[Odyssey] The Social Contract Dilemma Born of an Imagined “State of Nature”

Perhaps the most controversial topic among liberals is the social contract. What makes this debate paradoxical is that the social contract was, after all, advanced by a liberal, John Locke. Of course, the social contract was not Locke’s alone; Rousseau and Hobbes also advocated social contract theory. Whether Rousseau and Hobbes themselves should be regarded as liberals is likewise controversial. For liberals, this social contract is one of the sea monsters encountered by Ulysses in the Odyssey.

Social contract theory is a methodology that treats the stage prior to human society—or, strictly speaking, prior to the state—as “nature,” and examines the origin and essence of the state and law by asking what human beings were like in that natural condition. What is interesting is that Locke, Rousseau, and Hobbes all constructed this human state of nature imaginatively, not on the basis of empirical evidence or data. In that sense, social contract theory can be seen as a kind of imaginary “thought experiment.” Einstein’s theory of relativity also began as a thought experiment, but in the thought experiments of these social contract theorists there was no law or principle present from the outset. Nevertheless, this thought experiment called the “state of nature” was persuasive to intellectuals of the time because, under the currents of modern Enlightenment thought, individualism—which viewed the individual as the foundation of society—was highly fashionable. The representative work was Robinson Crusoe. Accordingly, the individual in social contract theory presupposes atomic and isolated individuals. What must be kept in mind here is that the individual in Rousseau’s and Hobbes’s social contract theories is also related to Leibniz’s monadology, especially the idea that “monads have no windows”—that is, monads are independent of one another and do not interact. The individual in modern Enlightenment thought, especially in French continental rationalism deeply influenced by Descartes, may be said to be precisely this Leibnizian monadic individual.

In this state of nature within French Enlightenment thought, individuals act by calculating only their own gain and loss. Naturally, Hobbes assumed that in such a state of nature individuals would be hostile to one another. The “war of all against all” could only be a natural phenomenon in the state of nature, and thus Hobbes came to advocate the necessity of an absolute sovereign—Leviathan—to overcome this merciless and belligerent natural condition, a ruler to whom all promise obedience through a social contract.

Locke of England broadly agreed with Hobbes on the need to overcome the state of nature and thus raised the need for civil government. Locke differed, however, in emphasizing that in the state of nature individuals were not, as Hobbes held, in a condition of war of all against all, but rather that a spontaneously cooperative order was its essence. These heterogeneous premises regarding the state of nature in Hobbes and Locke later appeared in international political theory as realism based on Hobbes’s perspective and liberalism based on Locke’s. Rousseau, however, thought differently.

Imaginary Thought Experiment, the “State of Nature”

Rousseau also advocated the social contract, but he criticized both Hobbes and Locke. In The Social Contract, Rousseau argues that both Locke and Hobbes presupposed not a true state of nature but an already socialized condition. In other words, if, as Hobbes claimed, individuals in the state of nature are fighting one another, that is only because they have already entered into the order called society. Rousseau believed that in a true state of nature the individual would be a primitive being concerned with no one else, pursuing only his own happiness. In nature, then, the individual was self-sufficient; when he encountered the strong, he fled, and the strong likewise had no interest in the weak. In fact, nature documentaries show us that Rousseau was right on this point.

Predatory beasts that occupy the top of the hierarchy in nature do not fight among themselves over devouring one another. Lions and leopards do not strive to catch weaker animals such as gazelles unless they are hunting. If human beings in the state of nature are fighting one another, then something must already be introducing inequality among individuals, and that inequality is producing envy and anger. Such a condition, Rousseau thought, is not a state of nature but already a social condition. In short, for Rousseau there can be no conflict in the state of nature.

If so, Locke’s state of nature also becomes problematic. If individuals in a Lockean state of nature are engaging in voluntary cooperation, then it is no longer a state of nature. For this reason, Rousseau criticized both Locke and Hobbes for forcing interpretations of the state of nature in order to justify their own political claims.

Rousseau’s criticism poses a serious question to liberals. He is in effect asking: is not this state of liberty you liberals speak of merely a device for advancing your own political interests? Rousseau’s resistance to Locke’s proprietary liberalism, and his claim that it amounted to little more than political justification for the bourgeoisie, was clearly revealed in his response to Locke’s argument for natural rights.

Locke was deeply angered when royalists attacked the theory of civil government by asserting that the king possessed a natural right granted by God—that is, the divine right of kings. In response, Locke came to argue, “We too, not only the king, have received the same rights from God.” This was less a principled argument than a kind of political denunciation. The royalist doctrine of divine right and the civic faction’s doctrine of natural rights were less universal principles than what today we would call factional logic. Ultimately, from Rousseau’s point of view, the social contract theories of Locke and Hobbes were nothing more than attempts to define the human state of nature according to their own political interests, and therefore fictional. If so, was Rousseau’s own social contract not fictional?

Rousseau’s “Desire for Recognition,” Which Adam Smith Missed

Rousseau argued that the state of nature, in which individuals had been free, independent, and equal, fell into inequality with the emergence of private property. Once someone claims something in nature as “mine” and begins excluding others from possessing or using it, those unable to appropriate such things compare themselves with the owners and experience a kind of deprivation and alienation.

Rousseau reflected that social conditions generate inequality, inequality generates struggle, and struggle gives rise to the state. In other words, inequality emerged together with society, and the state (government) was formed along with it.

Rousseau called this psychological characteristic of human beings the “desire for recognition.” Rousseau’s reflection here suggests an important contrast with Adam Smith of Britain, who observed that human nature contains not only self-interest—the desire to benefit oneself—but also a third-party observer who sympathizes with the misfortune and sorrow of others.

According to Rousseau, human beings have an “emotion of anger.” This is not Adam Smith’s kind of anger, which sympathizes with the unjust suffering of others, but anger at not being recognized by others. Of course, Rousseau did not claim such anger was justified. Rousseau was far removed from modern communism or socialism. For Rousseau, the limit of inequality was that it should not reach the point where one would “sell oneself for money.”

Rousseau saw through the fact that in society this desire for recognition can lead either to personal striving or to anger. It is here that one realizes how profoundly Rousseau influenced the political shift from the night-watchman state of the era of natural rights and liberties to the modern welfare state grounded in social rights and liberties.

How, then, should liberals assess Rousseau’s claim? Is it something to be accepted, or rejected? What political meaning and consequences does it carry?

The liberal’s arduous odyssey continues.

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Original title: [오디세이] 상상된 ‘자연상태’가 빚은 사회계약의 딜레마

Author: Jeong-seok Han

Date: 2020-12-30

Source: https://www.cfe.org/bbs/bbsDetail.php?cid=column&pn=5&idx=23387