I have a copy of a new edition of Rousseau. I won’t mention what edition exactly until I’ve finished blogging on its contents, which will mostly be about Rousseau’s thought rather than the qualities of the edition. I’ll comment on the edition after I’ve posted on its contents, bit by bit, by which time I should have the basis for a judgement.
‘Principles of the Right of War’ is another text unpublished in Rousseau’s lifetime and only published recently in the form now accepted as correct,as the result of archival research. Like the Geneva Manuscript chapter, the reason for including it in the edition under consideration is at least in part that is provides a bridge between the political philosophy of The Social Contract and the philosophy of history of The Discourse on Inequality. The title ‘principles of the right of war’ is a bit misleading since Rousseau finds fault with claims that states have the right to go to war. He does not put forward a case for pıre pacifism or refusal to serve in wars though, it is more that h observes sadly that state do go to war and the justifying reasons that are offered.
The very existence of the state appears to be linked with war for Rousseau, and again there is no suggestion of an alternative, there is is not anarchist program. Fır Rousseau’s point of view men need the state when they leave nature (though there are other occasions where he suggests an equilibrium at the earlier stages of historical existence which follow the movement from natural to social existence. This text represents Rousseau at his most pessimistic, the pessimism is never completely absent in other writings but there is also often discussion of the moral benefits of the move from nature to society, and of the best kind of political state, even if that only amounts to what Rousseau considers to be the least bad state. There is maybe a hint of a way of distinguishing between better and worse states when he refers to the energy in a state, and the existence of more energy or will in a small state, as in the state of a small nation. Elsewhere he expands on this so that the small state needs less force and therefore grants more freedom to citizens, with more possibility of elective government, or at the limits of possibility, the pure democracy in which all decisions are made by the whole citizen body.
‘Principles of the Right of War’, is very pessimistic in in its attitude to the existence of the state, and of society itself, even by Rousseau’s standards. He takes his respect for the isolated natural individual to the extreme, as he a sees a situation where individuals were completely self-sufficent and did not need anything from other individual, but still had no wish to harm others. You might wonder how men so isolated from each other could have sympathy of any kind with others. There are very good reasons for thinking that such individuals would not develop in what we understand to be mature humans. They would not have language, and would have extreme anxiety on seeing other humans. Rousseau himself says that such natural men would be afraid of other men, and does not explain how this compatible with meeting sexual partners and reproducing the species. Elsewhere he suggests fleeting couplings, which must mean that he thinks isolated women bring up children on their own in nature. The evidence about humans at the earliest stages of social development from pre-history, or for isolated communities which have been discovered in recent times do not suggest that Rousseau is remotely correct. Clearly he is using his own imagination which is strongly conditioned by his well known paranoia and by an 18th century fascination with the possibility of human individuals developing in very isolated conditions, the Daniel Defoe novel Robinson Crusoe is the most obvious example.
Rousseau sees war as first developing at an individual level, out of the tendency of humans to compete with others for what they see as scarce resources. Rousseau comes close to denying that there is scarcity of any kind, if men restrict their desires to the basics of existence. Competition over material possessions extends into conflicts of honour. Here as elsewhere, he takes on Hobbes by asserting that when Hobbes refers to a war of all against all without the state, he is not referring to humans in the state of nature, but to men corrupted by the development of society. It is perhaps harsh to condemn Hobbes for seeing war as universal when Rousseau himself sees it as universal one we leave the most simple conditions behind. Rousseau thinks of he state as not so much ending war as transferring it to the corporate inter-state level. He recognises that the state can quell internal violence and is complimentary of St Louis (Louis IX, a 13th centuryFrench king) for repressing duels. So a moment in which Rousseau sees progress in history. Wars between states are conflicts between sovereign power which compel individuals to fight wars in which they have no interest. Wars are perpetual since states keep comparing themselves with others and wish to be more powerful than all the others. He also refers to the link between slavery and war, recognised in earlier defences of slavery from Aristotle to Locke, where slavery is seen as justified from prisoners of war. Rousseau does not justify slavery, referring to it as part of the horror of war when we deny rights to those who should have rights. He finishes with a comment on the declaration of war on the Helots, the people enslaved by the ancient Spartans when they conquered their territories. That declaration war was made by the Ephors (5 leaders of the state appointed for one year terms, sharing the non-martial powers of a king), and was a justification for enslaving the Helots, which is unnecessary says Rousseau as slavery against the enslaved. Sometimes in other texts, Rousseau idealise ancient Sparta, though of course referring only to the situation for citizens and the republican institutions they had constructed for themselves. Such apparent inconsistencies are part of Rousseau’s greatness, as he keeps pushing ideas to the limit. As Kierkegaard says, the paradox is the passion of philosophy.
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