I’ve been thinking about Rousseau and his conception of freedom again because I’m not sure I hit the nail on the head last time. The most typical definition of freedom and that championed by libertarians focuses on an individual’s ability to make choices in their daily life. On the more libertarian end, the government is seen as an oppressor and a force of external compulsion.
On the other hand, Rousseau’s view focuses on “the people” and their freedom to choose the kind of society that they want to live in. Instead of being seen as an external entity, the government is seen as a vessel through which the people can express and realise this freedom (or at least as potentially becoming such a vessel).
I guess you could call this a notion of collective freedom, but at the same time this risks obscuring an important point: that at the same time it is an individual freedom as well. Part of it is that “the people” is made up of individual “people”, but it goes beyond this. The “will of the people” at least in its idealised form isn’t supposed to be about a mere numerical majority or some kind of averaging of perspectives or the kind of limited and indirect influence allowed in most representative democracies, but rather it is supposed to be about a broad consensus; a direct instantiation of the will of most individuals.
There is a clear tension between these kinds of freedom in that the more the government respects personal freedom that less control the people have over the kind of society they want to live in and the more the government focuses on achieving the “will of the people” the less freedom exists for those for whom this doesn’t sound so appealing.
I can’t recall the arguments Rousseau makes for this position, but I expect that they’d be similar to the arguments for positive freedoms. Proponents of positive freedom argue that theoretical freedoms, such as there being no legal restriction against gaining an education, are worthless if these opportunities aren’t actually accessible, say if this would cost more money than you could ever afford.
Similarly, proponents of Rousseau’s view could argue that freedom over your personal choices is worthless if you exist within a terrible society. Imagine there were no spam filters and so all of it made it through. Then the freedom to use email would be worthless without the freedom to choose to exist in a society without spam. Instead of characterising this as a trade-off between utility and freedom, Rousseau would see this as a trade-off between two different notions of freedom.
Now I’m not saying Rousseau’s views are correct—I mean the French revolution was heavily influenced by him and we all saw how that worked out. And it also depends on there being some kind of unified “will of the people”. But at the same time it’s an interesting perspective.
the French revolution was heavily influenced by him and we all saw how that worked out.
Can you make this a little more explicit? France is a pretty nice place—are you saying that the counterfactual world where there was no revolution would be significantly better?
Sure. I’m asking about the “we all saw how that worked out” portion of your comment. From what I can see, it worked out fairly well. Are you of the opinion that the French Revolution was an obvious and complete utilitarian failure?
I’ve been thinking about Rousseau and his conception of freedom again because I’m not sure I hit the nail on the head last time. The most typical definition of freedom and that championed by libertarians focuses on an individual’s ability to make choices in their daily life. On the more libertarian end, the government is seen as an oppressor and a force of external compulsion.
On the other hand, Rousseau’s view focuses on “the people” and their freedom to choose the kind of society that they want to live in. Instead of being seen as an external entity, the government is seen as a vessel through which the people can express and realise this freedom (or at least as potentially becoming such a vessel).
I guess you could call this a notion of collective freedom, but at the same time this risks obscuring an important point: that at the same time it is an individual freedom as well. Part of it is that “the people” is made up of individual “people”, but it goes beyond this. The “will of the people” at least in its idealised form isn’t supposed to be about a mere numerical majority or some kind of averaging of perspectives or the kind of limited and indirect influence allowed in most representative democracies, but rather it is supposed to be about a broad consensus; a direct instantiation of the will of most individuals.
There is a clear tension between these kinds of freedom in that the more the government respects personal freedom that less control the people have over the kind of society they want to live in and the more the government focuses on achieving the “will of the people” the less freedom exists for those for whom this doesn’t sound so appealing.
I can’t recall the arguments Rousseau makes for this position, but I expect that they’d be similar to the arguments for positive freedoms. Proponents of positive freedom argue that theoretical freedoms, such as there being no legal restriction against gaining an education, are worthless if these opportunities aren’t actually accessible, say if this would cost more money than you could ever afford.
Similarly, proponents of Rousseau’s view could argue that freedom over your personal choices is worthless if you exist within a terrible society. Imagine there were no spam filters and so all of it made it through. Then the freedom to use email would be worthless without the freedom to choose to exist in a society without spam. Instead of characterising this as a trade-off between utility and freedom, Rousseau would see this as a trade-off between two different notions of freedom.
Now I’m not saying Rousseau’s views are correct—I mean the French revolution was heavily influenced by him and we all saw how that worked out. And it also depends on there being some kind of unified “will of the people”. But at the same time it’s an interesting perspective.
Can you make this a little more explicit? France is a pretty nice place—are you saying that the counterfactual world where there was no revolution would be significantly better?
All the guillotining. And the necessity of that was in part justified with reference to Rousseau’s thought
Sure. I’m asking about the “we all saw how that worked out” portion of your comment. From what I can see, it worked out fairly well. Are you of the opinion that the French Revolution was an obvious and complete utilitarian failure?
I haven’t looked that much into French history, just think it is important to acknowledge where that line of thought can end up.