Rousseau, Jean-Jacques - Daniel E. Cullen (essay date 1993)
Daniel E. Cullen (essay date 1993)
SOURCE: "The Achievement of Democratic Freedom," in Freedom in Rousseau's Political Philosophy, Northern Illinois University Press, 1993, pp. 70-116.
[In the following excerpt, Cullen analyzes Rousseau's concept of "negative " (in the state of Nature) liberty and its relationship to democracy.]
Are free relations possible? Can the avoidance of personal dependence characteristic of solitude somehow be imported into community? Rousseau's political thought is devoted to finding a form of association that avoids the inherent tendency of social relations toward domination and submission; its project is negative in that political relations are regarded as defensive relations designed to protect citizens from mutual domination.
Rousseau indicates that freedom might be susceptible to a political form, that there are circumstances in which freedom, nature, citizenship, and virtue might be compatible.
...[The entire page is 23288 words long]
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