Justice as the constitutive norm of shared agency in Rousseau’s Social Contract

ABSTRACT

Kantian constitutivists, like Velleman and Korsgaard, argue that there are norms internal to individual agency. Yet as Gilbert and others have argued there may be norms internal to shared agency as well. Might political principles of justice be norms of this second kind? I turn to the history of philosophy for an answer, focusing on Rousseau’s classic work the Social Contract. Rousseau is much better known as a social contract theorist – but I argue that he is also a constitutivist about group agency. This means he is a thinker for whom success or failure in realizing the demands of justice is nothing other than success or failure in acting together. Unjust regimes, e.g. despotic ones, are ones whose members fail to genuinely act together. Interpretively, this approach has the advantage of explaining away the appearance of totalitarian tendencies in Rousseau’s thinking (‘the general will is always right’). Philosophically, it has the advantage of revealing in Rousseau’s writings what I believe is a unique type of social contract theory, resolutely non-hypothetical and normatively robust. In the closing sections, I revisit the oft-raised question of Rousseau’s relation to Rawls in light of the interpretation of the former proposed here.

KEYWORDS:

• Rousseau
• political philosophy
• constitutivism
• Korsgaard
• group agency

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 This essay has been in preparation for some time, so I owe many individuals and institutions thanks for their feedback and support. With apologies to any I have inadvertently omitted, I would here like to thank Frederick Neuhouser, Karl Schafer, Paul Schofield, Kenneth Walden, and audiences at NYU and Helsinki.

2 I cite Rousseau parenthetically in the text, using the following abbreviations: SC: The Social Contract, in The Social Contract, and Other Later Political Writings, ed. Victor Gourevitch. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. pp. 39–152 (‘SC, II.11.ii’ refers to book 2, chapter 11, paragraph 2); OC 3: Oeuvres Complètes III, ed. Bernard Gagnebin and Marcel Raymond, vol. 3. Paris: Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1959–69. DE: Discourse on Inequality in The Discourses and Other Early writings, ed. Victor Gourevitch. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. pp. 111–189.

3 Korsgaard (2009), Velleman (2000), and Katsafanas (2013) are examples of this approach.

4 The qualifier is important. A common objection to constitutivism is that it would, if true, render failure to adhere to moral norms mysterious. See Kolodny (2005). If these norms are constitutive of action, then how can we fail to act according to them? Korsgaard’s response (2009, 45–49) is that we must at least be trying to act morally, an idea reflected in my restatement of the view here. I address the ‘schmagency’ objection to constitutivism below.

5 An anonymous reviewer asks whether right and justice are synonymous. I will take it that they are, based on Rousseau’s apparent identification of them in the opening sentences of the work: ‘In this inquiry I shall try always to combine what right permits with what interest prescribes, so that justice and utility may not be disjoined’ (SC 1.1/OC 351).

6 I should here acknowledge that I am following Schofield (2012). Though not a work in history of philosophy, like mine, this unpublished dissertation also defends and attributes to Rousseau the idea of the state as a group agent with a will.

7 A more recent, and more sophisticated, version of this view is the ‘social autonomy’ interpretation defended by Neuhouser (2003, 2008), Cohen (2010) and Rawls (2008), also anticipated by Dent (1988) and Cassirer (1954, 1970). My interpretation belongs to the latter family, though I appeal to shared agency rather than collective autonomy. For a critique of the ‘social autonomy’ interpretation in favor of one that stresses happiness see Hasan (2016, 2018).

8 Katsafanas (2013).

9 (2014, 191).

10 (2009, 135–142).

11 Korsgaard (2009, Ch.9, 188 ff.)

12 Korsgaard (2014, 191)

13 I refer to A Theory of Political Obligation (2006). Rousseau is invoked regularly, though not interpreted in depth or discussed in any sustained way (2006, 15, 61, 124 n. 135 etc.). Another important difference between Gilbert and Rousseau, which Gilbert registers, is that Rousseau appeals to an actual contract. I offer a more sympathetic account of Rousseau’s case for ‘actual contract theory’ on p. 17.

14 Gilbert (1990).

15 ‘ … neither coercive circumstances nor immoral content prevents a joint commitment from obligating the parties in the usual way’ Gilbert (2006, 289).

16 Gilbert (2006, 252).

17 I thank an anonymous reviewer for reminding me of this.

18 Gilbert (2006, 290–292).

19 Miller (2008, 756).

20 But see Gilbert’s objections to ‘actual contract theory’, (‘no-agreement’ and ‘no-obligation’) which I will, unfortunately, not be able to address (2006, 70–90).

21 Another important affinity between my account and Gilbert’s concerns what is sometimes called the issue of ‘scalability’. I agree with Gilbert that the large-scale and enduring agency of corporations and states can be modeled on the small-scale, temporary shared agency of two or so people who perform some action together (Gilbert 2006, 8.3). Crucially, this depends on a non-reductive account of shared agency, which rejects Bratman’s treatment of cooperation as a matter of individual intentions ‘meshing’ in the right way. As Shapiro (2014) argues, convincingly in my view, there are serious difficulties for Bratman’s account when it is applied to ‘massively shared agency’ of corporations and states.

22 Nisbet (1943).

23 See, for example, Cohen (2010, 24 ff.), Bertram (2003, 74).

24 An important exception is Cohen (2010, 61–62).

25 In addition to those already mentioned, e.g. Gilbert, see Pettit and List (2011) and Collins (2019).

26 Gilbert (1989) cited in Pettit and List (2011, 74).

27 Most would agree that such talk is sometimes metaphorical. However, ‘singularism’ goes further in maintaining that such talk is always metaphorical.

28 Searle (2010) Tuomela and Miller (1988) are in the former camp, while Bratman (1993, 1999) belongs to the latter. Rousseau often describes the ‘general will’ in terms that suggest it is something resembling a we-intention: more specifically, he contrasts it with the ‘particular will’, for self-interested actions.

29 See Searle (2010, 52–53), who levels the circularity accusation at Tuomela and Miller (1988). I agree with Schweikard and Schmid (2020) that the accusation is inapt, as it is not clear that Tuomela intends his account to be reductive.

30 Here is Rousseau’s description of the stag hunt, which diverges slightly from more recent treatments in game theory and political philosophy: ‘If a deer was to be taken, every one saw that, in order to succeed, he must abide faithfully by his post: but if a hare happened to come within the reach of any one of them, it is not to be doubted that he pursued it without scruple, and, having seized his prey, cared very little, if by so doing he caused his companions to miss theirs’ (SC 2.9/OC 166–167).

31 ‘Over time there is some low level of experimentation with stag hunting. Eventually a small group of stag hunters comes to interact largely or exclusively with each other. This can come to pass through pure chance and the passage of time in a situation of interaction with neighbors. Or it can happen more rapidly when stag hunters find each other by means of fast interaction dynamics. The small group of stag hunters prospers and can spread by reproduction or imitation’ (Skyrms 2004, 132).

32 Korsgaard (2009, 142) also cited in her (2014, 191) uses the example of war for a similar purpose.

33 An anonymous reviewer questions whether this passage bears on justice. I take it that making an exception of oneself in the way Rousseau describes would, as he says in the final line, constitute an ‘injustice’.

34 Enoch (2006, 186).

35 Ferrero (2009), Korsgaard (2009, 1).

36 Cohen (2010, 2).

37 Rawls (1999, 11n.5).