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Reason, Self-Legislation and Legitimacy: Conceptions of Freedom in the Political Thought of Rousseau and Kant

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Alexander Kaufman
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Extract

Rousseau and Kant both argue for contractarian theories of justice. In spite of their common contractarianism, however, Rousseau and Kant argue for conceptions of legitimacy which differ markedly. The substantive differences between their accounts of legitimacy, I suggest, illustrate the political implications of disagreement regarding the status of practical reason. Rousseau, in assigning reason to a merely instrumental status, anticipates both postmodern and empiricist skepticism regarding the power of reason to ground the choice of ends. Kant is the forerunner of contemporary accounts of justice which reject such skeptical views of practical reason. Rousseau's skepticism about practical reason ties his criterion of legitimacy directly to the actual preferences of individuals. Kant's more robust conception of practical reason (1) allows him to argue for a criterion of great generality and flexibility, but (2) ties the plausibility of his account of legitimacy directly to the soundness of his conception of practical reason.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 59 , Issue 1 , Winter 1997 , pp. 25 - 52
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1997

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References

1 These concerns are grounded most particularly in Heideggerian insights regarding the givenness of the world from which being takes its possibilities “in accordance with the way things have been interpreted by the ‘they’” (Heidegger, Martin, Being and Time, trans. Macquarrie, John and Robinson, Edward [New York: Harper & Row, 1962], p. 239).Google Scholar

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9 Ibid., p. 140.

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26 Works by Rousseau are cited in the text. I have used the following translations: Bloom, Allan, Entile or On Education (New York: Basic Books, 1979)Google Scholar. Cress, Donald A., Discourse on the Origins of Inequality (DOI) in jean-Jacques Rousseau: The Basic Political Writings, ed. Cress, Donald A. (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1987).Google ScholarMasters, Judith R., Geneva Manuscript (GM), and On the Social Contract (SC) (New York: St. Martins, 1978).Google ScholarWatkins, Frederick,Considerations on the Government of Poland in Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Political Writings, ed. Watkins, Frederick (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1986).Google Scholar Other citations from Rousseau refer to the French text in the following editions: Lettre a C. Beaumont (1762), de la Pleiade, Edition, vol.4 (LB) (Paris: Gallimard, 1959);Google ScholarLettres Ecrite de la Montague, de la Pleiade, Edition, vol. 3 (LEM) (Paris: Gallimard, 1959);Google Scholar “Political Fragments” (PF), de la Seuil, Edition, vol. 3 (Paris, 1959).Google Scholar

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28 “Our passions are the principal instruments of our preservation. …Their source is natural. … But countless alien streams have swollen it. … Our natural passions are very limited. They are the source of our freedom; they are the instruments of our freedom; they tend to preserve us. All those which subject us and destroy us come from elsewhere.… We appropriate them to the detriment of nature” (Emile 212).

29 “Practical reason. ‥ [is] a causality of reason in the determination of the will” (CPR A803/B831/634).

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31 Ibid., p. 57.

32 Necessary because the individual wills rationally, and thus universally. See Cassirer, , The Question of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, pp. 55,124.Google Scholar

33 Ibid., p. 124.

34 Ibid., p. 63.

35 “If it is at least possible that a people could agree to [a law], it is our duty to consider the law as just” (TP 79).

36 In addition, the Formula of Humanity requires that the individual treat all rational agents as ends. Since an individual cannot be compelled to adopt ends, the compulsion must be supplied by the free will of the individual.

37 Note Velkley's persuasive argument that, for Rousseau, “reason never loses its instrumental character” (Velkley, , Freedom and the End of Reason, p. 37).Google Scholar

38 “What makes man essentially wicked is to have many needs and to depend very much on opinion.‥ the dangers of society make art and care all the more indispensable for us to forestall in the human heart the depravity born of their new needs” (Emile 214). Thus, the best form of education delays exposure to society and opinion. “The child raised according to his age is alone” (Emile 219). The individual should be exposed to “high society” only once he is “in a condition to evaluate it himself” (Emile 222).

39 “Our passions are the principal instruments of our preservation” (Emile 212).

40 Beck, Lewis White, A Commentary on Kant's Critique of Practical Reason (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960), p. 23.Google Scholar

41 Kant defines reason as “the faculty which secures the unity of the rules of the understanding under principles” (CPR A302/B359/303).

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43 “Pure reason establishes the goals of action through the formulation of an intrinsically practical and unconditional law. This is its real use” (Ibid., p. 41).

44 See the helpful discussion in Allison, Henry E., Kant's Theory of Freedom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 136–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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46 The principle of autonomy directs that the will “seek the law that is to determine it.‥ in the fitness of its maxims for its own legislation of universal laws” (G 441/45). Since the imperative that self-legislation take the form of universal law is not based on any interest, “it alone of all possible imperatives can be unconditional” (G 432/39). Thus, the determination of the autonomous will is distinguished by “the renunciation of all interest” (G 431/38).

47 If the agent fails to prescribe laws for herself, relying on hypothetical maxims grounded in material objects, “the will does not give itself the law, but a foreign impulse gives the law to the will” (G 444/48).

48 SeeAllison, , Kant's Theory of Freedom, pp. 136–45.Google Scholar

49 A material (rather than formal) principle “can indeed remain” as a factor affecting the content of free self-legislation. (CPr 34/35) “Kant clearly allows for the possibility that morally worthy [i.e., free] actions might be prompted by nonmoral motives” (Ibid., p. 119).

50 “Our natural passions are very limited. They are the instruments of our freedom. … All those which subject us and destroy us come from elsewhere. Nature does not give them to us. We appropriate them to the detriment of nature” (Emile 212). Note Velkley's claim that Rousseau's “ideal” of freedom “corresponds to the unobstructed pursuit of prepassionate desire” (Velkley, , Freedom and the End of Reason, p. 38).Google Scholar

51 That is, humans are constrained to act on maxims grounded in the categorical imperative.

52 In Of The Social Contract, Rousseau introduces a second criterion of justice, which holds that all individuals in a certain category will be treated similarly (SC 66). I will not discuss this criterion in this article.

53 In addition, Rousseau's discontinuous conception of time led him to reject notions of representation. I will not develop this point in this article.

54 Sovereign power refers to the legislative power, as distinguished from the executive power, which Rousseau calls the government.

55 The weak quality of rationality creates additional complications in Rousseau's theory of government, since it requires the introduction of the Legislator to compensate for the flawed rationality of the general will, itself. I will not develop the issue in this article.

56 As Rawls has famously argued.