Political Realism and Political Philosophy in Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Social Contract by Haozhe Wang A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Political Science in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Wendy Brown, Chair Professor David Bates Professor Kinch Hoekstra Spring 2013 Abstract Political Realism and Political Philosophy in Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Social Contract by Haozhe Wang Doctor of Philosophy in Political Science University of California, Berkeley Professor Wendy Brown, Chair This thesis places Jean-Jacques Rousseau in the “realist” or raison d’état tradition of political thought. While highly critical of the conceptualization of political sovereignty among earlier social contract theorists such as Hugo Grotius and Thomas Hobbes and also very condemnatory of the popular eighteen-century discourse of reason of state, Rousseau preserves some of the most important insights in the theory of state and political sovereignty of earlier authors, in particular the value, status, and justification of political life. This thesis thus looks at both the continuity and the disruption or corrections that Rousseau represents in the tradition of political realism. The first part of the dissertation looks at Rousseau’s reflections on international politics, political economy, and the role of government. It examines Rousseau’s criticism of the seemingly triumphant theory and practice of realpolitik and mercantilism in the eighteenth-century and how this criticism derives from his overriding concern with political equality and liberty in the Social Contract . The second part of the dissertation details the necessary link between Rousseau’s conceptualization of the political and his epistemology and linguistic anthropology. Rousseau’s linguistics accounts for both his emphasis on equality as the condition of the political and his anxiety over the fragility of the political. Rousseau must confront a gap between the concept of the political as a just and equitable form of civil association and the utter impossibility of the literality of the political condition. Rousseau’s theory of government and his resentment of mercantile administration must be read in light of this gap between the concept and literality of the political. 1 Introduction Rousseau’s political realism This thesis will read Jean-Jacques Rousseau as a political realist. There are several aspects to this political realism that intersect each other in Rousseau’s writings. Political scientists most commonly understand realism as a principle that governs the treacherous and mutually suspicious relationships between states. Thanks to some fine works by Kenneth Waltz, Stanley Hoffman, and others, 1 we now accept that Rousseau indeed has something meaningful to say on international politics. Realism is also frequently associated with Thomas Hobbes and a certain notion of sovereignty that is absolutist and overridingly concerned with (collective and individual) self-interest and self-preservation that justifies and legitimates the political state.2 Rousseau’s own Hobbism is well noted not only for the use of the fiction of state of nature but for the domestic analogy of man and state, which according to some authors may have been an inspiration for the political ideas found in the Social Contract .3 Above all, I argue that Rousseau’s realism lies in a certain understanding of the political that, as with Machiavelli and Carl Schmitt, asserts its reality and autonomy as well as skepticism of metaphysical, moral, cultural, religious norms that claim their conceptual anteriority. 4 Rousseau’s political realism encompasses all these elements: a privileged ontic status of the political, an absolutist notion of sovereign authority, and a quintessentially pluralistic international politics. They are welded together in original ways in Rousseau. In calling Rousseau a realist I want to show that he culminated a development in early modern political thought that started to uphold the meaning and essence of political life as legitimate exercise of collective self-preservation and defense of security and unity of the body politic and emphasize the primacy and autonomy of this political logic. 5 But I want to address also what I hold to be important corrections to the realist tradition that Rousseau’s political theory, especially his theory of government, entails. The two tasks are inseparable because accounting for Rousseau’s theory of political sovereignty necessitates a critical engagement with aspects in the natural law theories of Hugo Grotius and Hobbes as well as the economic, fiscal, and foreign policies of the leading European states of their time that modern scholarship often calls “realist” but which Rousseau deems incompatible with the principle of popular sovereignty and the essence of political life. To put Rousseau in that tradition, to expound the continuity as well as the disruption or (self-)correction of the tradition in Rousseau’s political thought, yields a concept of political sovereignty that I think will be more satisfactory than previously understood in the realist or raison d’état tradition. In his critique of the conquest rights that Grotius, Hobbes, and Samuel von Pufendorf all cited in explaining the origin of the political, we first see the simultaneous disruption and continuity that Rousseau presents in the realist tradition. Rousseau appreciates the bold theoretical innovation of conquest rights in hypothesizing an origin of the political that does not depend on any assumption of natural or commercial sociability of humankind or any ethical and judicial principles. Rousseau’s critique of conquest rights is not a dissent from this realist concept of the political that has proclaimed its radical conceptual autonomy in the Grotian or Hobbesian contract; rather, Rousseau’s complaint is that the fact of conquest cannot establish an absolute and perpetual sovereign authority 1 and that the true political condition – in which individuals join the contract to form a constituted whole in order to live in the peace and security of the whole – never takes hold in a state founded on conquest. In Rousseau, collective security is only possible if we join as free and equal members. The political condition is thus innately emancipatory because all subjects surrender themselves equally to the rule of law and thus save themselves from any other forms of dependency. For Rousseau, dominion acquired through temporary advantage in force injects an element of instability to political life that contradicts the very idea of sovereignty, which is supposed to perpetuate and preserve itself against threats of foreign and civil wars. It is precisely this realist or absolutist conception of political sovereignty that must guarantee moral autonomy, equality, and justice to the citizens. Without this emancipatory dimension, political sovereignty is never complete or self-sustaining. Moreover, Rousseau inherits but also expands Grotius and Hobbes’s understanding of the relationship between sovereignty and government. For the two natural law theorists, the inquiry into the nature of the political is separate and superior to matters of statecraft and administration that in previous centuries had obstructed any scientific, abstract, and universal understanding of the nature of political power and sovereign authority. Rousseau, too, insists that the government is merely the minister of the sovereign and that the relativity and particularity of the science of government must not obscure the universal validity and truth of the principles of the social contract. Writing in the age of mature absolutism, however, Rousseau also vehemently castigates the statecraft of the ancien régime . Rousseau observes that the eighteenth century practice of realpolitik was part of a mercantile governmental reason that was purported to create not only a European balance of power but also a pattern of economic production, circulation, and extraction that was unjust and unequal. The skewed understanding of national interests and security not only gave rise to a set of economic and fiscal policies that were tyrannical and caused inequalities between the city and the country and between social classes but also threatened the sovereignty and unity of the state. The mercantile reason of state thus conflates the appearance of an absolutist, undivided government with the majesty of unified sovereignty; it is usurpation and despotism. Rousseau wants to at once uphold the emancipatory and egalitarian promise of the political and to purge absolute sovereignty of its unsavory association with despotism and the mercantile competition between states by proposing a science of government that can maintain the security, rigor, and health of the state and above all must prevent its own degeneration into corruption, centralization, and tyranny. Far from being a utopian ideal, Rousseau’s concept of legitimate sovereignty and his attack on tyranny entails a theory of political administration and public economy that must embody and materialize what is otherwise an abstract doctrine of popular sovereignty and must substitute for the mercantilist governmental reason. Whereas the principle of liberty and equality is everywhere the same and the general will has the quality of predictable simplicity, Rousseau knows that states must assume different forms of government contingent upon the climate of the land,