There is a great deal of room for misunderstanding in the pages of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s work. His prose is not as weighed down by jargon as Heidegger’s, or as difficult to wade through as Hegel’s — by all accounts his writing is easy to parse! And yet, at times, his writing seems to leave too much up in the air. As such, his work has been both a guiding star for the political left and decried as a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Much of this disparity in opinion can be traced back to a common concern that Rousseau’s attempt to create a basis for legitimate political power seems to take place at the expense of individual freedom. But this raises a question: what is freedom?

Rousseau’s concern for the preservation of some type of freedom could not be overlooked by even the least discerning of readers. In the sixth chapter of The Social Contract, Rousseau states the fundamental problem he wishes to address — that we may:

Find a form of association that defends and protects with all common forces the person and goods of each associate, and, by means of which, each one, while uniting with all, nevertheless obey only himself and remains as free as before. (Rousseau, 2011, p.164)

And, yet, as clear as Rousseau states the goal which underpins the political theory found in his most famous work, the reader is still left with questions upon completing The Social Contract. Daniel Cullen, author of Freedom in Rousseau’s Political Philosophy, writes that “while the word ‘freedom’ is constantly on his lips, it is difficult to isolate a single, self-consistent, and fully articulated theory of freedom in his writings.” (Cullen, 1993, p.3) It is this lack of clarity which has prompted criticism of Rousseau’s work to appear in the unceremonious pages of Bertrand Russell’s A History of Western Philosophy — in which Russell names Rousseau as an ideological forebear to the Nazi Party. (Russell, 1945, p.790) In spite of his claim to be writing in support of freedom, it is Rousseau’s apparent abandonment of it that has led writers to react in such hostile ways. Misinterpretations of his theory of freedom are led by his claim that we must “force man to be free” (Rousseau, 2011, p.167) such that he might “place all his power in common under the supreme direction of the general will.” (ibid, p.163)

Rousseau takes the fundamental problem of political philosophy, as laid out in the excerpt above, to be the formation of a political structure which caters to its citizens’ need for social cooperation while also catering to their nature as essentially free beings. The difficulty of this task rests on the idea that successful social cooperation must be regulated by a governing will that is in accordance with the common good, while individual freedom would seem to require that individuals be subject to no will other than their own. As Frederick Neuhouser (1993) points out, because cooperation with others entails adapting one’s behavior such that it bends to interests that extend beyond those that reflect what is best for themselves, individuals would seem to be left with no other option but to relinquish their will to some other being or body politic and cease to be free. (p.367)

Rousseau takes the ‘general will’ to be the solution to this problem. How we go about unpacking the general will depends a great deal on what we take freedom to be. But Neuhouser’s description in Freedom, Dependence, and the General Will supplies a good starting place. Neuhouser writes that “if the solution is to succeed, the general will must regulate social cooperation in accord with the common good and at the same time be the will of the individuals whose behavior it governs.” (ibid) This is achieved when the individuals in a society are said to be invested in the common good. In holding the common good above their own, individuals then contribute to the general will with this common good in mind. Then, in following the laws set forth by the general will (to which the individual has contributed), the individual is said to be subject only to his own will, and, thus, free.

However, we are still left here with the question of what it means to be free. The description above of the role that the general will plays in preserving freedom paints a vague picture of it. In this picture, freedom is nothing more than the ability of the individual to exercise her will. But this description of freedom is not the description we find in Rousseau’s work. The Social Contract seems to define natural freedom as merely the absence of interference from others while exercising one’s individual will. But such a description does not exhaust what it means to be free for Rousseau. A more robust understanding can be found in his Second Discourse. Natural freedom, writes Rousseau, is the kind of freedom held by individuals prior to joining a political society. He writes:

This common liberty is one consequence of the nature of man. Its first law is to see to his preservation; its first concerns are those he owes himself; and, as soon as he reaches the age of reason, since he alone is the judge of the proper means of taking care of himself, he thereby becomes his own master. (Rousseau, 2011, p.157)

It is clear from the passage above that, in natural freedom, the individual is concerned only with her own problems, with meeting her own needs, and is subject to no one but herself. At minimum, this natural freedom is exercised when the individual’s will, unimpaired, is actualized. It is from this rather bare bones account of freedom that many writers have an issue with just how much is being asked of the individual who submits to the general will as compared to what she receives. “What man loses through the social contract is his natural liberty and an unlimited right to everything that tempts him and that he can acquire,” writes Rousseau. (ibid, p.167) And he goes to great lengths to justify the individual’s exchange of natural freedom for the sake of preserving social cooperation. He writes:

Finally, in giving himself to all, each person gives himself to no one. And since there is no associate over whom he does not acquire the same right that he would grant others over himself, he gains the equivalent of everything he loses, along with a greater amount of force to preserve what he has. (ibid, p.164)

But, in a sense, Rousseau is barking up the wrong tree. Though his energy is spent on explicating the complex need for the general will, his critics have focused on whether the individual can rightly be said to want to participate in such a system. After a short description of the individual’s exchange of freedoms as she enters the political society, Rousseau moves to another topic. Regarding his discussion of freedom in The Social Contract, he writes that he has “already said too much on this subject.” (ibid, p.167) By glossing over the finer points of what exactly he takes the individual to be regaining by taking part in the general will, Rousseau inadvertently sidelines his political theory. But this is not entirely his fault. There are a few indications left by Rousseau that a more thorough understanding of freedom can be found elsewhere. He writes in The Social Contract that the “philosophical meaning of the word liberty is not part of my subject here.” (ibid) But if not here, where?

In the Second Discourse, Rousseau outlines our descent from happy and free to forever in the chains of an inter-dependent society. It is here that his account of the relationship between the individual and the political society is most thoroughly laid out. And Rousseau makes it clear, even in this earlier text, that the problems he discusses are to be solved only through the kind of social contract his later text would address. (ibid, p.85) Though he does not intend to use his Second Discourse to explain in depth the contract he has proposed, the text hints at the forthcoming work. In parsing out the details of the individual’s transformation of natural freedom to social obligation — as laid out in Rousseau’s Second Discourse — we can more clearly see what Rousseau thinks we have lost to the body politic, and what, then, the general will is meant to help us regain.

“They all ran to chain themselves, in the belief that they secured their liberty,” writes Rousseau. “For although they had enough sense to realize the advantages of a political establishment, they did not have enough experience to foresee its dangers.” (ibid, p.79) This, broadly speaking, sums up the narrative of human development in Rousseau’s Second Discourse. Prior to coming together to form social structures, the individual is rather happy. And this happiness comes from the natural freedom she possesses. The individual’s life in this period is indistinguishable from that of animals. Humans are concerned only with their most immediate needs — food, shelter, reproduction. And, in this state, the individual has no concern for the opinions of others. So, man is free both from the physical needs beyond what is required for basic survival as well as the dominion and judgment of society. In this natural state, humans differ from animals only in that they possess the ability to leave it.