Page 11 - GALIET ILLUSION: Rousseau IV

Rousseau’s utopian The Social Contract juxtaposes the dystopia of an oppressive Suzerain Covenant akin to Babylonian suzerain treatises.1 Whereas his Social Contract posits the fabled liberty and equality of “each to all and all to each,”2 whereby each cedes his rights to the General Will whose sovereign body tends to the preservation and common good of all, the Suzerain Covenant affirms the oppression and inequality of each and most, whereby the inferior cede their rights to a Master’s Will in a covenant of “absolute dominion, advantage and obedience.”3 Rousseau argues that while the Social Contract liberates by equality; the Suzerain Covenant enslaves by inequality.
To Rousseau, the enslaving Suzerain Covenant is an absurd and null treatise because no individual has the right to wield power over another.4 In seeking to assert its power over the enslaved nation, it creates a master-slave society,5 devoid of a genuine association and a body politic that aims at the common good of all.6 The despot, in subduing the weak, exercises all powers and rights over the enslaved or disadvantaged nation by saying, “I’ll respect it [the Suzerain Covenant] as long as I please, and you shall respect it as long as I
1 During the Hittite Empire, Suzerain covenants were the formal basis of the empire. It established a relationship between the Hittite State and its vassals whereby the state protects the vassals in exchange for their forced allegiance. In some instances, the vassals were protected from arbitrary action of the overlord. There are also many similarities in redaction and style between a Suzerain covenant and the Old Testament Covenant, between Yahweh and the Israelites. See Babylonian. Archtemeier, E.R. The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible. An Illustrated Encyclopaedia. “Covenant.” Ed. Arthur Buttrick and Emory Stevens Bucke. Volume I. Nashville> Abingdon Press, 1962. 714-723.
2 Rousseau. The Social Contact. Book II. Chapter 4. Trans. Maurice Cranston. London: Penguin Books, 1968. 77
3 Ibid., Book I. Chapters 4 and 5.
4 Ibid., Book I. Chapter 4
5 It also creates the master-slave morality expressed in Nietzsche’s the Genealogy
of Morals.
6 Ibid., Book I. Chapter 5.
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