administering finance?
Rousseau derives from the rule that needs must be guarded against that the most important rule of finance is to take more pains to guard against needs than to increase revenues. Remedies arrive after and more slowly than the evil, so injury remains; one evil is treated while another appears, and the remedies create new difficulties. He notes ancient governments did more with parsimony than modern ones with treasures, and links the word economy to prudent management of what one has.
Chapter 92
How does Rousseau say the needs of a State generally grow, and what example does he give?
Rousseau says states' needs generally arise, like individuals' wants, less from real necessity than from the increase of useless desires, and expenses are often augmented only to give a pretext for raising receipts. He says apparent wealth can be more burdensome than poverty. He cites Joseph's policy toward the Egyptians as a political sophistry that is fatal because the money never returns to the hands it left, enriching the idle at the expense of the industrious.
Chapter 92
Section 934 cards
According to Rousseau, what secret motive often drives a nation's desire for conquest?
The author argues that conquest is often not really about aggrandizing the nation; its hidden motive is rulers' desire to increase their authority at home by enlarging the number of troops and by diverting citizens' minds toward war. He adds that conquering nations are the most oppressed and wretched, since their successes only increase their misery.
Chapter 93
What Roman examples does Rousseau give for the shift from citizen soldiers to mercenaries?
Rousseau notes that paying Roman infantry began only at the siege of Veii. Marius, in the Jugurthine war, dishonoured the legions by introducing freedmen, vagabonds and other mercenaries. Tyrants kept standing troops ostensibly against foreigners but really to enslave countrymen, and this was a principal cause of the Roman Empire's ruin.
Chapter 93
What conditions make taxation legitimate according to Rousseau?
The author argues taxes cannot be legitimately established except by consent of the people or its representatives, a truth he says is admitted by reputable philosophers and jurists, including Bodin. Assessment must be voluntary in the sense of resting on the general will decided by majority vote, with a proportional rating leaving nothing arbitrary. The social compact's foundation is property, and each person tacitly binds himself to contribute to public needs.
Chapter 93
How does Rousseau distinguish real and personal taxes, and which suits liberty?
Contributions are real (on commodities) or personal (paid by the head); both are called taxes or subsidies. He cites the Spirit of the Laws that a capitation tax suits slavery and a real tax suits liberty, but argues this holds only if circumstances are equal. If a head tax were exactly proportioned to each person's circumstances, it would be most equitable and proper for free-men.
Chapter 93
Section 944 cards
According to Rousseau, who benefits most from the social confederacy?
The author argues that the social confederacy chiefly protects the rich: it safeguards their immense possessions while barely leaving the poor secure in the cottage they build themselves. He claims lucrative posts, privileges, exemptions, and public authority all favor the rich, and that crimes by the great are hushed up while a rich man's slightest inconvenience mobilizes the whole police force.
Chapter 94
What does Rousseau call the terms of the social compact between rich and poor?
He summarizes it as an agreement in which the rich say: "You have need of me, because I am rich and you are poor," promising the poor the honor of serving them on condition that the poor give up the little they have left in return for the pains the rich take to command them. The author presents this as the actual, cynical bargain underlying the two estates.
Chapter 94
How does Rousseau say taxes should be levied to be equitable?
The author argues that equitable taxation should not be in simple ratio to property, but in compound ratio to the difference of contributors' conditions and the superfluity of their possessions. He calls this a very important and difficult operation, adding that a Plato or Montesquieu would not undertake it without great diffidence and prayer for understanding and integrity.
Chapter 94
What does Rousseau claim about taxing land or the peasant's produce?
The author argues that burdening the peasant to rouse him from indolence is a ridiculous notion confuted by experience: in England and Holland the farmer pays little and in China nothing, yet land is best cultivated there, while taxing produce makes the husbandman leave land uncultivated or reap only bare subsistence. Excessive land or corn taxes, he says, depopulate and ruin countries.
Chapter 94
Section 954 cards
Why does Rousseau say a land tax can keep corn prices low while peasants starve?
Rousseau argues that a tax on corn in the producing country does not raise its price, and quantity can fall without price rising. The farmer must pay rent and taxes at fixed times whether or not he sells, so he cannot wait for his own price. Thus the heaviness of the tax itself frequently keeps the price of corn low, and many die of hunger though corn remains cheap.
Chapter 95
How does Rousseau distinguish duties on merchandise from a land tax?
Rousseau says duties on merchandise raise prices and are paid by buyers rather than sellers; they are voluntary and the merchant buys only in proportion to his sales, so he controls the application. The farmer, by contrast, must pay his rent at stated times whether he sells or not, and cannot wait for his own price, so the tax burden falls on him.
Chapter 95
What taxes does Rousseau recommend, and what two ends do they serve?
Rousseau recommends duties on imported foreign commodities the natives crave but don't need, on exports not too plentiful that foreigners can't do without, on frivolous and lucrative arts, and on luxuries generally. These answer a two-fold end: easing the poor and throwing burdens on the rich, thereby preventing the continual increase of inequality of fortune and the depopulation of the countryside.
Chapter 95
Why does Rousseau praise China's tax system, and what does it exempt?
Rousseau says China's taxes are greater yet better paid than anywhere else. The merchant pays no duty; the buyer alone meets the whole charge without murmuring, because necessaries like rice and corn are absolutely exempt from taxation. Thus the common people are not oppressed, and the duty falls only on those who are well-to-do.
Chapter 95
Section 964 cards
Which taxes does Rousseau say risk dangerous results without express consent?
Rousseau argues that personal taxes and duties on the necessaries of life are always liable to have dangerous results if not established with the express consent of the people or its representatives, because they directly trespass on the right of property and thus on the true foundation of political society.
Chapter 96
Why does Rousseau treat taxes on optional goods as voluntary contributions?
Rousseau reasons that with articles whose use we can deny ourselves, the individual is under no absolute necessity to pay, so his contribution may count as voluntary. The particular consent of each contributor then takes the place of the general consent of the whole people, since no one is forced to pay a tax falling only on those who desire to pay it.
Chapter 96
How does Rousseau illustrate taxing something the government could prohibit?
Rousseau argues that whatever is not proscribed by law or contrary to morality, yet may be prohibited by government, may also be permitted on payment of a certain duty. If government may prohibit coaches, it may impose a tax on them—a prudent method of censuring their use without absolutely forbidding it. The tax acts as a sort of fine whose product compensates for the abuse it punishes.
Chapter 96
What objection about rich tax-imposers does Rousseau dismiss, and how?
Rousseau raises the objection that those Bodin calls impostors—those who impose or contrive taxes—being rich, will not spare themselves to relieve the poor. He replies this is quite beside the point: if those entrusted with governing were, from their position, enemies of the people, it would not be worth inquiring what they ought to do to make the people happy.
Chapter 96
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Text used: Project Gutenberg eBook #46333 (Public domain in the United States). Generated from the full text; cards paraphrase the source.
Version: Public domain edition. Retrieved 2026-10-25. Cards reviewed 2026-10-25.
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