INALIENABLE FREEDOM AND UTOPIAN DEMOCRACY IN ROUSSEAU

Abstract

The fundamental convention, which Rousseau calls "the social contract", is that which creates the state. He tells us that the question of its historical origin is unanswerable and proposes to discuss its legitimacy. The political body thus created is a society of free assent and not of force, and a union of each with all on equal terms for the common welfare. Such union creates the democratic state, where law is the voice of the "general will", and it alone provides security in human rights. However, Rousseau and others political philosophers were not really trying to give an objective answer to a single question, namely, "What are the grounds of political obligation?" at all: they were each prescribing a particular political system. This paper put forward a proposal to the problem of democracy as utopia and clarifies the grounds for totalitarian and libertarian interpretations.