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Rousseau on War and Peace

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

Stanley Hoffmann
Stanley Hoffmann*
Affiliation:
Harvard University
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Extract

For many reasons Rousseau's writings on international relations should interest students both of Rousseau and of world politics. The former have been celebrating the 200th anniversary of Emile and of The Social Contract. Those works, and the Discourse on Inequality have been analyzed incessantly and well. But Rousseau's ideas on war and peace, dispersed in various books and fragments, some of which are lost, have had only occasional attention, and some of that is of the hit-and-miss variety. Incomplete as his own treatment of the relations between states remains, the frequency and intensity of his references indicate the depth of his concern.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 57 , Issue 2 , June 1963 , pp. 317 - 333
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1963

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References

1 See the strange story of Rousseau's manuscript on Confederations, in Windenberger, J. L., La République confédérative des petits Etats (Paris, 1899), ch. 2Google Scholar.

2 The most recent discussion, however, although incidental to a general analysis of Rousseau's politics, is admirable: see Fetscher, Iring, Rous-seaus politische Philosophie (Neuwied, 1960), ch. 4Google Scholar.

3 In Wolters, Arnold and Martin, Laurence W. (eds.), The Anglo-American Tradition in Foreign Affairs (New Haven, 1956), p. xiiiGoogle Scholar.

4 Paix et Guerre entre les Nations (Paris, 1962)Google Scholar. See my review, “Minerva et Janus,” in Critique, Nos. 188 and 189 (Jan. and Feb. 1963).

5 Man, , The State and War (New York, 1959)Google Scholar.

6 First draft of the Social Contract: Vaughan, C. E., The Political Writings of J. J. Rousseau (Cambridge, 1915), Vol. I, pp. 447 ffGoogle Scholar.

7 See L'Esprit des Lois. Book I. For a searching analysis of Montesquieu's conception of the state of nature and of laws of reason prior to positive laws, see Aron, Raymond, Les grandes doctrines de Sociologie Politique (Paris, Cours de Sorbonne, multigraph, 1960), pp. 42–55Google Scholar. Two important differences distinguish Rousseau's and Montesquieu's state of nature. (1) In Montesquieu's state of nature, laws of reason which he calls “relations of justice prior to positive laws,” and which are moral standards and goals for men, already exist—in addition to the “natural law” derived from man's nature in the state of nature (self-preservation, sociability, etc.). In Rousseau's state of nature, only the latter exist (self-preservation and pity). In this respect, Montesquieu is closer to Locke, Rousseau to Hobbes. (2) For Montesquieu, the state of nature is just an early stage in man's development; for Rousseau, it represents a state of liberty and happiness which makes society appear as the cause of man's fall, and which could only be recaptured under the thoroughly new guise of moral autonomy and good citizenship. Hobbes's state of nature, in contrast, expresses an analysis of human nature that remains valid in civil society; the latter entails neither moral progress, nor moral disgrace, just physical safety.

8 Discourse on Inequality; see Vaughan, I, 159 ff. and 203 ff.

9 Vaughan, I. 203 and 293-4 (Economie Politique).

10 Ibid., pp. 305-6.

11 L'Esprit des Lois. Bk. I, end of ch. 2. Consequently, and paradoxically, the establishment of civil society is treated as beneficial both by Montesquieu and by Hobbes: the former sees in it both the outcome of man's social inclination and the remedy of early society's defects (cf. Locke); the latter sees in it man's chance of salvation from violent death. Rousseau, on the other hand, sees in most civil societies a perpetuation of man's fall.

12 Vaughan, I, 138.

13 Ibid., pp. 173 ff. See also the Essai sur l'Origine des Langues (Oeuvres Complkles, Paris, 1905, Vol. I)Google Scholar.

14 This, again, is very close to Montesquieu, (L'Es-prit des Lois, Bk. I, ch. 3).

15 Vaughan, I, 179 ff.

16 Ibid., 448-9 (first draft of the Social Contract).

18 Leviathan, chs. 13 and 17.

19 Ibid., ch. 13.

20 L'Esprit des Lois

21 For Rousseau, see Vaughan, I, 300; for Hobbes, Leviathan, ch. 13., Bk. I, ch. 3.

22 Vaughan, I, 313.

23 L'Esprit des Lois. Bk. I, ch. 3 and Bk. X, chs. 2, 3.

24 Vaughan, I, 312-3.

25 Vaughan, I. 203 ff, 447 ff., and II, 308 ff. (Project for Corsica).

26 Vaughan, I. 178.

27 Ibid., pp. 178 and 297. Strangely enough, Proudhon—who spent so much time attacking Rousseau—follows Rousseau's analysis very closely in Vol. II of his book, La Guerre et la Paix; it is the same attack on greed, property and inequality as in the second Discourse; war is seen as the result of clashes over wealth, due both to the end of primeval abundance and to the “somber rapacity” that grips societies when man's original temperance fades away.

28 Vaughan, I, 180 and 294; II, 29.

29 Vaughan, I, 180.

30 Vaughan, II, 29.

31 Vaughan, I, 297-8 (L'Etat de Guerre)

32 Ibid., pp. 298-9.

33 Ibid., p. 182. It can be seen from what precedes that Rousseau finds the causes of war not only (1) in the structure of a milieu of clashing sovereignties, but also (2) in the corrupt nature of existing states, and (3) in the “evil propensities” of man, due not to his original nature but to the “fall” that society has entailed and almost all states have perpetuated.

34 Ibid., p. 365 and p. 295.

35 Ibid., pp. 304-6; II, 158 (L'Emile).

36 Vaughan, II, 147.

37 Vaughan, I, 179-81.

38 Ibid., pp. 389 ff. (Critique of St. Pierre's Project).

38 Kant, , “Idea for a Universal History,” in: The Philosophy of Kant, Friedrich, C. J., ed. (New-York, 1959), p. 128Google Scholar.

40 Vaughan, I, 182.

41 Ibid., p. 365. Man was not the “enemy of mankind” either in the original state of nature, when he was a peaceful being, or even in de facto society, when his contacts with others may have been bloody, but limited in scope; see ibid., p. 453.

42 Ibid., p. 374.

43 Ibid., p. 300.

44 Ibid., pp. 371 ff.

45 Ibid., pp. 304-5. Compare Aron, op cit., ch. 23.

46 Vaughan, II, 308.

47 Vaughan, I, 299.

48 Ibid., p. 389.

49 Ibid., p. 392.

50 Ibid., p. 391.

51 E.g., the U-2 affair in 1960, the U. S. insistence on piercing the Soviet wall of secrecy, the Soviet inclusion in all disarmament plans of proposals aiming at the dismantling of America's foreign bases.

52 See the author's “Les règles du jeu,” in Les Cahiers de la République, March, 1962.

53 Vaughan, I, 390-1.

54 Ibid., p. 391.

55 The most brilliant contemporary analysis is that of Raymond Aron,. op. cit., Introduction and final note. Rousseau's and Aron's arguments contradict the faith in moderation which advocates of the “national interest” as the norm of foreign policy have so often proclaimed in recent years.

56 Vaughan, I, 391.

57 The Legal Community of Mankind (New York, 1954), esp. p. 199Google Scholar.

58 Vaughan, I, 388.

59 Ibid., p. 396.

60 Luard, Evan, Peace and Opinion (Oxford, 1962), ch. 2Google Scholar.

61 Compare Wolfers, Arnold, “The pole of power and the pole of indifference,” World Politics, Vol. 4 (10 1951), pp. 39–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

62 Vaughan, I, 297.

63 This is what I have attempted to do in: “Du Contrat Social, ou le mirage de la volonté générale,” Revue Internationale d'Histoire Politique et Constitutionnelle, 10 1954, pp. 288–315Google Scholar.

64 Op. cit., p. 232.

65 Ibid., pp. 185-6.

66 Vaughan, I, 180-1.

67 Ibid., pp. 450-1.

68 Or, more accurately, reserve to the world-state the monopoly of the legitimate use of force.

69 Vaughan, I, 182.

70 Vaughan, II, 31 (and in general, Bk. I, ch. 4, of the Social Contract).

71 See the reasoning in Windenberger, op. cit., ch. 6.

72 See Vaughan, I, 484 ff; II, 56 ff, 64 ff, 154, 442-3.

73 Vaughan, II, 66.

74 See my essay, “Areal division of powers in the writings of French political thinkers,” in Maass, A. (ed.), Area and Power (Glencoe, 1959), pp. 143-149, at 120-4Google Scholar.

76 Vaughan, II, 144-5; I, 182. See also the passage on Socrates and Cato in Economie Politique, Vaughan, I, 251-2.

76 Iring Fetscher, op. cit., pp. 194 ff.

77 Vaughan, II, 319.

78 Ibid., pp. 319, 348 ff., and 431 ff.

79 Ibid., p. 144.

80 Ibid., p. 129.

81 Vaughan, I, 389-92.

82 Vaughan, II, 486-92.

83 Vaughan, I, 251. See Fetscher, op. cit., pp. 62 ff.

84 Vaughan, I. 217; II, 319, 344-5, 441.

85 Vaughan, II, 434 ff; Fetscher, op. cit., pp. 194 ff.

86 See esp. Vaughan, II, 437 ff.

87 Ibid., pp. 346-7, and the remarkable passage in Vaughan, I, 320: “in all that depends on human labor, one must carefully rule out machines and inventions capable of making work shorter, of reducing the amount of manpower needed, and of producing the same results with less effort.”

88 Op. cit., pp. 241 ff.

89 Vaughan, II, 145.

90 Ibid., pp. 353.

91 Ibid., p. 330: “everybody must live and nobody must get rich”; p. 322: “poverty became noticeable in Switzerland only after money had begun to circulate.”

92 Ibid., p. 311.

93 Vaughan, I, 452.

94 Ibid., p. 138.

95 Ibid., p. 494.

96 Here, again, he has learned much from Montesquieu: L'Esprit des Lois, Bk. IX, chs. 1-3. On Rousseau's confederations, see Vaughan's discussion, I, 95 ff.

97 Vaughan, II, 159.

98 On this point, see Windenberger, op. cit., pp. 143-4.

99 Vaughan, I, 387; II, 158.

100 Vaughan, II, 50.

101 Vaughan, I, 300 f.

102 Oeuvres, IX, 287Google Scholar; Vaughan, II, 146.

103 On Kant's philosophy of peace, see Friedrich, C. J., Inevitable Peace (Cambridge, 1948)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Pierre Hassner's admirable study, “Les Concepts de guerre et de paix chez Kant,” Revue Française de Science Politique, Vol. 11 (09 1961)Google Scholar. I have followed here M. Hassner's demonstration.

104 See Deutsch, Karlet al., Political Community and the North Atlantic Area (Princeton, 1957)Google Scholar.

105 The Uniting of Europe (Stanford, 1958)Google Scholar; “The Challenge of Regionalism,” International Organization, Vol. 12 (Autumn, 1958)Google Scholar.

106 Vaughan, II, 158.

107 See, for instance, what happened during the coal crisis of 1959, and in the negotiations on a common agricultural policy and on the admission of Great Britain.

108 Compare Aron, op. cit., pp. 729 ff.

109 Vaughan, II, 161.

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