Rousseau’s political project consists in ensuring that the citizens of the social contract, in uniting with each other, preserve their ability to self-legislate, or be autonomous. For this to work, however, members of the social contract would need to feel intrinsically linked to the political whole. This essay investigates what that feeling might be and how it can be grown. I argue that Rousseau develops a model of the energy or character of the being capable of autonomy, capable of experiencing (...) themselves as part of the whole. That energy is a pathos of vigour, a strong sentiment and way of being that I develop from Rousseau’s educational precepts in Émile, which makes the citizen feel free and robust in dependence and boundedness. Autonomy, then, comes from the active exercise of oneself, physically and mentally, in an environment bounded by things, and this results in a sentiment of vigour, a vitality that produces confidence and poise, which then entices further activity. (shrink)

Both Rousseau and Charles Taylor are well-known for their support of positive freedom. However, Taylor criticizes Rousseau’s positive freedom and the general will for inducing the worst form of hom...

This article discusses Rousseau’s theory of the genesis and development of a “post-liberal self” and its political implications. In his Emile, or Education, Rousseau explores the distinctive features of the post-liberal self through Emile’s growing capacity to think in terms of his social interdependence with others and yet to maintain his critical autonomy. For Rousseau it is only such individuals with a highly developed moral and civic consciousness who are capable of articulating the general will and of properly participating in (...) a modern republic. I argue that the general will for Rousseau is therefore not a property of the community but of the post-liberal self, for whom the common good is a larger dimension of the individual good. I then discuss the political implications of this theory by relating it to The Social Contract where Rousseau urges us to examine the legitimacy of existing social norms, laws and practices. Rousseau, I conclude, is one of the great radical thinkers of self-transformation as the prerequisite for overcoming the pathologies and limitations of liberal society. (shrink)