Using freedom and liberty to mean the same thing, I shall discuss Rousseau’s reasons for believing that men must renounce their natural liberty in favour of a liberty, bound by the clauses of the social contract and the justification he gives for the institutions he holds are necessary to preserve a legitimate authority and will go on to discuss whether Rousseau had a ‘negative’ or a ‘positive’ concept of liberty in mind when drawing up the social contract.

Rousseau holds that by nature men are free, but left to themselves they will inevitably enslave each other. This assumption that, in the absence of some kind of common, mutually beneficial association, men will tend towards inequality and oppression, and move ever onwards in to an unjust society of slaves and masters, lies behind Rousseau’s thinking in the Social contract. He observes that the obstacles in the way of man’s preservation in the state of nature must have become too great for each individual to over-come alone; and consequently that man’s only hope for self-preservation is to form an association with others so that the sum of their forces might b

A final institution is introduced in the form of ‘civil religion.’ That is, each citizen must subscribe to some form of religion which they may choose themselves in order that they “love their duty”(On the Social Contract Bk4, chapterVIIIp96), notice that atheism is not an option. A diversity of religions should be tolerated provided that each religion includes a principle of toleration of the others, obviously if it were otherwise this would lead to conflicts within the society. In addition to this personal religion Rousseau would have each citizen subscribe to the civil religion. “Of which the sovereign would fix the articles, not exactly as religious dogmas, but as social sentiments without which man cannot be a good citizen or a faithful subject.” This social religion would have the power to banish from the state whoever does not believe them as an anti-social being and further if any citizen, having publicly recognised these doctrines, behaves as if he does not believe in them he can be punished by death. This institution appears to me to be directly opposed to the principle of uniting one’s self with all while still obeying one’s self alone and remaining as free as before.

In Sum, Rousseau suggests that man is unable to preserve his natural liberty in the state of nature and must associate himself with others in order to survive. The renunciation of natural liberty in favour of this association will not result in any less freedom, he would argue, provided that the association is based upon the social contract. The social contract will protect the liberty of each man by making him part of the Sovereign which he is subject to and thus making him both ‘co-author’ and subject of the general will of all. This ‘general will’ will promote the liberty of each citizen because “as long as several men in assembly regard themselves as a single body, they have only a single will which is concerned with their common preservation and wellbeing” (On the Social Contract Bk4, chapter I, p.71)

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