Political Philosophy Questions

Then what is government? An intermediate body set up between the subjects and the sovereign to enable them to communicate with one another; it's job is to apply the laws and to maintain civil and political liberty

"Reflection is not the evil; but a reflective condition and the deadlock which it involves, by transforming the capacity for action into a means of escape from action, is both corrupt and dangerous"

Creating a constitution is a matter of skill: "It requires a deep knowledge of human nature and human necessities [...]. What is the use of discussing a man's abstract right to food or to medicine? The question is upon the method of procuring and administering them." (61)

Reflection is a snare in which one is caught, but, once the 'leap' of enthusiasm has been taken, the relation is a different one and becomes a noose which drags one into eternity. Reflection is and remains the hardest creditor in existence; hitherto it has cunningly bought up all the possible views of life, but it cannot buy the essentially religious and eternal view of life; on the other hand, it can tempt people astray with its dazzling brilliance, and dishearten them by reminding them of all the past. But, by leaping into the depths, one learns to help oneself, learns to love others as much as oneself, even though one is accused of arrogance and pride—because one will not accept help—or selfishness

"The pretended rights of these theorists are all extremes; and in proportion as they are metaphysically true, they are morally and politically false. The rights of men are in a sort of middle, incapable of definition, but not impossible to be discerned." (62)

"The question of dethroning [...] will always be, as it has always been, an extraordinary question of the state, and wholly out of the law; a question [...] of dispositions, and of means, and of probable consequences, rather than of positive rights. [...] The speculative line of demarcation, where obedience ought to end, and resistance must begin, is faint, obscure, and not easily definable. It is not a single act, or a single event, which determines it. Governments must be abused and deranged indeed, before it can be thought of; and the prospect of the future must be as bad as the experience of the past." (30)

We have seen that the legislative power belongs to the people and can't belong anywhere else. But the principles I have laid down make it easy to see that the executive power can't belong to the people as legislature or sovereign, because it consists wholly of particular acts that fall outside the scope of the law, and consequently of the sovereign, whose acts must always be laws

The social spirit that is to be created by these institutions would have to preside over their very foundation; and men would have to be, in advance of the laws, what they should become by means of the laws

Each man in giving himself to everyone gives himself to no-one; and the right over himself that the others get is matched by the right that he gets over each of them. So he gains as much as he loses, and also gains extra force for the preservation of what he has

After an unequivocal experience of the inefficiency of the subsisting federal government, you are called upon to deliberate on a new Constitution for the United States of America. [...] It has been frequently remarked that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force. [...]

Find a form of association that will bring the whole common force to bear on defending and protecting each associate's person and goods, doing this in such a way that each of them, while uniting himself with all, still obeys only himself and remains as free as before

This passage from the state of nature to the civil state produces a very remarkable change in man: the role that instinct used to play in his conduct is now taken over by a sense of justice, and his actions now have a moral aspect that they formerly lacked. The voice of duty has taken over from physical impulses and a sense of what is right has take over from appetite; and now—only now—the man who has until now considered only himself finds himself forced to act on different principles and to consult his reason before listening to his inclinations. In this civil state he is deprived of many advantages that he got from nature, but he gets enormous benefits in return—his faculties are so stimulated and developed, his ideas are extended, his feelings ennobled, and his whole soul uplifted.

The basic compact doesn't destroy natural inequality; rather, it replaces such physical inequalities as nature may have set up between men by an equality that is moral and legitimate, so that men who may be unequal in strength or intelligence become equal by agreement and legal right

Let us take it that men have reached the point at which the obstacles to their survival in the state of nature overpower each individual's resources for maintaining himself in that state. So this primitive condition can't go on; the human race will perish unless it changes its manner of existence

If the populace held its deliberations (on the basis of adequate information) without the citizens communicating with one another, what emerged from all the little particular wills would always be the general will, and the decision would always be good. But when plots and deals lead to the formation of partial associations at the expense of the big association, the will of each of these associations—the general will of its members—is still a particular will so far as the state is concerned; so that it can then be said that as many votes as there are men is replaced by as many votes as there are associations. The particular wills become less numerous and give a less general result. And when one of these associations is so great as to prevail over all the rest, the result is no longer a sum of small particular wills but a single particular will;

The fact is that each individual as a man can have a particular will that doesn't fit, and even conflicts with, the general will that he has as a citizen. His individual self-interest may speak to him quite differently from how the common interest does.

Now, because the sovereign is made out of nothing but its constituent individuals, it doesn't and can't have any interest contrary to theirs; so there's no need for it to provide its subjects with guarantee of treating them well, because the body can't possibly wish to hurt [...] its members [...]. The sovereign, merely by virtue of what it is, is always what it ought to be

So I give the name 'republic' to any state governed by laws, whatever form its administration takes; for only when the laws govern does the public interest govern, and the public thing is something real. Every legitimate government is republican; what government is I will explain later on

The strongest is never strong enough to be always the master unless he transforms strength into right, and obedience into duty. [...] Force is a physical power; I don't see what moral effect it can have

the total alienation of each associate, together with all his rights, to the whole community