Reconciling irreconcilable ideas – in response to Qian’s essay
October 30, 2008
Thank you, Qian, for allowing me to publish your essay. This is one more step towards our intellectual discussion, so I hope it can be made the norm in the future.
Your standpoint is very clear – defending that the idea of “general will” is not a threat to individuality, but rather, a blessing. According to Rousseau’s theory, “general will” is unanimous, infallible, wisest, and therefore the best thing that can happen to human society. After all, who doesn’t want to get all the benefits (positive freedom), and be “as free (negative freedom) as before”?
Maximizing the Freedom
October 30, 2008
Qian Yin
Dr. Hélène Landemore
POLS0820D: Freedom
10 October 2008
In his work The Social Contract, Jean-Jacques Rousseau aims to design a society within which an individual gets protection from the State, while “obey[ing] only himself and remain as free as before” (50). The freedom he depicts in his theory, however, is considered by Isaiah Berlin as a conception associated with tyranny, which may be commonly understood to relate to an absolute and centralized rule as well as the people’s lack of freedom. While the approach Rousseau takes to construct the society may raise readers’ apprehensions of the generation of a tyranny, taking a more comprehensive and coherent view of the book, I understand it as an integral part of a theory which effectively diminishes the possibility of a tyranny, and ensures the rule of the people.
In defense of Hypothetical social contract theories
October 12, 2008
It is often alleged that hypothetical social contract theories are waste of paper because they are hypothetical. That remark seems logical. After all, what’s the practical value of those vague theories relying heavily on suspicious assumptions, analogies and metaphors?
But if they are useless, why would they be banned by contemporary crown-heads? Why should those powerful men feel threatened by “wasted paper”? I would argue the opposite: despite their theoretical nature, social contract theories are very useful.
