Rousseau: a free community of equals

210 Pages·2010·1.112 MB·English

by  Rousseau, Jean-Jacques;Cohen, Joshua

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ROUSSEAU
A Free Community of Equals
Joshua Cohen
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Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Listof Abbreviations xi
Introduction 1
1. A Free Communityof Equals? 10
FreeandinChains?TheSocietyoftheGeneralWill 14
Realism?NaturalGoodnessandDemocracy 16
ThreeAims 20
2. TheSociety of the General Will 23
TheFundamentalProblem 24
ASolution:TheSocietyoftheGeneralWill 32
3. Reflectionson the General Will’sSovereignty 60
Groups,Sovereignty,Consensus,Majorities,andRights 60
ASolutiontotheFundamentalProblem? 84
4. TheNatural Goodnessof Humanity 97
ThreePropertiesofHumanNature 100
Motivations 106
NaturalGoodness 110
AGenealogyofVice 113
ComplementaryMotivations 122
NaturalGoodnessandReasonableFaith 127
5. Democracy 131
SomeInstitutionsoftheSocietyoftheGeneralWill 135
PrinciplesandInstitutions 140
FourStrategiesofArgument 145
PopularDemocracyorExecutiveDominance? 166
ADemocratAfterAll? 175
Notes 177
Bibliography 189
Index 195
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Acknowledgments
Chapters 2, 3, and 5 draw on my ‘‘Reflections on Rousseau:
AutonomyandDemocracy,’’PhilosophyandPublicAffairs15/3
(Summer 1986), 275–97. Reprinted in Christopher W. Morris
(ed.), The Social Contract Theorists: Critical Essays on Hobbes,
Locke,andRousseau(Lanham,Md.andOxford:Rowman&Lit-
tlefield,1999)(Criticalessaysontheclassics),197–213;inThom
Brooks (ed.), Rousseau and Law (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005); in
TimothyO’Hagan (ed.), Jean-JacquesRousseau(Aldershot:Ash-
gate,2007).
Chapter 4 is based on my essay ‘‘The Natural Goodness of
Humanity,’’ in Andrews Reath, Barbara Herman, and Christine
Korsgaard (eds.), Reclaiming the History of Ethics: Essays for
JohnRawls(Cambridge:CambridgeUniversityPress,1997).