For Rousseau what had drawn humans out of their primitive state was not the agreement for self-preservation as Hobbes and Locke though, but rather a quality that he calls `perfectibility` according to him previous thinkers such as Hobbes and Locke, did not pay enough attention to the distinctive human capacity to change and develop, to transform oneself. In other words, they failed to consider the implications of the fact that human nature itself can to an extent shape history.
It is important to note here that although it could be said that this is an aspect of Rousseau that could be said to hold radical ideas, that Rousseau himself insisted that there was no escape from history. That although that would have been the preferred way of living, there was no going back, because human nature itself had changed `the savage and the civilised man differ so much…that what constitutes the supreme happiness of one would reduce the other to despair”. Natural man had been sufficient and relied only on himself, but the man in the civil society had become dependant on his fellows in countless ways, even in the point of living in the `opinion of others`. The modern man was surrounded by philosophy, civilisation and codes of morality, but had little to show of himself but `honour without virtue, reason without wisdom, and pleasure without happiness`.
The radical character of Rousseau’s political thought is nowhere more apparent than in his treatment of reason and human nature. He rejected the older ideas of a natural law discoverable through right reason (Aristotle, Locke) and instead insisted that humans had not been endows with reason, that they were not naturally social or political beings. He was adamant that natural law and God had made reason innate in a person, otherwise would not have needed to be taught or to learn things.
Rousseau’s charge at the beginning of The Social Contract is that virtually all existing governments were illegitimate: "Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains." Having raised the issue of legitimacy, Rousseau turned to his most ambitious project to date: the question of how better governments might be established. "I want to seek," he wrote, "if, in the civil order, there can be some legitimate and solid rule of administration, taking men as they are and the laws as they can be."
The solution that he devised, was an agreement by which everyone would give himself and all his goods to the community, forming a state whose legislation would be produced by the will of each person thinking in terms of all (“the general will) The state’s legitimacy would thus be derived from the people, who, in obeying the law, would be obeying themselves.
The legitimate state, as Rousseau imagined it, would need not only virtuous citizens, but an extraordinary "Legislator" who could persuade people to accept the rules necessary for such a society. Law in the properly constituted state would be, among other things, an instrument of transformation: "He who dares to undertake the making of a people’s laws ought to feel himself capable of changing human nature." Once a legitimate state is established, it needs to be maintained and defended. Thus, according to Rousseau, there should be no "particular associations" competing for the loyalty of citizens; religion should not be left independent of political control; and those who refuse to conform to the general will would have to be "forced to be free."
This thinking can be criticised as being radical, why because how can you force someone to be free? the first reaction to these arguments would be that Rousseau is endorsing totalitarianism. We live in a age where rights are considered to be vitally important, and it does not seem right that we would just be a small part of a greater whole. Rather than making freedom possible, his theory seems to revoke freedom by trying to bind people to something which they might at some point regret.
However, looking at Rousseau one can predict what he would say, that we are not free at all. Instead, we may lack any initiative, we often have difficulty interacting with each other in any meaningful way and that our decisions and behaviour are usually dictated to by us by consumer culture that discourages individual thought. His argument is that we seemed to have lost the community spirit that makes people want to be together, citizens in his idea republic would not be forced into the community but they would agree to it for their mutual benefit.
Overall it can be said that Rousseau was a radical thinker who put forward revolutionary theories. He put forward the theory that the government was based on a contract, that is the consent of the governed, and that society should be led by the general will, for him the best government was the republic. Because it was sensitive to the desires of the people. Rousseau clearly promotes a perfect society in the Social Contract which according to his theory would eliminate all society problems. Although such a society would be wonderful, the ideas would not work, quite simply because of the wants and desires of the human for himself and his family.
Bibliography
Boucher and Kelly, Political thinkers, from Socrates to the present
Steven M Cahn, classics of political and moral philosophy