Page 12 - GALIET ILLUSION: Rousseau IV

wish.”7 Because the suzerain-covenant benefits the despot entirely, it is an illegitimate covenant: there is no mutual obligation or duty that binds the enslaved nation to heed it. To Rousseau, the duty of obedience is owed only to legitimate powers.8 If obedience is compelled by force, it does not compel a duty to obey,9 because to yield to force is an act of necessity, not of will.10 Thus, force cannot be transformed into a right or moral duty,11 and neither does it bestow rights on mighty conquerors to enslave or possess any natural authority over others.12 Precisely because all humans are born free, it is contrary to nature to willfully enter into a covenant of absolute dominion that imposes slavery, and the renouncing of one’s liberties because might does not make right.13 In this dystopian state, “man was born free, but he is everywhere in chains.”14
Only the liberating Social Contract to Rousseau, is a legitimate, equitable and a durable binding General Covenant15 because it is not one between an inferior and a superior, but one amongst equals. It is a Social Pact between a wholly absolute, sacred, inalienable, inviolable Sovereign Body and each of its members.16 It is legitimate because, protected by the General Will, it does not create a master-slave society where absolute right, liberty and dominion belong to the masters17 by subjugating the dispossessed and weak. Instead, it
7 Ibid., Book I. Chapter 4.
8 Ibid., Book I. Chapter 3.
9 Ibid., Book I. Chapter 3.
10 Ibid., Book I. Chapter 3.
11 Ibid., Book I. Chapter 3.
12 Ibid., Book I. Chapter 4.
13 Ibid., Book I. Chapter 4.
14 Ibid., Book I. Chapter 1
15 Ibid., Book I. Chapter 6.
16 Ibid., Book II. Chapter 4.
17 Aristotle. Like Rousseau, Aristotle posits in his Politics, Chapter I and II, that
the State is the highest form of community and it aims at the highest good. It aims at satisfying all needs, and at self-preservation. He also claims that by nature man is
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