Rousseau’s Dilemmas. A critical reading of The Social Contract

  • Marta Nunes da Costa Universidade Federal do Mato Grosso do Sul, Brasil
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1489211
Keywords: Freedom, General Will, Legislator, Rousseau, Sovereignty

Abstract

The Second Discourse ends in a tone of negative critique, without offering a set of proposals that could contribute to transform the actual society in an ideal, although realistic, one. On the other hand, The Social Contract offers the grounds for this project; a project, which is not only political but mainly a project of transformation of human nature through politics, institutions and education. The concept of popular sovereignty plays a key role in this task: it transforms «the people» into the sovereign historical subject; and it does so by unfolding in the concept of General will. Through this, Rousseau is temporarily capable of conciliating the project of recovery of human freedom with the project of a well-ordered society where the common good becomes the regulative ideal. However, Rousseau lives in a permanent dilemma: the abyss between what i tis and what it should be. The politics of immanence converts itself in a politics of dualism, incarnated in the figure of the Legislator.

Author Biography

Marta Nunes da Costa, Universidade Federal do Mato Grosso do Sul, Brasil

MARTA NUNES DA COSTA, is Adjunct Professor of Philosophy at the Universidade Federal do Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil. PhD in Philosophy and Politics at the New School for Social Research, USA. Her research topics are ethics, theorical and philosophical politics, theories of democracy, modern and contemporary philosophy. She is the head of the research group «Grupo de Estudos Democráticos» (CNPQ). She published, among the others, the books: Modelos Democráticos (Belo Horizonte: Arraes Editora, 2013); and Redefining Individuality (Braga: Húmus, 2010).

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Published
2017-12-22
How to Cite
[1]
Nunes da Costa, M. 2017. Rousseau’s Dilemmas. A critical reading of The Social Contract. Disputatio. 6, 7 (Dec. 2017), 43-80. DOI:https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1489211.
Issue
Vol. 6 No. 7 (2017)
Section
Articles and Essays

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