Given the overall task of this book (that is, to calibrate Western philosophy for India), I want to undertake the following to accomplish this task. One, I want to begin a new interpretation of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) that is different from and not undertaken by anyone so far, thereby demonstrating my competence to handle texts from the West. Two, I want to establish a new connection; namely, that Rousseau is the founder of a new social institution: the old age home. This connection has not been made earlier. This further serves two purposes: one, it enhances my competence to deal with Western philosophers; and two, it provides an opportunity which eluded the attention of the West for Indians in reflecting about old age. This, thus, provides me an opportunity to demonstrate my ability to handle philosophical texts from the West and to calibrate Western philosophy for India.
Despite Rousseau’s location within the radical project of modernity, there have been attempts to relate him to pre-modern traditions, where, to make a different use of Patrick Riley, his radicalism “waxes a bit” and the pre-modern tradition “wanes a little” (1986: ix). A concerted attempt was made by Judith Shklar and Patrick Riley to accomplish this. Contesting that, this chapter points out how these attempts have ignored – not inadvertently, but conveniently – the Cartesian legacy. Descartes inaugurated the radical project of modernity, which was inherited and significantly extended by Rousseau. This chapter explicates the limitations of these interpretations by relating Rousseau with Descartes.
Following a brief discussion of Shklar and Riley in the first section, the next will undertake a new reading of The Social Contract. This will avoid the existing practice of cherry-picking that can relapse into cherry-pecking of his political ideas. Further, this section explicates the nature of the frame of the text – namely, inquiry – announced by Rousseau right at the outset. The third section discusses various ideas and claims regarding his rejection of slavery, which is surrounded by rhetoric rather than justification. The last section highlights how he lays the foundation of a new social institution; namely, the old age home.
The discussion on the ‘waxing’ of the radicalism of Rousseau conveniently centers around the concept of ‘general will’ and avoids any mention of his radical and novel ideas such as the autonomous individual in the state of nature that seeks to disinherit the entire past, his rejection of slavery, or his uncompromising plea for liberty and freedom. Considering these ideas will obstruct their rendering of Rousseau’s relation with his predecessors. Both Shklar and Riley largely focus on the concept of general will. Shklar does concede that this concept is “ineluctably the property of … Rousseau”; however, she adds that he “did not invent it.” She claims that “Father Malebranche was the first well-known writer to put the words ‘general will’ to philosophical use” (1973: 275); it was, she says in another place, also used earlier by Montesquieu and Diderot (1985: 168). Not only does she reduce Rousseau’s claim on the authorship of the idea of general will, she goes on to reduce its importance, by claiming that it “does very little”. She recommends that contrary to general will, people “must merely hold [on] to [their] … ancient laws and customs which, thanks to the wisdom of the legislator, are the main source of its well-being” (in Shklar 1973: 277, original emphasis). The most important ancient laws for Shklar are those of Sparta and Rome. Highlighting their significance for Rousseau, she says that they were “not merely private daydreams for Rousseau”. According to her, he used them negatively as swords to “smite his contemporaries” and positively as “an image of the perfectly socialized man, the citizen whose entire life is absorbed by his social role” (1985: 13).
Continuing this line of argument pursued by Shklar, Riley claims that “Rousseau is not conceivable without Augustine and various seventeenth-century transformations of Augustinianism” (1982: 5). He, too, endorses her when he reiterates that Rousseau
wanted will to take a particular form; he wanted voluntarism to legitimize what he conceived to be the unity and cohesiveness, the generality of ancient polity, particularly of Sparta and of republican Rome.
(1982: 99)
Comparing the relation between “hidden seventeenth-century theological roots of” general will and Rousseau, Riley says, is like the relation between ‘art-history’ to ‘art’ and ‘music-history’ to ‘music’ where the former is “something secondary but not inconsequential” (1982: xiv).1
Both Shklar’s and Riley’s interpretations reduce the radicalism in Rousseau and focus on the concept of general will. Skhlar is quite categorical in her declaration that “Rousseau’s general will was [not] … a plan for revolution” (1973: 278). They do not take into consideration other radical ideas in Rousseau. This cherry-picking of just one concept – namely, general will – axiomatically resulted in larger conclusions that were determined by premises rather than a comprehensive discussion of all the ideas in the text. In the context of locating Rousseau within the pre-modern tradition, Riley reluctantly concedes that Rousseau did give general will “an almost wholly secular turn: the city steps into God’s place” (1982: 109). The expression ‘almost wholly’ reveals his reluctance. Riley does not explain the nature of the turn towards secularism, nor does he give any importance to it. This is evident as he finally loses what is gained through this ‘secular turn’ by rendering the modern city inside the theological concept of God. Instead of recognising the difference in kind between the classical and the modern, thereby acknowledging the radicalism in Rousseau, Riley concedes only a degree of difference and neutralises it. This attempt at focusing on a convenient concept like general will – not factoring in other important and fundamental ideas such as autonomy of the individual, freedom, or rejection of slavery – presents a distorted picture of Rousseau by not properly recognising his relation with Descartes. This is evident in the following passage by Shklar:
To Madame d’Houdetot, Rousseau wrote of his bottomless doubts. To resolve them he followed Descartes into his own mind, and also found the cogito. Beyond that every doctrine of Descartes was refuted later by philosophers.
(1985: xiv)
While conceding how Rousseau took Descartes’s help to resolve his ‘bottomless doubts’, she is quick to cover this with an abrupt judgement by declaring how every doctrine of Descartes was later refuted by philosophers. She thus erases the importance of Descartes and renders Rousseau’s use of him not very significant. This chapter seeks to correct the distortion and relocate Rousseau within the project of modernity by retracing the Cartesian lineage.
In explicating Rousseau’s relation with Descartes, this chapter focuses on discussing some novel ideas in The Social Contract. While rereading this enigmatic text, let me, at the outset make two preliminary clarifications about it.
First, having sustained interest and gained enduring value through the centuries, this text has two aspects to it: one, the radical political ideas; and second, the rhetorical force that pushes at least some of these ideas. The rhetorical aspect of Rousseau is identified – but not elaborated on – by Ronald Grimsley (1973: 19). He points out how “logical argument or a historical demonstration” in “Discours sur les sciences et les arts is not particularly impressive”. And how Rousseau has not offered adequate explanation in proposing a:
necessary connection between the corruption of man’s moral life and the development of culture and that the ancient republics of Greece and Rome were morally superior to large modern states may or may not be true.
(1973: 19)
I want to highlight the rhetorical aspect, apparent not only when explaining the contemporary corruption of man’s moral life with reference to the ancient republics, but also in the normative political proposals in The Social Contract. Between these two aspects that are present in the text, while logic and argumentation consolidate the first quality, lyrical value and an underlying speed of statement propels the reader from one sentence or idea to the next. The ensuing momentum in the rhetoric pushes the reader away from reflecting and rationally understanding the meaning of the idea. I realised that texts, particularly the classics, have their own speed. Speed can vary at different places, even within a text. Sometimes the text moves, or allows us to move, at one speed. It may subsequently, though not predictably, become faster at some places and slower at others. The speed operates more at the realm of rhetoric and less with rational justification.
Second, the text can be divided into two broad parts. One is the frame, while the other consists of the ideas that are presented and organised, at times loosely, within the frame. Not recognising this difference led to Shklar and Riley cherry-picking ideas from Rousseau and constructing a maze that distorts his ideas. In doing so, they have neither distinguished the content from the frame nor paid any attention to the latter. This chapter distinguishes content from frame and highlights the importance of the frame, thus offering a new reading of Rousseau. With this background, let me proceed with rereading the text.
Inquiry: The first sentence is of paramount importance. It is the key, as it succinctly frames the text. The impact of this prevails throughout, so the framing of the text not only needs to be acknowledged, but also distinguished from the rest of the text. Commenting on the first sentence of the text, Victor Gourevitch makes an apt observation when he says that the Social Contract “begins with ‘I’ and ends with ‘myself’ ” (1997: xv). He adds:
The aim therefore is, as Rousseau announces in the very first sentence of the Social Contract,
to inquire whether in the civil order there can be some legitimate and sure rule of administration, taking men as they are, and the laws as they can be: In this inquiry I shall try always to combine what right permits with what interest prescribes, so that justice and utility may be disjoined.
He goes on to add,
Whereas the principles of natural right are derived from ‘the natural man’, the principles of right are derived from ‘men as they are,’ here and now, and whose amour proper, individual interests and common utility or common good have to be taken into account.
(1997: xvi–xvii)
Gourevitch makes a good observation about the beginning and ending of the text – that it begins with ‘I’ and ends with ‘myself’. Moreover, he also refers to the first sentence of the text. He pays attention to ideas such as how principles of natural right are derived from the nature of man, whereas principles of political right are derived from men as they are. However, the word ‘inquire’ that is present in the first part of the sentence eludes the attention of Gourevitch. I wish to argue that it is the fundamental concept that provides a frame, and considering this will radically change our understanding of this text.
Let me explicate the nature of this framing and revisit this first sentence differently. The text begins with “I mean to inquire” (Rousseau 1952: 30). Let us pause at this stage and reflect on this enigmatic word, ‘inquire’. I reread the entire text keeping this word in mind and found that the impact of this word pervades the entire text and, like a frame, holds it together. The entire text is an inquiry, and while Rousseau might not have given enough justification for his assertions, he casts the entire text in the format of inquiry. This mode of inquiry brought freshness and has greatly enchanted readers. Without it, the text would be like a painting without a frame, which cannot be hung on the wall.
However, the modern reader, in the eagerness to pick up radical modern political ideas or concepts, often tends to bypass this frame and proceed directly to harvest ideas organised within the frame. Books on political philosophy have rarely paid attention to this first sentence, nor recognised its importance, thus rendering it dispensable. Most in fact head straight to the passage in the fourth paragraph in Chapter I, “Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains” (Rousseau 1952: 3). This oft-quoted statement has dominated the reading of this work. Due to the strong focus on this radical statement, the first sentence – particularly the word ‘inquire’ – lost its visibility, and its meaning remained obscure. However, I find that our understanding of this text will be considerably compromised if we do not study this first sentence and recognise important elements in it, including some fundamental words. Before proceeding further, I wish to stop for a moment and closely scrutinise the word ‘inquire’.
In declaring his project to be an inquiry at the outset, Rousseau, I would like to argue, is performing three tasks. One, he is – unlike Shklar’s and Riley’s attempts to relate him to pre-modern traditions – rejecting the path followed in the classical philosophies. Two, while largely following the path charted by Descartes, he is making some modifications to it. In addition, three, he is declaring the nature of his path. To begin with, he is rejecting the path followed by classical philosophies where the truth has already been laid out and the task is to discover it. This ancient path pervades Greek philosophy. Referring to this, Leo Strauss says that traditional natural law is “primarily and mainly an objective” rule and measure, a binding order prior to and independent of the human will (1966: vii–viii). The human being merely has to receive these pre-established truths passively. It is against this background that the importance of the term ‘inquire’ needs to be recognised.
Two, he is also distinguishing his path from that of Descartes, the father of modern philosophy. While the Cartesian method is largely preoccupied with doubt and seeks to establish certainty, Rousseau’s method is one of inquiry. Whereas Descartes moves from doubt to arrive at certainty, Rousseau moves from inquiry – which is different from doubt – to a lighter form of certainty; that is, ‘sure’. This is clear in the first sentence. To quote, “I mean to inquire if, in the civil order, there can be any sure and legitimate rule of administration” (1952: 3). Here the inquiry is not about abstract things like in Descartes but about civil order and if it can support a sure and legitimate rule of administration. Thus, the civil order has to fulfil two important requirements: one, a form of certainty or surety, thereby reflecting the Cartesian concern; and two, legitimacy, which locates or anchors the project within a political domain. Rousseau prefers the method of inquiry instead of the Cartesian method of doubt in which extremism leads to counter-extremism, or certainty. Inquiry can be less extreme and more open-ended.
Lastly, the open-ended nature of inquiry is an intrinsic part of Rousseau’s positive project, which is prefaced by rejecting the methods of classical theories and distinguishing itself from Descartes’s method of doubt. By way of extending the discussion on this positive project, I now bring into the format of inquiry the reader of the text, alongside the author. Here let me introduce a distinction between Rousseau, who is inquiring, and those who read the nature of this inquiry. While he has rejected the path followed by classical theories and, in a radical departure, has also distinguished his path from Descartes’s. The path cleared by Rousseau remains at the level of the author who, in this case, is Rousseau. However, texts cover not only authors but also readers. There is a possibility and a need to extend the open-endedness of inquiry to include the reader. This radical text can have two kinds of readers: one, like the classical reader, who reads and receives it passively; two, those who read it in the mode of critical inquiry as proposed by Rousseau. The first one can ultimately relapse into the orthodoxy that Rousseau seeks to dismantle. The second kind of reader on the other hand seeks to critically engage with the text and maintain continuity with the main tenor of the author.
Unlike discovery, inquiry, in addition to being open-ended, need not remain author-centered. The author might behave like a classical thinker in transmitting to the reader what he or she has seen in this inquiry. The reader would in turn receive it passively, thus compromising on the extent of radicalism in modernity. Like the author – in this case, Rousseau – the reader, too, needs to be alert and be a co-inquirer in this pursuit. This would make it a joint venture or a cooperative pursuit, deeply involving the reader in exploring new paths.
Not recognising Rousseau’s attempt to dismantle the classical path à la Shklar and Riley and distinguish it from Descartes’s can amount to discounting his contribution. More importantly, there is further danger that one might receive these ideas outside the purview of the path of inquiry; for instance, in the traditional mode of ‘final truth’. This would breach the radicalism set by Rousseau. Alternatively, as already pointed out, if we receive these ideas outside the new path Rousseau has laid, they will lose their dynamism and remain static. To avoid these consequences, we need to consider the fundamental status of the word ‘inquire’.
Alternatively, the idea of inquiry in Rousseau has two facets: one negative, the other positive. The followers of modernity and the subsequent scholarship did not pay enough attention to the negative aspect in their preoccupation with the positive aspects. It is important to pay attention to the negative aspect too in order to recognise the radical project of modernity. It not only lays a new path; the ingenuity of the new path lies in the way it unleashes its critique of the pre-modern philosophies that follow the path of discovering the already existing truth.
Let me support this by referring to something similar. Henri M. Peyre says of French poet Arthur Rimbaud that he no longer used language to transmit “a preexisting meaning to express and convey a feeling or an idea. It became a sacred value … aiming at ‘changing life,’ … at creating what did not yet exist” (1973: vi).
Therefore, there are two levels: one, foundational; the other, ordinary. What Peyre claims on behalf of the poet with regard to language is true of the new thinking initiated and sustained by Rousseau. The first sentence is to be taken as a frame or a foundation, supporting the entire text, hence to be distinguished from other sentences. Consequently, it must be recognised that the subsequent political ideas that drew the attention of scholars comprise the edifice built on this foundation. By not recognising this architectural design or not excavating this buried foundation, we will have compromised, if not distorted, the understanding of this text.
Having fixed the frame, I now move a little further and note in the same sentence another seminal idea, which may not have eluded the attention of as many as the word inquiry perhaps did. This is the distinction between ‘is’ and ‘ought’. He wants to take men as they are and laws as they ought to be, to explore the nature of finding out about the ‘sure’ and ‘legitimate’ rule of administration. Let me scrutinise the two words ‘sure’ and ‘legitimate’ inserted within the larger frame of the distinction between ‘is’ and ‘ought’, between men being taken as they are, and laws as they should be. For me, the more important term here is ‘sure’ rather than the political term ‘legitimate’. One way of understanding this desire to frame legitimacy with sure ground is to see the Cartesian connection. The major preoccupation of Descartes is for certainty, certainty in the human realm. So, the certainty or sure ground that Rousseau is looking for, or seeking to ensure, has Descartes in the background.
In this first sentence, in addition to the significance of the term inquire, there is a distinction introduced between ‘is’ and ‘ought’, and legitimacy is sought to be specifically grounded on sure foundations. The radical project of modernity is revealed not only by looking forward to or reading the next sentence in the text but also by contrasting it with previous theories. So, this first sentence of the book frames the text. The next section discusses different, intricate, and incomplete ideas of freedom and Rousseau’s arguments for the rejection of slavery.
Now let me turn to that famous line, “Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains” (Rousseau 1952: 3). I want to closely scrutinise various components of this enigmatic sentence. There is a political message in this powerful statement that caught the imagination of millions and inspired them into political action. I want to distinguish between the idea and the rhetoric, two traits of this sentence, and lay bare the relation between them.
Let me begin by asserting that Rousseau takes human beings to be, by nature, in the state of freedom. Alternatively, he rejects the thesis that human beings are naturally in bondage. Thus, he institutes the autonomy of free individuals right at the outset. Claiming that human beings are by nature in the state of freedom and not in bondage is different from asserting that the human being who is in bondage needs to be freed subsequently. Before recognising the performative power of the claim that man is born free, let us ask in what sense this claim is to be understood. If one begins to reflect on the claims and meaning of the statement, one finds it difficult to understand when and how man is born free. It is not factually correct to claim freedom for the act of birth when in all respect there is dependency that surrounds it. Moreover, Rousseau himself admits at the beginning of the next section that children are dependent on the father.
Now let us turn to the next idea in this statement. Having made this fundamental claim about the idea of an autonomous free individual, Rousseau turns his attention to the unnatural phenomenon called bondage. He says “and everywhere he is in chains”. Unlike the previous claim, this is not difficult to accept, as there is indeed bondage all around. Therefore, we have the first claim that is difficult to understand and the second idea that is easy to understand. Further, there is a difference, even opposition, between the first and the second; namely, what was and what is. What was, is the state of freedom. However, what is, is the state of bondage. So bondage, unlike freedom, is not natural. Man is living in an unnatural state.
The underlying structure of this statement reveals the opposition between two states, the state of freedom and the state of bondage. While we need no explanation to understand the process from freedom to freedom or slavery to slavery, the process from freedom to bondage does require explanation. Rousseau undertakes this in the sentence after the next, when he asks “How did this change come about?” (1952: 3). That is, how did the change from freedom to bondage come about? There is a variance, an opposition, or even mutual exclusiveness between the previous and the subsequent stages. His answer to this question is he does not “know” (1952: 3). What is interesting is that, in the context of admitting that he does not know the explanation for this heterogeneous, oppositional transformation, where the present is the opposite of the previous, he makes two stunning moves that further dissociate his inquiry from two other standard paths. In saying that he does not know, he silently, but with a high level of ingenuity, dissociates his inquiry from the path of anthropology and history. With this act of dissociating in the context of declaring his failure, he ensures that the previous state of freedom is not a state that belongs to the past where one could ask when was that state, or when did that state exist. Answering these questions would lead one into the domain of anthropology, the discipline of space or spaces, or into the domain of history, which is dominantly the discipline of time.
In obstructing these two paths of inquiry, Rousseau makes a sudden move that inhabits the political arena. This puts the reader in a state of confusion, where he or she is left with reading the dominant, and in this case the prominent, political claim of legitimacy. While the text moves the reader towards the political site of legitimacy, the author has already registered two important additional theoretical moves that have serious consequences as they steer the discussion away from facts. In other words, Rousseau is shifting the discussion not only from the factual domain to the abstract ideal domain, but also from facts to legitimacy. However, one should remember that this legitimacy is within the domain of politics that is parked away from history and real society. Rousseau, therefore, does not provide evidence for his claim that birth is a state of freedom. While we do understand his second claim about the pervasiveness of bondage, what is left unexplained is the transition from freedom to bondage. Finally, he moves into the political domain, which is bereft of realism, and embarks on explaining the legitimacy of individual freedom and rights. This political domain, Durkheim infers, is not an historical state but only a methodological one (1960: 69).
There are two moves here. One, the previous state of freedom is not a real state that can be handled either by anthropology or by history, but a hypothetical one. The ‘are’ in “men being taken as they are” does not refer to empirical men. This makes the state not real and empirical but rational and ideal (the implication of this to democracy needs to be worked out carefully). Second, instead of providing justification for this state, which is fundamental to his philosophy, Rousseau covers it with political claims; thus, this state remains without support. In a way, it hangs in the air. In addition to these two states – the natural state of freedom and the artificial state of slavery – he introduces in the same paragraph another important variable; namely, conventions, when he says that “social order is a sacred right” and it is the “basis of all other rights”. While this is true, he dissociates rights from nature and asserts that they “must therefore be founded on conventions” (1952: 3–4).
So, there are three states: the natural state of freedom, the forceful state of slavery, and the state based on conventions. This state of conventions is founded on his fundamental thesis of contract. Unlike the other two states, this third state is not based on mere nature, nor is it sustained by force, but is grounded in contract, which is the product of reason and will. Thus, Rousseau institutes individual will, which is based on rationality, as the firm and proper foundation for building a social fabric.
Rousseau has not given justification for his claim that man is born free. He debunks the explanation of how the state of freedom becomes the state of bondage. Further, he dissociates the factual domain from the postulated political domain and begins to operate from the latter. The implications of this to political philosophy are serious. This introduces for the first time an unbridgeable gap between radicalism and realism in the political domain. Reconciling both becomes an arduous task for subsequent political philosophers. At a more theoretical level, this poses the problem between claims and justification. Justification for the claims, or the lack of it, poses a serious problem in maintaining modernity’s claim of being rational.
Despite these serious gaps between claims and justification, the text moves the readers ahead. I would like to assert that it is the presence of rhetorical force that made this possible, rather than semantic content. The rhetoric moves the statement rather than the factual status. The claim that man is born free is not factually true. If it is a hypothetical state or a methodological device, then relating it to the historical reality, namely, the state of slavery, Rousseau rightly points out, is not valid.
The rhetoric fired the emotions of the modern reader. This pushed readers away, instead of enabling them to rationally reflect on and understand the claims. What is problematic is not the use of rhetoric, but equating modernity with rationality, which involves admitting ideas after thorough reflection. These semantic aberrations in the foundations of modernity lurk in modern life, with freedom being absolutised where it cannot be. Having identified the first frame in the word inquire and highlighted rhetorical elements in key statements in the text, let me now discuss another idea that offers a remarkable relation between master and slave.
This brings us to the sentence that lies between the famous sentences, “Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains” and “How did this change come about?” In this sentence, Rousseau says: “One thinks himself the master of others, and still remains a greater slave than they” (1952: 3). It is necessary to recognise here that something very novel and with radical implications is being proposed, perhaps for the first time. While Riley rightly observes that Rousseau’s is “the most perceptive understanding of mastery and slavery after Aristotle and before Hegel” (2001: 1), he, however, does not explain why this is so. In my reading, Rousseau’s understanding of the relation between master and slave is radical for two important reasons. One, he rejects outright the classical relation between master and slave made notoriously famous by Aristotle, who proposed one-way dependency where the slave is necessarily and continuously dependent on the master. Two, he becomes the precursor of a radical understanding of the relation between master and slave. He points out how, though in different proportions, there exists a two-way dependence between master and slave – the master, while being dependent on the slave, continues to be under the false feeling of being master of others. This has been substantially made use of by Hegel, though without acknowledging Rousseau. Rousseau, in my reading, has for the first time proposed this two-way dependence, though in varying degrees, between master and slave, by highlighting that the master remains a greater slave than the slaves do. This is unprecedented. In addition to providing the basis for Hegel and later Marx, talking about the mutual dependency between master and slave, particularly the master’s dependence on the slave, in a fundamental way sows the seeds for revolution and social change. There is a difference between the slave being dependent on the master and the master being dependent on the slave. The latter makes a greater case for changing this relation to liberate the slave from the grip of the master; whereas if it is the slave who is dependent on the master, one has a more difficult case to make against this relation.
Having postulated his idea of freedom, Rousseau goes on to criticise both Aristotle and Grotius for defending slavery. He criticises Aristotle, who maintained that equality is unnatural, and that inequality is the natural state of man. While agreeing with Aristotle that there is inequality all around us, he differs from Aristotle when he says that this inequality is not the cause but the effect. To quote Rousseau, “Aristotle, before any of them, had said that men are by no means equal naturally, but that some are born for slavery, and others for dominion” (1952: 5). The inequality that is before us is not caused by inequality from the beginning. In other words, according to Rousseau, there is no continuous relation between the past and the present. This is already pointed out earlier when he says that man is born free but everywhere he is in chains. On the contrary, he looks at this relation as discontinuous. For him, unlike Aristotle, it is a case where the original equal state was converted into a state of inequality.
Rousseau also criticises Grotius’s defence of slavery. In this context, he argues how one cannot alienate oneself entirely. He lays out the argument against slavery that an individual cannot “alienate his children” as children are “born man and free”; their liberty belongs to them and no one but they themselves have the right to dispose of it (1952: 7), and he further rejects other forms of slavery with regard to prisoners of war as slaves, and claims that war “is constituted by a relation between things, and not between persons; and … the state of war cannot arise out of simple personal relations” (1952: 8). Therefore, voluntary slavery is “absurd”, “inconceivable”, and “meaningless”. Such an act is “null and illegitimate” as one “who does it is out of his mind”. Extending such an act from the individual domain to the “whole people” in addition “is to suppose a people of madmen”. He concludes, “madness creates no right” (1952: 7). A close look at the nature of the argument reveals that all these are a series of claims. One can ask why it is madness, why this is absurd and inconceivable, or null and illegitimate. Rousseau later claimed, “To renounce liberty is to renounce being a man, to surrender the rights of humanity and even its duties” (1952: 8). If I cannot surrender my rights like I would sell my property, then in what sense is my body mine? Simply saying that my liberty is sacrosanct is to avoid argumentation. Rousseau does not provide argument for his claim that “For him who renounces everything no indemnity is possible”. Similarly, why is it that such a “renunciation is incompatible with man’s nature”?; further, why does this act of removing liberty lead to removing “morality from his acts” (1952: 8)? All these are a group of related claims, and need arguments to support them.
In fact, one might validate arguments in favour of voluntary slavery from the right to own – when I own something, I can both use it and dispose of it. For instance, there is a difference between the rights to use and to sell and the right to use and sell. I can use my office, as I am employed, but I cannot sell it; whereas I can use my house and also sell it, as I own it. Similarly, according to the right to own, I have a right on myself that no one else has; if this is so, and then I am entitled to use it as well as sell it. While this is permitted by the rights discourse, Rousseau’s arguments restrict it to the ‘use but not sell’ format.
The preceding self-evident claims are not good enough justification for rejecting voluntary slavery. Rousseau’s appeal to follow ‘use but not sell’ is rhetorical, emotional, and not supported by arguments. There is a need to make a strong case for restricting it to ‘use and not sell’ to distinguish it from ‘use and sell’ which is permitted in the modern discourse of right to own. Given the difference between claims and their supporting arguments, let us find the support first by looking within the text. This brings us to the beginning of the text, where Rousseau states that justice and utility cannot be divided, in the sense that they are together and remain inalienable. He declares, “In this inquiry I shall endeavour always to unite what right sanctions with what is prescribed by interest, in order that justice and utility may in no case be divided” (1952: 3).
An act is just when it generates utility. Acts cannot be just if they do not generate utility. Rousseau intertwines ‘justice’ and ‘utility’, and thus connects the ontological status of justice with the teleological or consequential ideal of utility. Justice has to always be seen in relation to utility. Nothing should be in the realm of justice for its own sake. For instance, take case 1 where A gives something to B. A expects something in return from B. B gives something in return and A receives it. Now, take case 2 where A gives something to B. A expects something in return from B. B does not give it. A feels let down. Take case 3 where A gives something to B. A expects something from B. B gives it, but A is not there to receive it. The reason why A is not there is that he has completely enslaved himself to B. Even though B is ready to give to A, A is unable to receive it as he is not there, as an autonomous individual, but has become a slave who belongs to someone else. Thus, all actions are contracted, and the contract involves two people. In any exchange in a contractual transaction, one gives and the other takes. This giving and taking are just and justified if they involve utility, as actions without utility are not just for Rousseau.
Rousseau does not endorse a third kind of situation. He makes a distinction between giving oneself to the other and surrendering oneself entirely to the other, undermining one’s individual autonomy. This argument validates Rousseau’s rejection of voluntary slavery defended by Grotius. His claim at the beginning of the text about the indivisibility of justice and utility provides a solid argument for rejecting Grotius’s defence of voluntary slavery. Having discussed the frame and his ideas of freedom and rejection of slavery, let me in the next section discuss how Rousseau laid the foundation for a new social institution: the old age home.
Feminists have laid bare the gendered nature of the modern self. S. M. Okin clearly brings out the imbalance between abstract reason and feeling where the former is identified with man and the latter with woman. In this context, she traces the tilt towards reason in John Rawls to the legacy of Kant. Following Okin, I would like to discern a different dimension where reason, though equated with or including man, excludes an important aspect of human life, including male life – that is, old age. In addition to the earlier exclusion based on race, colour, region, or gender, I will focus on a different kind of exclusion – excluding certain phases in an individual’s life. This new kind of exclusion is not recognised in scholarship. I would like to start that discussion, and I begin by bringing Rousseau into it.
Okin shows how modern morality is based on reason – which excludes non-reason – associating men with reason and women with non-reason, such as feelings and emotions. She alleges that Kant in his minor writings, however, consistently did not allow any place for love in the realm of morality. He did this, according to her, because he took into consideration only two kinds of love, ‘practical love’ and ‘pathological feeling’, but neglected another form of love that is more substantial and positive, namely “love that is typified by parent/child relations” (1989: 232). This strategy to exclude non-reason like love, which is equated with woman – and only include reason, which is equated with man, Okin rightly claims, is to exclude woman from modern morality.
While accepting her claims on how modern philosophers too surreptitiously excluded women, I want to make two comments on her analysis. One, in the context of analysing the original position, she discusses Kant and Rawls. While accepting the Kantian legacy in Rawls as rightly claimed by her, I would like to mention that the idea of the original position that she extensively discusses in her paper is clearly available in Contract philosophers like Rousseau rather than in Kant. Two, while she is right in drawing attention to how modern philosophers like Kant excluded women, I would like to highlight how the idea of the man who excludes women is not an empirical male. Rather, a rational adult male also excluded the post-adult phase of human beings, namely, old age. This is why I discuss Rousseau. Alternatively, following Okin’s path, let me lay bare how the modern self that Rousseau inhabits is not merely a gendered male who excluded women, but an adult who also neglected an important aspect of human life: old age, including old age of the male. Shifting the discussion from gender division, let me turn towards the three different phases in the life of any individual, including males: childhood, adulthood, and old age. I will now highlight the adult nature of the modern self and discuss how this adult male self excludes not only women, but also old age. In shifting male old age from the domain of modernity, I want to strengthen the domain that it excludes – women, as well as old age (including that of males).
One way to understand the nature of the modern self in Rousseau is to trace its ‘legacy’ to Descartes. He institutes a self that is not historical or empirical but autonomous, one that constitutes certainty. This autonomy has its own costs. It excludes everything that is non-cognitive, including feelings and emotions. This excludes women, as rightly highlighted by Okin, but it does not exclude only women. It also excludes some crucial aspects of all human life, including men. Let me explain this in detail. Having established the centralised self through certainty and the novel method of doubt, Descartes brings in reason as that which constitutes the modern self. He says:
I reflected that we were children before being men and had to be governed for some time by our appetites and our teachers, which were often opposed to each other and neither of which, perhaps, always gave us the best advice; hence I thought it virtually impossible that our judgments should be as unclouded and firm as they would have been if we had had the full use of our reason from the moment of our birth, and if we had always been guided by it alone.
(1985: 117)
Here Descartes concedes the existence of childhood, which is governed by ‘appetites’ and ‘teachers’ who do not give the ‘best advice’. This makes him wish that one were born with reason and perhaps without appetite, and could avoid advice from teachers. However, we know that this is not possible, though he does not seem to accept it as a fact. He highlights the primacy of the rational domain that is outside childhood and encompasses the non-childhood phase, which is adulthood. The underlying argument of this passage is to bypass the biological domain, and in doing so skip or exclude childhood from the philosophical domain. In making a case for reason simultaneously, he is knocking down the domain of childhood from the discourse of modernity. The individual that Descartes instituted is one that does not factor in childhood. This is the first step away from the empirical individual (1985: 114).2 Having established the possibility of one, that is, I, the individual is embellished by two associated features, reason and adulthood. This by implication keeps the domain of childhood outside the purview of modernity, because it is the domain of non-reason and is guided by appetites and unreliable teachers. The roots of a human being, namely childhood, are chopped off. This adult self inhabits, with minor modifications, the Social Contract Philosophy, in the form of man in the state of nature. This brings us to Rousseau who says that:
The most ancient of all societies, and the only one that is natural, is the family: and even so the children remain attached to the father only so long as they need him for their reservation. As soon as this need ceases, the natural bond is dissolved. The children, released from the obedience they owed to the father, and the father, released from the care he owed his children, return equally to independence. If they remain united, they continue so no longer naturally, but voluntarily; and the family itself is then maintained only by convention.
(1952: 4)
Here it may be pointed out that while Descartes denies modernity to childhood by excluding it, Rousseau, by way of naturalising Cartesian rationality, includes childhood. However, if we read this passage closely, an important subtext introduces a linear notion of time that replaces the circular notion of time. The child is free after he or she attains adulthood. However, this leaves the deal incomplete as one might legitimately ask why the father should spend time and resources on the child. What does he get in return? So the account is not settled. In a traditional paradigm, the account is settled when children take care of parents in their old age. This is not acceptable to Rousseau, as that would make the contract brief and put the child in debt. This would also legitimise the return to family, which he is seeking to dismantle. So how does one settle this deal? If we read the passage carefully, the subtext reveals that children need not take care of their parents. The father takes care of children until they become independent, and the account is settled. It is settled because the father is paying off his debt to his father by bringing up his own children. Therefore, it is more in the form of paying off a debt than making his children indebted to him. This legitimises the institution of the old age home in the modern times. It is this way of dismantling family that facilitates dispensing with the old, who are no longer useful for production. The children and the adult, as they are the future and present resources, respectively, should be protected from spending their time on the old, who are no longer useful for production. While Descartes sought to keep childhood outside the domain of modernity, Rousseau, while accounting for it, however hands over the childhood in the hands of either a tutor or the father. More importantly, in this process, he laid the foundation for the institution of the old age home. This modern institution has come into existence based on his views on the relation between child and father. The larger design eluded the attention of feminists, who rightly criticised Rousseau for factoring in only the father and quietly excluding the mother from his analysis.
While accepting the feminist critique of patriarchy that survives in a disguised form in modernity, I am highlighting how the latter excludes an important aspect of human beings, that is, old age. Okin, in her preoccupation to highlight the exclusion of women by excluding them from parental love, fails to notice how the male self that ruthlessly excluded women also excluded old age. There is a need to move the focus from gender exclusions to the exclusion of some phases of human life. Let me explain the compelling reason for this by bringing into the discussion compulsions of capitalist production that colonises the modern self, perhaps not immediately and directly, but eventually.
Some interpret Rousseau as a romantic who highlighted how modern society enslaved human beings. For instance, David Gauthier argues that both Rousseau and later Marx did not see the “primary effect of the division of labor” as enriching persons by “giving them access to the capacities and powers of their fellows” but to “enslave them by making the exercise of their own capacities dependent on their fellow’s alien wills” (2006: 14). In contrast to this clear anti-capitalist portrayal of Rousseau, given the fact that division of labour is an important instrument of capitalism, Christopher Brooke asks whether Rousseau – along with Marx – “is an apologist for liberal capitalism on the one hand or sympathetic to the claims of radical socialism on the other” (in Riley 2001: 118). Extending Brooke, I would like to highlight how Rousseau made a subtle but significant move and dissociated adulthood from old age, to make the adult male available for capitalist production. This can be seen as reflecting the birth of capitalism. The dismantled circularity of traditional societies and instituted half circle in a linear temporality allowed for the young and the old to separate, thereby facilitating a higher and undisturbed availability of the young for production. In capitalist societies, you have to take care of children because they are the reservoirs of the future. Old people, on the other hand, have no potential for production. The non-inheritance of experience of the previous generation is the cost we seem to pay for individual freedom and liberty.
Foucault elaborates on the production aspect of the modern self, particularly the technology of the self. Clarifying the ‘general theme of [his] research’ he says in an Afterword that “the goal” of his work “during the last twenty years” has “not been to analyze the phenomena of power” but “to create a history of the different modes by which, in our culture, human beings are made subjects” (1984: 208). One of the three modes of objectification which transforms human beings into subjects, is “objectivizing of the productive subject, the subject who labors, in the analysis of wealth and economics” (1984: 208). I want to claim here that Rousseau, by making adults available for production, laid the foundation for pervasive phenomena by dissociating old age from both childhood and adulthood. Alternatively, I want to fine-tune Foucault’s diagnosis of how the ‘mad’, ‘sick’, and ‘criminals’, get objectivised by the ‘sane’, ‘healthy’, and ‘good boys’, respectively. As a part of this fine-tuning, I want to introduce another binary between adult and the old age and highlight how in Rousseau, the former objectivises the latter.
Yet, another important insight from Foucault is his attempt to excavate the birth of new institutions in the modern period, like clinic, prison, and asylum (1970, 1973, 1975). Following him, I want to show how in excluding old age, and making adult individuals available for production, Rousseau enabled human resources to capitalist production. This has deprived the adult from understanding the life experience of the old. I also want to show how this led to the foundation of a new social institution, namely old age home. Rather than analysing this from the point of concern for the old, I want to reverse the strategy and argue that everyone will become old unless they die prematurely. That is, here I am not as interested in the care aspect that involves the need to look after the old. I am speaking of the experience of the old from the perspective of adults and children. One, the experience of the elderly may help the present adults – who will possibly become old in future – to learn, and in the process change their attitude towards life and work. There are experiences of children that might remind the old that, if they lived together, it might help them understand their own childhood better. Relooking at children by the old, like rereading a text, might enable a better understanding of their own childhood. Similarly, there are experiences of the old that can equip children and prepare them to better organise their own old age. It is in this context that this denial of how old age is lived, may take the adults away from an important domain of human experience, which one may have to confront suddenly rather than get acclimated to gradually. Instead of seeing the experience of the old as a burden, it can be seen as an asset to be used in future.
One of the reasons why the old become a liability rather than an asset is the relation to production. More importantly, the reason why this ruthless exclusion of an important human domain eluded the attention of modern readers of this text is the age of the reader who has been exposed to modernity. Modernity targets children and adults by appealing to them. In enticing these two phases of human life, modernity excludes an important aspect of life – old age – a domain that is generic rather than gendered. Here, I am aware of the variance between women’s and men’s old age, and how the former can be more difficult in a patriarchy. Therefore, in addition to males, we need to further scrutinise the age of the male reader to whom this rhetoric appeals at the subconscious level. The relation between the adult male and modern texts needs to be problematised while assessing modernity.
Here we have two situations. One, contrary to the claims of modernity that seem to totalise autonomy of the individual, in reality, autonomy is restricted to the adult domain. As pointed out previously, there is a relation between adult autonomy and capitalist production. Two, the adult domain is autonomous. Father, an adult, is autonomous – and he is available for production. This is claimed as a form of individualism by modernity. However, Rousseau makes the father take care of his children, which compromises his autonomy. The father might ask why he should take care of his children. More importantly, he might question if his father was asked to take care of him when he was a child. There may be no necessary relation between nurturing and growing. Animals, or at least some of them, do not nurture their newborns, and yet they survive and grow. Therefore, there is a contingent relation between nurturing and surviving. This is particularly important, as the adult is unnecessarily made to compromise his autonomy in taking care of the children. In other words, Rousseau takes it for granted that children need to be taken care of by the father, when there is no such necessity and newborns can grow on their own after a minimum lactation period where the mother – and not father, as wrongly claimed by Rousseau – can feed the child and then leave as animals do. Strictly speaking, modernity in general – and Rousseau in particular – is on weak terrain here.
If one were to make a case for extending nurturing to children that deviates from the state of animals, then we should not build the institution of family with the father as envisaged by Rousseau, but with the mother who provides the foundation to this first association outside her womb. Her fundamental status in building the institution of the family that enables the extending of childcare has to be acknowledged. She lays the foundation of this first social institution. A family based on this first foundation can then have its other members like the father. Family, therefore, can be grounded on the first relation between the child and the mother, and not between the father and child, as envisaged by Rousseau.
Let me explain. There are many things that can be performed equally by both women and men. Then there are specific things that can be largely performed only by women, like giving birth. Even test tube babies are an extension of women’s capability. Man is the supplier of sperm. Instead of looking at this as division of labour, let me look at this as belonging to two phases of biological production. Women farm the seed of man. Within the patriarchal form, the harvest belongs to the male. The female who is the cultivator and nurturer of the product is erased and thus exploited. The male makes his stage appearance at the first and third phases, namely, investment of the sperm and marketing of the product. The woman’s involvement at phase two is erased and marginalised, and she thus stands exploited. Exposing the politics of this exploitation, there is a possibility where the second phase – the most important one – should be sumptuously rewarded and the first and third phases should be rewarded marginally.
This exposes how adulthood, which is central to modernity, is parasitic on child production and child nurturing where women play an indomitable and indispensable role. The woman – the cultivator in this domain – should get more than she has been given. Once this is corrected, she also gets a larger share of the rewards. I am making this roundabout argument for family with a new form of circularity where all three phases of human life are lived together, learning from each other face to face in the Levinasian sense of alterity. This is not because it is desirable, per se, but if we envisage extended childhood care and nurture, then this form of family can be considered less exploitative. However, if we do not think it necessary to have extended childhood care, then even this idea of family can be withdrawn.
The chapter began by criticising the attempts by Shklar and Riley to absolve the radicalism of Rousseau within the pre-modern traditions. In these attempts, his radicalism not only waxes but also evaporates completely. In contrast, I have located him within the project of modernity initiated by Descartes. By taking him out of the pre-modern traditions, I have tried to display his novel ideas, offer new justifications for his rejection of the institution of slavery, and highlight the problems surrounding these new ideas. Having proposed a new reading of Rousseau’s The Social Contract, this last section points out how Rousseau laid the foundation for a new social institution called the old age home. This connection between Rousseau and the old age home has not been made earlier. This rereading can throw better light on understanding this text that has shaped, and continues to shape, modern life. Having undertaken these two tasks – namely, proposing a new reading and establishing a relation between Rousseau and old age home – I want to highlight how the old age home is not a product or a result of a reflection by modernity and its individualism, freedom and liberty. It, on the other hand, is an unreflected consequence of the result of assumptions made by modernity about rationality, production, and adulthood. The modern individual is thrown into the old age home rather than choosing it. Let me elaborate.
I make a distinction between making a choice and being forced into accepting consequences following from the actions of our choice. The discourse of rights is based on choice. However, individualism that factors in adulthood – and does not factor in old age, into which one is thrown because of the choice about individualism that takes into consideration only the adulthood – is not based on choice. The latter is the unintended consequence of the former. Thus, there lurks within the domain of modern individualism that is governed by choice an aspect such as the old age home that is outside this domain of choice. Speaking in terms of temporality, this is governed by sequential temporality. In contrast, instead of passively following or embracing this experience and combination from the modern West, India can learn from this experience and rationally reflect about a combination that follows another kind of temporality, which is simultaneous. We can consider following the modern Western way, but this will be governed by choice and deliberation rather than merely embracing the consequences. We can also factor and change this combination and relook at the move by modern philosophers like Rousseau who sought to dismantle family, reconsider feminist critique of patriarchy without dismantling family. This can become an important academic discussion that has enormous social relevance to Indian society. This can also provide a different combination to modern Western society. There are serious problems in the pre-modern or in tradition, but modernity may not be a solution to solve these problems. Having demonstrated my ability to reread Western philosophical texts differently and made new connections not made earlier, thus making an initial move to relate Rousseau to India, I want in the next chapter to discuss another Western philosopher, Jacques Derrida. This I will do to extend the boundaries between particular kinds of Western philosophy (the philosophy of the written that is inaugurated by Plato) and contrast it with the philosophy of the spoken (that includes Socrates). I will try to broaden the extent of India by including Socrates within it.