Rousseau and Burke on Revolution: Comparing Their Views

Introduction: Two Revolutionary Thinkers

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (June 28, 1712 – July 2, 1778) left a legacy as one of the finest Western thinkers. He was a Franco-Swiss writer, philosopher, political theorist, and self-schooled composer of the Age of Enlightenment. Rousseau's political ideas served to guide the French Revolution, the development of socialist theory, and the growth of nationalism — some credit him with inspiring America's famous isolationism as well. His legacy as a radical and revolutionary is perhaps best demonstrated by his most famous line, drawn from his most important work, The Social Contract: "Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains."

Edmund Burke (1729–1797), by contrast, is most famous for his writings opposing the French Revolution, and his Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) is widely regarded as a founding text of modern conservative thought. Yet, as this paper argues, both thinkers were ultimately proponents of revolution — they differed chiefly on what makes a particular revolution justified.

Rousseau's Philosophy of Human Nature and Society

Rousseau's views on revolution are drawn from a fundamental divide he saw between society and human nature. He contended that man was good by nature — a "noble savage" in the state of nature, the condition humankind shared with all other animals before the creation of civilization — but that society corrupts him. Rousseau saw society as entirely artificial and argued that the growth of social interdependence had, over time, been deeply harmful to human well-being. In this sense, society breeds the conditions for revolution almost by definition.

According to Rousseau, society's negative effect on naturally good men centers on its transformation of amour de soi — a positive, instinctive self-love — into amour-propre, or pride. Rousseau argued that amour de soi generates the human desire for self-preservation in conjunction with the power of reason. Amour-propre, by contrast, is not natural but artificial: it forces man to compare himself to others, creating unwarranted fear and allowing men to take pleasure in the pain or weakness of those around them. Revolution, for Rousseau, stems from amour de soi and is therefore pure — a genuine and uncorrupted force for change.

In his Discourse on the Arts and Sciences (1750), Rousseau approached revolution from a different angle. He asserted that the arts and sciences had not benefited mankind, because both were advanced not in response to human needs but as products of pride and vanity — amour-propre. The opportunities they created for idleness and luxury led directly to the corruption of man. Rousseau further argued that the growth of knowledge had rendered governments increasingly powerful while destroying individual liberty, and that material progress had undermined sincere friendship, replacing it with jealousy, fear, and suspicion.

Here, Rousseau grounds his belief in revolution in his deep distrust of the impact that society and learning have on man. Revolution becomes a way of abandoning the corrupting effects of material civilization — a way in which human energy can be turned not toward idleness but toward genuine renewal in government and social organization.

Rousseau's Discourse on Inequality (1754) traced the progress and degeneration of mankind from a natural state to modern society. He argued that the earliest human beings were isolated semi-apes distinguishable from animals only by their capacity for free will and their perfectibility. These earliest humans were also infused with a basic drive toward self-care and an inherent inclination toward compassion or pity. Society changed this: as humans were forced by population growth to socialize more closely, they underwent a psychological transformation and came to value the opinions of others as an essential component of their own well-being.

This is how revolution became possible for Rousseau. Had man retained the independent thinking of earlier times, he could never have socialized with other humans to form a common understanding and coordinate to overthrow a government. Socialization, though harmful in many respects, thus contributed to man's capacity to engage in collective revolution. Rousseau correlated this new social self-awareness with a golden age of human flourishing, but reasoned that the subsequent development of agriculture and metallurgy, private property, and the division of labor led to increased interdependence and inequality. Self-awareness, then, gave man both the ability and the reason to start a revolution.

Rousseau's Social Contract and the Seeds of Revolution

The resulting state of social conflict led Rousseau to argue that the first political state was created as a kind of social contract imposed at the insistence of the richest and most powerful members of the community. This original social contract was, in Rousseau's view, deeply skewed: the wealthy and powerful deceived the general population, thereby cementing inequality as a permanent feature of human society. Rousseau's own idea of the social contract can be understood as a legitimate alternative to this false and degrading form of association. At the end of the Discourse on Inequality, Rousseau argues that the desire to hold value in the eyes of others — which originated in the golden age — ultimately undermines personal integrity and authenticity in a society marked by interdependence, hierarchy, and inequality.

The Social Contract, published in 1762, is arguably Rousseau's most important work. It outlines the basis for a legitimate political order and remains one of the most enduring works of abstract political thought in the Western tradition. Building on the Discourse on Inequality, Rousseau argued that the state of nature eventually degenerates into a brutish condition without law or morality, at which point the human race must adopt institutions of law or perish. In this degenerate phase, man is subject to frequent competition with his fellow men while simultaneously becoming increasingly dependent on them — a double pressure that attacks both his survival and his freedom.

When freedom is threatened, the seeds of revolution are planted. According to Rousseau, by joining together through the social contract and relinquishing their claims of natural right, individuals are able both to preserve themselves and to remain free. This occurs because submission to the authority of the general will — the collective will of the people — protects individuals from being subordinated to the wills of others, while ensuring that they obey themselves because they are, collectively, the authors of the law.

Even so, Rousseau draws a sharp distinction between the sovereign and the government. For Rousseau, the government is charged with implementing and enforcing the general will and is composed of a smaller group of citizens he called magistrates. He was firmly opposed to the idea that individuals should exercise sovereignty through a representative assembly; rather, citizens should make the laws directly. Much of the subsequent controversy surrounding Rousseau's work has focused on his claim that citizens constrained to obey the general will are thereby rendered free.

Drawing these arguments together, Rousseau saw revolution as not only necessary but pure and free of pride — a true force for change, engendered by man's socialization which, paradoxically, gave man the capacity to wage a revolution while simultaneously planting the seeds of inequity that made revolution necessary.

Conclusion: Agreement Beneath the Disagreement

Ultimately, both Burke and Rousseau were proponents of revolution. Rousseau wrote: "Europe had fallen back into the barbarity of the first ages. People from this part of the world, so enlightened today, lived a few centuries ago in a state worse than ignorance. Some sort of learned jargon much more despicable than ignorance had usurped the name of knowledge and set up an almost invincible obstacle in the way of its return. A revolution was necessary to bring men back to common sense, and it finally came from a quarter where one would least expect it."

Burke agreed in principle, as his own writings demonstrate — however, he did not believe the French Revolution qualified as a legitimate one. In his view, it was rooted only in economic inequity rather than in political underrepresentation and purity of ideals.

Rousseau, on the other hand, felt firmly that economic inequities translate directly into the need for revolution and that, as an expression of amour de soi, revolution is motivated by something outside the dangerous domain of pride. Pride, for Burke, was precisely what motivated the French Revolution — and therefore the reason he argued so powerfully against it.

In this way, the disagreement between Rousseau and Burke is less absolute than it first appears. Both men accepted revolution as a legitimate political act; they disagreed about what made any given revolution legitimate. For Rousseau, the driving force of genuine revolution was humanity's natural impulse toward self-preservation and freedom. For Burke, legitimacy depended on tradition, caution, and a principled rather than merely economic grievance. These two frameworks remain among the most influential in the history of political thought.

Bibliography

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. Discourse on the Arts and Sciences, 1750.

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. Discourse on the Origin and Basis of the Inequality of Men, 1754.

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. The Social Contract, 1762.

Burke, Edmund. Reflections on the Revolution in France, 1790.