Page 12 - GALIET FREEDOM: Kant and Rousseau IV

from the institution of property: “the first man who, having enclosed a piece of land, thought of saying ‘This is Mine’ and found people simple enough to believe him was the true founder of civil society. How many crimes, wars, murders; how much misery and horror the human race would have been spared if someone had ...cried out...: ‘Beware of listening to this impostor” (Rousseau: 109). For Rousseau, civilization does not only encroach on man’s natural freedom, but it also promotes inequality by creating a society of oppression: masters over slaves. However, Rousseau does not suggest that man must return to his natural state for he is aware that his ideal “state of nature ... perhaps never existed, and probably never will.”5 Instead, Rousseau proposes a “Social Contract”6 where, paradoxically, in opposing anarchic freedom, he exalts “freedom under law” (Rousseau: 32) in juxtaposition to Hobbes’s alternative: absolute sovereignty. Consequently, freedom for Rousseau means a social contract between the rulers and those who make the body politic where the “general will”7 is the imperative that must be obeyed for it represents the common
5 Durant, Will and Ariel. The Story of Civilization. Rousseau and Revolution. Volume X. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1967. 29
6 Rousseau, Jean Jacques. The Social Contract. Great Books of the Western World. Volume 38. Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc. 1952.
7 Microsoft Encarta. Rousseau, Jean Jacques. The Social Contract. Reference Library 2002. Seattle: Microsoft Corporation.
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