Rousseau’s Social Contract, part 5
In Book 2, Chapters 4 and 5, we’re covering “The Limits of the Sovereign Power” and “The Right of Life and Death.” Rousseau has finally seemed to realize that the framework he is building is incredibly totalitarian, and has started to backpedal FURIOUSLY.
Full show notes here.
The problem is that his backpedaling doesn’t actually fix anything. He ends up creating a bunch of distinctions that can never be measured, since they supposedly dwell in the will of a phantom. He tries coming up with a tricky and weird definition of Law, which he fails to carefully explain. He makes arguments about universality of the general will that can easily be sidestepped by a clever tyrant. He puts forward a surface-level interesting concept for justice, then immediately contradicts it. He even fails again to treat man “as he is,” arguing that “good” governments won’t have much crime without realizing that inequality is not the only rationale for criminals, and without explaining how there can be “good” and “bad” governments if the State is infallible.
Plus, he starts to get really desperate with a bunch of statements that are basically, “Let me cook! It’ll totally make sense eventually!”
It’s not very effective…
This video is available on Odysee, YouTube, and BitChute.
Return to the table of contents for this series.
Reference links
First two chapters of Locke’s Second Treatise, including a link to Richard Hooker’s book:
https://marginalnonhermit.com/?p=663
Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10615
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10616
George Orwell’s 1984:
https://archive.org/details/1984novelbygeorg0000eric/page/4/mode/2up
Critique of Chapter 12 of Kropotkin’s Conquest of Bread:
https://marginalnonhermit.com/?p=754
Intro quote is from Human Action, which you can read here:
https://mises.org/library/book/human-action
Intro music by Egor Gandukhin, courtesy Pixabay:
https://pixabay.com/users/sounddelicious-44481665/