This paper examines the political philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau—particularly his concepts of the general will, sovereignty, and the social contract—and traces their influence on the American Founding Fathers as they drafted the U.S. Constitution and authored The Federalist Papers. The paper explores how Rousseau's concerns about property, factions, and representative government informed Madison's arguments in Federalist No. 10 and No. 39, while also noting where the Framers departed from or refined Rousseau's ideas. The analysis highlights the tension between individual will and collective sovereignty, and how Madison's treatment of factions can be understood as a practical response to Rousseau's theoretical warnings.
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Jean-Jacques Rousseau is one of the European theorists most frequently cited as an inspiration for the Founding Fathers as they wrote the U.S. Constitution and created the American form of government. In some ways, however, they were using Rousseau's writings as a starting point and then seeking a governmental form that would address some of his concerns about what representative government might become if left unchecked. The authors of The Federalist Papers responded to certain of these concerns, especially those regarding factions and the effect of differences of opinion on the sovereign.
Property in its broadest sense was a concern for Rousseau, as it was for the Founding Fathers. Rousseau believed that the individual in effect owns him or herself, for he states that "no man has a natural authority over his fellow man" (Rousseau, The Basic Political Writings 144). All children are born free:
"Their liberty belongs to them; they alone have the right to dispose of it… Renouncing one's liberty is renouncing one's dignity as a man, the rights of humanity and even its duties" (Rousseau, The Basic Political Writings 144).
Yet it is the development of external property that leads to the formation of a civil society, and external property is precisely that for Rousseau — not an embodiment of rights, but a creation that signals a change from the state of nature to the state of civil society:
"The first person who, having enclosed a plot of land, took it into his head to say this is mine and found people simple enough to believe him, was the true founder of civil society… For this idea of property, depending on many prior ideas which could only have arisen successively, was not formed all at once in the human mind. It was necessary to make great progress… before arriving at this final stage in the state of nature" (Rousseau, The Basic Political Writings 60).
The right that Rousseau holds in highest regard is the social order, which he argues does not come from nature but is rather founded on conventions. Identifying these conventions is central to his project, and one of the most important forces he identifies as motivating their development — and the resulting agreement on a social order — is the general will. Rousseau was less interested in individual freedom and more concerned with making government responsive to the general will. He considered the formation and influence of groups within society and concluded that the social contract creates an environment in which the general will of the people, a unifying force, would dominate individuals and their particular wills.
Rousseau felt that once individuals came together to form a social order, what was formed was a new entity with a common life and a common will. This is the general will, and it always tends to preserve the existence and welfare of the whole. The general will is something intangible but powerful. Rousseau states that "only the general will can direct the powers of the State in such a way that the purpose for which it has been instituted, which is the good of all, will be achieved" (Rousseau, "The Social Contract" 190). It may have been the opposition of private interests that made the establishment of societies necessary, but it is the agreement of those same interests that makes society possible. These different interests share in common the bond of society, and at some point their interests must have been identical, or no society would have been possible. Now that there is a society, it is only on the basis of this common interest that it can be governed:
"I maintain, therefore, that sovereignty, being no more than the exercise of the general will, can never be alienated, and that the sovereign, who is a collective being only, can be represented by no one but himself. Power can be transmitted, but not will" (Rousseau, "The Social Contract" 190).
Sovereignty is no more than the exercise of the general will, and the sovereign is only a collective being. Rousseau draws a distinction between a particular will — any particular will — and the general will. A particular will tends toward partiality and will agree with the general will only part of the time. The general will, however, tends toward equality, leveling the many individual wills and finding some common ground. The general will determines the actions of the sovereign by giving the sovereign the power to act for the common good. The individual who does not agree with the general will on a given matter is still compelled under the social contract to accept it. This creates an interesting contradiction: the individual will finds freedom in submitting to the larger freedom of the general will.
"Factions as threats to the general will"
"Madison's constitutional solutions to faction"
"Gap between constitutional ideals and early practice"
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