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Acknowledgements
I owe a special debt to John P. McCormick for both his generous encouragements and helpful comments.
Notes
1. Cohen conceives Rousseau as ‘philosophically liberal, and sociologically communitarian’, Cohen (Citation2010, p. 22).
2. Rousseau (Citation1964), Social Contract, henceforth CS.
3. Rousseau (Citation1964), Letters Written From the Mountain, henceforth LEM.
4. See also the Dedication in the Discourse on the Origin of Inequalities, Rousseau (Citation1964, p. 113).
5. The function of Legislator is exactly to discern the correct government for a certain people in order to make them flourish (CS III, 2, p. 402). The prosperity of the people is a fundamental criterion for evaluating governments for Rousseau (CS III, 9). For the role of political success in Rousseau see Trachtenberg (Citation1993).
6. Rousseau also states that there are as many possible governments as the amount of citizens in the state (CS III, 3, p. 403), but that just one of them is the best government given the actual historical, social and economical features of that people (CS III, 1, p. 397).
7. For an account that stresses Rousseau’s approval of wealth equality and inequality in authority see Shklar (Citation1965). Moreover, for a compelling reconstruction of Rousseau’s reading of Machiavelli see Geuna (Citation2013).
8. Since the choice of magistrates is a particular decision on specific persons, the people, when taking such a decision, are already acting as a democratic government (CS III, 17, pp. 433–434), except if they decide to appoint offices by lot (which thing they should do if they want to stay a democracy: CS IV, 3, pp. 442–443). Conversely, the way elections are to be settled needs a proper law and is then matter of people’s sovereign power (CS III, 5, note p. 407; IV, 3, p. 442).
9. Rousseau envisages a specific kind of relationship between sovereign and government, which rests on the amount of people that compose the state and on how much dispersed they are. Since the larger is the state, the smaller has to be the government, a nation state will need a monarchy, despite its being the most dangerous government (CS II, 9, p. 387; III, 6, pp. 408–413; III, 10, pp. 421–423).
10. See CS III, 4, p. 404: ‘If one takes the term in its rigorous meaning, there never was a proper Democracy, and never will’.
11. As McCormick notices, Rousseau explicitly declares that the General Will is constituted ‘less by the number of voices than by the common interest that unites them’ (CS II, 4, p. 374). For a clearer identification of what the General Will consists in see also: CS II, 11, p. 391 and LEM, Ninth Letter, p. 891.
12. Even the person who should represent the maximum of objective knowledge that human beings could reach, the Legislator, does not get to directly decide the fundamental laws for the people. It is true that Rousseau concedes for him to resort to religion and divinities in order to persuade people without violence or conviction, but this does not prevent that people have to accept and confirm his propositions in order for them to become proper laws, see CS II, 7, p. 383.
13. For the same reason, this interpretation explains also Rousseau’s resolute antagonism towards political representation (CS III, 15, pp. 428–431). See on Rousseau and political representation Fralin (Citation1978) and Manin (Citation1997).
14. The kind of interest Rousseau has in mind is also normative, because it is the interest that individuals own and should recognize as human beings, and not as actual, socially determined men, with unequal wealth and power (Burgio Citation1989). Such an interest-based reading of Rousseau is different, even if compatible, with the interpretation offered by Neuhouser (Citation2008) and embraced by Rawls (Citation2007) and Cohen (Citation2010).
15. However, this makes Rousseau’s approval of Roman clienteles, that McCormick criticizes, even more striking (CS IV, 4, p. 450).
16. For a fascinating and convincing analysis of Rousseau’s works in this light, see Silvestrini (Citation2010).
17. The analysis of Roman tribunes is very compelling: Rousseau clearly blames them for the fall of Roman republic, but in quite a contradictory way. On one hand, they were guilty of abuse of power (CS IV, 5, p. 454); on the other hand, he declares that under their institution Rome became ‘the capital of the world’ (so they were fundamental) and they ruined Rome by not contrasting consuls’ armed power (so consuls were the major responsible and blameworthy for the republic’s fall). Moreover, it is not obvious how they could have saved Rome if they were given only negative veto power, as Rousseau himself suggests in the Social Contract. See LEM, Ninth Letter, pp. 879–880; CS IV, 5, pp. 453–455.