Rousseau on the ground of obligation: Reconsidering the Social Autonomy interpretation

Abstract

In Rousseau’s Social Contract, political laws are rationally binding because they satisfy the interests that motivate individuals to obey such laws. The later books of Emile justify morality by showing that it is continuous with the natural dispositions of a well-brought-up subject and is thus conducive to genuine happiness. In both the moral and political cases, Rousseau argues for an internal connection between the rational ground of an obligation and the broader aspects of human psychology that are satisfied and expressed by acting from that obligation. Yet, inspired by Kantian philosophy, the recent and influential Social Autonomy interpretation has disjoined rationality and psychology. Criticising this interpretation, I argue that for Rousseau, obligations are justified because they satisfy the demands made by our moral psychology, most notably amour-propre, i.e. the desire to have one’s worth recognised by others.

Keywords

Jean-Jacques Rousseau Joshua Cohen Frederick Neuhouser autonomy freedom

Rousseau as a Kantian: The Social Autonomy interpretation

In the Social Contract (SC; Rousseau, 1997: 54), Rousseau writes, ‘the impulsion of appetite alone is slavery, and obedience to the law one has prescribed to oneself is freedom’ (SC: 1.8.3).¹ Kant similarly grounds the bindingness of moral obligation in a self-legislative act. A moral agent is ‘subject only to his own and yet universal legislation, [such that] he is obligated to act in conformity with his own will’ (Kant, 1996: 4:432). Inspired by this resemblance, as well as by Kant’s often-cited remark that reading Rousseau taught him to ‘honor man’ (Kant, 2011: 20:45), one prominent strand of interpretation construes Rousseau as Kant avant la lettre. For example, Ernst Cassirer suggests that ‘Rousseau’s ethics is … the most categorical form of a pure ethics of obligation that was established before Kant’ (Cassirer, 1989: 96). More recently, John Rawls, Joshua Cohen and Frederick Neuhouser have followed this interpretive path (Cohen, 2010; Neuhouser, 2003, 2008, 2014; Rawls, 2007). For example, discussing Rousseau’s views on amour-propre, Rawls writes, ‘as so often, Kant is the best interpreter of Rousseau’ (Rawls, 2007: 200). Together, these latter authors offer the ‘Social Autonomy’ interpretation (hereafter, SA), according to which Rousseau is primarily a theorist of how to secure moral and political autonomy under complex conditions of psychic, social and material dependence.²

Although SA addresses many different aspects of Rousseau’s work, at the core of the position we find the following three interpretive claims. First, there is a strong continuity between Rousseau’s view of the ideal man and the ideal citizen, such that there is no essential tension between the demands of morality and politics. This is at odds with a well-known interpretation according to which Rousseau vacillates between two irreconcilable ideals, the morality of ‘natural man’ and the politics of the public-spirited, quasi-Spartan citizen (Shklar, 1969; Strauss, 1953). Second, the general will is not a majoritarian principle that tramples on the rights of individuals in the name of the collective. Rather, to have a general will is to participate in a specific form of practical reason, one based on shared fundamental interests and arrived at in abstraction from the particularity of the agents who bind themselves by its dictates. Accordingly, the general will protects individual rights and sets boundaries to majoritarian decision making (cf. Crocker, 1968: 43–114). Third and perhaps most importantly, SA follows Nicholas Dent in arguing that amour-propre is not simply a source of invidious comparison, violence and wrongdoing that ought to be eradicated at all costs. Rather, it lies at the origin of the concept of equal moral and political worth (Dent 1989, 1992, 1998, 2005).³ Our obligations as moral and political creatures are in some sense closely connected to our shared desire for recognition.

In what follows I will not address the first two claims, with which I am in agreement. With respect to the third claim, I want to investigate more carefully how best to understand the link between obligation and moral psychology in Rousseau. Here, I criticise SA for importing a Kantian framework into its interpretation. SA holds that one must distinguish more clearly than Rousseau himself did between his reflections on psychology and his account of the normative bindingness of obligation. For example, Cohen argues that for Rousseau, our socio-psychological passions – paradigmatically, amour-propre – provide ‘motivational complements to the sense of duty’ but are distinct from the ground of duty itself (Cohen, 2010: 123, 145). Similarly, Rawls writes that amour-propre is not itself a rational principle of reciprocity but only motivates individuals to act from such principles (Rawls, 2007: 199). More generally, Cohen advocates for a distinction between normative ground and moral psychology when he writes, ‘[Rousseau’s] strong assertions about the need for … common happiness as an ingredient in individual happiness are offered … as conditions of the stability of a legitimate order, not as constitutive elements of the conception of legitimacy itself’ (Cohen, 2010: 57).⁴ Neuhouser’s views on this issue are complicated and not always consistent. Although he sometimes argues that Rousseau, anticipating Hegel, ‘rejects the strict dichotomy Kant sets up … between the [psychological] principle of self-love, on the one hand, and the principle of morality, on the other’, he also concludes that amour-propre is merely ‘the affective prototype of the standpoint of reason’ (Neuhouser, 2008: 231, 227). Because amour-propre is a psychological force, it can only be ‘the passions’ way of anticipating reason’s claim that objectivity in the ethical realm derives from the agreement of rational agents’ (Neuhouser, 2008: 228). And he often suggests, in a manner similar to Cohen and Rawls, that for Rousseau the content of moral obligation is determined by ‘universal ideals of reason’ which need not necessarily take into account how acting from an obligation expresses our psychological desire to be recognised (Neuhouser, 2008: 243).

As an interpretation of Rousseau, insisting on this strict separation between the ground of obligation and our moral psychology is odd. For Rousseau, justifying our moral and political obligations involves demonstrating that acting from them involves forms of motivation that are continuous with, express and develop essential capacities of human nature. By way of preliminary evidence for this claim consider that in SC formal considerations of what makes laws binding are closely related to the interests that motivate individuals to obey such laws. The text aims to reconcile ‘what right permits with what interest prescribes’ (SC: 1.1.1). And Emile (E) develops an ideal of a free and yet duty-bound life by showing that such a life would be psychologically enriching and motivationally plausible for the individual living it.

In critically interrogating SA’s Kantianism, the plan of the rest of the paper is as follows.⁵ In the second section, I focus on Cohen’s separation of Rousseau’s theory of legitimacy from his theory of psychology. In the third section, I argue that although Neuhouser’s account of the role of amour-propre in practical reason brings Rousseau farther away from Kant than Cohen’s interpretation, he still separates elements that Rousseau treats as unified. By outlining the varieties of SA, I aim to distinguish between commentators often taken to share roughly the same interpretative positions.⁶ In the fourth section, I draw on Emile in order to offer the outlines of an alternative account of Rousseau’s theory of obligation. I also briefly defend the value of Rousseau’s integrated treatment of normative legitimacy and motivational psychology.

Cohen’s Sociological Reading

Following Cohen’s slogan that Rousseau is ‘philosophically liberal, and sociologically communitarian’, in this section I consider his ‘Sociological Reading’ of Rousseau (Cohen, 2010: 22). The Sociological Reading holds that in evaluating Rousseau’s moral and political theory one must distinguish between two distinct sets of concerns. The first set of concerns pertains to the actual content of his normative doctrine. In the political case, this involves determining the requirements of the general will. In the moral case, it is the question of what duty demands of free and rational subjects. The second set of concerns pertains to the psychological and educational measures needed to ensure that we are motivated to act from the requirements of the general will or the demands of duty. In the political sphere, these distinct sets of concerns mark the difference between the legitimacy of a well-ordered society and the forces needed to maintain its stability; in the moral sphere, the difference between duty and its motivational pull. Both are species of the more general distinction between the ground of our obligations and our motivations to regulate our lives by such obligations.

Cohen’s account of what he finds most compelling in Rousseau depends on holding these two sets of concerns apart. With respect to politics, Cohen argues that Rousseau offers an egalitarian-democratic principle of political legitimacy, whereby the general will protect the fundamental interests of individuals. But at the same time, Rousseau believes that such a society can only be secured – i.e. individuals can only be motivated to uphold the norms of the general will – if they are formed and reformed (or as Rousseau ominously puts it, ‘denatured’) through modes of collective attachment that demand the subordination of the self to the community. Cohen writes,

Rousseau’s views … draw together an egalitarian-democratic ideal of a free community of equals, founded on a conception of individuals as free and animated by self-love, and owing much to the modern contractualist tradition, with a sometimes-communitarian political sociology, focused on the social solidarities that are arguably required to unite the independent members of a society of equals. (Cohen, 2010: 5)

By distinguishing Rousseau’s liberal philosophy from his communitarian political sociology, Cohen can cordon off those aspects of Rousseau that distance him from Kantian and Rawlsian liberalism. On Cohen’s account, Rousseau is wrong to think that it takes demandingly civic identification to form the citizens of a democratic republic. But by insisting on the relative independence of the domains of legitimacy and stability, Cohen concludes that this error in motivational psychology does not vitiate Rousseau’s core doctrine of legitimacy.

Cohen’s projection of an essentially Kantian bifurcation between obligation and motivational psychology appears most systematically in his treatment of amour-propre. Here, Cohen’s goal is to show that the basic elements of human nature that form moral subjectivity – most notably, amour-propre, but also compassion and pity – can, under the right institutional conditions, provide resources for moral motivation that might replace the demanding collective identities Rousseau prefers. On Cohen’s reading, Rousseau’s account of amour-propre is meant to solve the problem of finding

motivational complements to the sense of duty. Although motivational complements are distinct from the sense of duty, they generally support it. The content of these motives is such that they support our efforts to comply with our duties, as those duties are specified by the general will. (Cohen, 2010: 123)

Cohen claims that this central aspect of our human nature merely underwrites our motivations to act from duty, independently conceived. On his interpretation, Rousseau wants to show how under the right institutional circumstances, individuals might achieve a sense of self-worth that does not ‘by and large conflict with the demands of duty’ (Cohen, 2010: 124). So we have, on the one hand, a ‘distinct’ ground of duty, determined by reason alone and expressed through the general will, and, on the other, ‘motivational complements’ to it in the psychological quest for recognition. Analogously, in the political case, Cohen holds that the norms of the just polity can be arrived at in relative abstraction from Rousseau’s account of how the parties subject to those norms might be motivated to obey them.

With respect to the political case, however, it is important to state Cohen’s separation of ground and motivation with care. Cohen does not deny the obvious point that the parties to the social contract sign on to the coercive structure of the state in order to protect their interests – primarily, their interest in being free, and the material and bodily security necessary to support such freedom (Cohen, 2010: 34–40). So why then deny that for Rousseau the ground of political obligation stems from the interests that motivate individuals to uphold those obligations? Sometimes Cohen argues that the general will is determined by reason alone, such that the fact that it satisfies interests is simply a motivational bonus. For example, at one point, he claims that if the general will expresses a psychological principle of reciprocity, this is ‘important to the formation of our motivations’ because it encourages compliance with the ‘requirements of the general will’ (Cohen, 2010: 125). But if one of the reasons that individuals even erect a general will is to benefit from cooperation without sacrificing their freedom, then reciprocity is in fact among their fundamental interests, or at least it is easily derivable from such interests. In that case, reciprocity does not only provide a motivation to uphold the general will. It is also the ground of our obedience to it. As Rousseau says, ‘the engagements that bind us to the social body are obligatory only because they are mutual’ (SC: 2.4.5) (emphasis mine). Cohen concedes that there is a sense in which reciprocity grounds the general will, so as a stopgap measure he distinguishes between the reciprocity inherent in the general will and the reciprocity that ‘provides the psychological foundations for an explanation of how citizens might come to be moral’ (Cohen, 2010: 154).

Let us now consider the overall viability of the Sociological Reading by examining the moral case, specifically, Emile’s introduction to moral concepts. If acting on a putatively moral demand does not unify Emile – i.e. if it is in no way continuous with the natural development of the boy’s psychological dispositions – then such a demand is not genuinely normative but represents instead only a species of social falsity, what Rousseau often characterises as mere ‘opinion’. Thus, even when Emile is introduced to a recognisably proto-Kantian form of moral duty, which demands the ‘sacrifice [of] inclination’ and the ability to ‘hold out against [one’s] heart in order to listen to reason’, it is in the context of marriage, a sphere of human activity that forms an essential part of Emile’s happiness or flourishing as a natural being (E: 443). Rousseau explicitly links the rational authority of acting from duty to Emile’s ability to ‘live happily and wisely’, i.e. to live a life that expresses and develops his natural motivations as a free being (E: 446).

Though grounding political obligation in the satisfaction of rational interests is not obviously identical to grounding moral obligation in happiness, both strategies share a conception of obligation that does not float free of moral psychology but is in fact an expression of it. To see this basic metaethical picture in the SC, consider the text’s claim that although one may be able to imagine ‘a universal justice emanating from reason alone’, such justice is not binding because it is motivationally inert; without an account of the reasons for following such abstract norms that make reference to our psychological tendencies, universal justice cannot ‘be admitted among us’ (SC: 2.6.2). Similarly, after establishing the general will as the source of the state’s legitimacy, Rousseau adds that ‘when the social bond is broken in all hearts … the general will grows mute’ (SC: 4.1.5).

Of course, that Rousseau rejects a strict dichotomy between the ground of an obligation and psychological motivation does not entail that he recognises no distinction between the reasons why we ought to do something and how we come to be motivated to do it. Rousseau’s view is not that moral obligations are only binding if individuals have reasons to act morally which correspond to their given psychological dispositions, which might well be self-seeking and debased. Rousseau indexes moral reasons not to given desires but to natural or healthy desires – i.e. to the desires of a subject raised to live both happily and freely. To show such a subject that he has reason to obey his moral obligations is to show him that doing so expresses other aspects of his nature that he has good reasons to endorse, especially insofar as he interested in living a life in which he obeys only his own will. The tutor must show Emile his ‘true interest in being good’, an interest that is only secured when he appreciates ‘the enjoyment of that durable happiness’ which is brought about by the ‘repose of a good conscience’ (E: 314). In sum, if our obligations bind because they express those aspects of our psychology which contribute to our overall well-being and freedom, then any of Rousseau’s particular ‘sociological’ accounts cannot be neatly detached from his normative doctrine.

Neuhouser on amour-propre: Beyond the separation?

By contrast, Neuhouser’s interpretation of amour-propre brings issues of psychological motivation closer to the ground of obligation, though not, as we will see, as close as does Rousseau. This point is far from obvious, however, because Neuhouser covers over the differences on this crucial matter between Cohen and himself. To see what is distinctive about Neuhouser’s account, let us return to Cohen’s claim that amour-propre lends ‘motivational support’ to duty. Cohen writes,

[W]hen individuals have the public status of equal citizen in the society of the general will … individuals can reasonably be expected to acquire an understanding of one another as equals. And if we do regard each other as equals, then those same arrangements will … confirm our sense of our own worth. The sense of duty has motivational support from the sense of self-worth, then, when the latter is informed by an understanding of equality. (Cohen, 2010: 125–125)

Neuhouser’s stated critique of the account of amour-propre expressed in this passage is that it does not fully appreciate the dangers of that passion, as well as the measures needed to remedy those dangers. Neuhouser shows that inflamed amour-propre (i.e. the myriad pernicious manifestations of the desire to be recognised) can lead to extremes of envy, violence and cruelty that tear at the very fabric of the self of both victim and perpetrator, leading to a loss of identity and alienation from any set of values. Neuhouser argues that Cohen’s solution to the pathologies of amour-propre – the institution of a sphere of purely formal equality in which each can be respected as an equal citizen – is inadequate to the task of domesticating its destructive force (Neuhouser, 2008: 61–80, 2011: 434–444, 2013: 214–215). Rather, what is needed are widespread social and political transformations aimed at affording individuals an outlet through which to affirm their sense of self in cooperative rather than antagonistic ways (Neuhouser, 2008: 155–183).

Yet, Neuhouser’s criticisms of Cohen, while important and compelling, actually do not capture the extent of their disagreement. With respect to the moral and political dimensions of practical reason, Neuhouser sometimes suggests that amour-propre does not merely secure ‘motivational support’ for the sense of duty. Rather, it enables individuals to stand in the appropriate relations of reciprocal recognition that determine the rational content of duty itself. As Neuhouser puts it, the drive to satisfy amour-propre accounts not just for our ability to be ‘motivated to comply with [reason’s] demands’, but to ‘grasp [them] intellectually’ (Neuhouser, 2008: 229). Or more boldly, ‘recognition is … the very substance of reason’ (Neuhouser, 2008: 216). At other times, his account is closer to Cohen’s, with amour-propre understood simply as providing motivational force for an independent conception of duty.

In those moments where he differs from Cohen, Neuhouser has the following, quasi-Hegelian picture in mind. What motivates an agent to exercise the capacity for rationality is the desire to be recognised. This is because amour-propre draws agents out of their solipsistic concern for themselves and into a realm in which they must ‘learn to act … on principles that require them to take into account and, so, to acknowledge the perspectives of their fellow beings’ (Neuhouser, 2008: 220). Through the activity of reasoning with others – e.g. negotiating claims or demanding and offering justifications for one’s actions – the individual seeks recognition from others. But others can only confer the desired recognition if they are treated as competent recognisers. So rationality demands ‘a certain attitude of respect’ towards all agents who also manifest amour-propre (Neuhouser, 2008: 209). This then means that the content of the norms of reason are determined as an ongoing and collective attempt to arrive at rules that allow for the systematic recognition of all those agents whose participation in the game of giving and asking for reasons stems from the desire to be recognised. Ultimately then, my desire for acknowledgement of my own supreme and putatively superior worth becomes, through induction into the space of reasons, a desire to take part in the collective constructions of norms of justice that treat all as equal. Thus, ‘recognition is … the very substance of reason’ (Neuhouser, 2008: 216). Or ‘rationality itself relies on amour-propre’ (Neuhouser, 2013: 70).

Unfortunately, Neuhouser does not adequately embrace the implications of this conception of practical reason for understanding the relation between the ground of obligation and moral psychology. What his account, if correct, shows is that the very same psychological processes that explain why we can bring ourselves to do what we ought to do (i.e. our motivations to be rational agents) also determine the content of what in fact we ought to do. To put the point another way, part of why we ought to do what we ought to do is that fulfilling our obligations secures the conditions under which we can express our natural desire to be recognised by others in a way that does not lead to violence and psychological catastrophe.⁷

Neuhouser is reticent to fully attribute his interpretation and reconstruction to Rousseau. He claims that Rousseau does not go the entire way in deriving the content of reason from ‘a dialectical argument that uncovers the conditions under which the drive for recognition can be systematically satisfied’ (Neuhouser, 2008: 243). So he also suggests, inconsistently in my view, that for Rousseau, the role of amour-propre in practical reason has only to do with a genetic story pertaining to how the capacity to be moved by reasons is first acquired and maintained. Cohen would probably not disagree with this, since as we have seen he thinks that amour-propre provides the background psychological motivations operative in acting from duty. And so once again, like Cohen, Neuhouser’s interpretation of Rousseau ultimately falls back on the Kantian distinction of ground and motivation, in which our psychology appears as a mere ‘affective prototype’ for our rational obligations.

If one embraces the Hegelian dimensions of Neuhouser’s reading more fully than he himself does, we can pose the following contrast. For Cohen, amour-propre motivates us to act from the demands of duty or justice, independently conceived. Whereas for Neuhouser, amour-propre’s demand for recognition ‘makes up the core of justice’s content’ (Neuhouser, 2008: 216). I suspect that this is at least part of the reason why Neuhouser argues that the more socially destructive manifestations of amour-propre cannot be neutralised by purely formal means, but must instead be repaired by broad interventions into the patterns of human interaction that allow individuals to engage in mutually recognitive and reason-giving activities. In the final section, I provide textual evidence to support a more integrated reading of ground and obligation than Neuhouser's framework will allow.

Extending amour-propre

Consider the following passage from Emile:

Let us extend amour-propre to other beings. We shall transform it into a virtue, and there is no man’s heart in which this virtue does not have its root. The less the object of our care is immediately involved with us [tient immédiatement à nous-même], the less the illusion of particular interest is to be feared. The more one generalizes this interest, the more it becomes equitable, and the love of mankind is nothing other than the love of justice. (E: 252)

Prior to Dent’s and SA’s work on the positive dimension of amour-propre, this passage was puzzling. Assume that to ‘extend’ a sentiment to others is to postulate that such a sentiment is operative in their motivational economy and respond accordingly. If amour-propre were merely a desire for superiority or self-aggrandisement, how could assuming the same motive force in others result in virtue? (At most it might generate the prudential realisation that others are also trying to outdo me, so that I should adjust my plans for domination accordingly.) After Dent and SA, we can clearly see that Rousseau means that the origin of virtue and justice lies in the recognitive structure of amour-propre. That is, since amour-propre is a desire to seek meaningful recognition, it can only be satisfied when it affords equal moral standing to those from whom it seeks its validation. The internal logic of this psychological force reveals that the quest for self-satisfaction culminates in regarding others as independent sources of value (Dent, 1989: 119, 144; Neuhouser, 2008: 224).⁸

We have been helped by SA in comprehending ‘Étendons l’amour-propre sur les autres êtres’, but consider now what it means to say, ‘we shall transform it into a virtue’ (‘nous le transformerons en vertu’), where the ‘it’ refers to amour-propre. This makes clear that Rousseau’s view is not that amour-propre functions as a motivational precondition or ‘affective prototype’ for virtue. Rather, amour-propre itself undergoes the appropriate transformations in order to become virtue’s content and ground.

Dent comes much closer than SA to appreciating Rousseau’s attempt to trace such a unity between our psychology and the authority of our obligations. He writes,

The question of morality is this: what significance should the being and needs of another (of others generally) have for one in moderating, redirecting and supplementing one’s desires, feelings, attitudes, and behavior? How should others be incorporated and accommodated into the content and shape of one’s soul and one’s conduct? … These enquiries concern the content of the requirements of morality. There is also a second set of questions of equal importance to morality: What contribution, what addition or subtraction, to the quality of my life – to my felicity, to my sense of personal value, to the meaning of my own existence and the felt import of my life and my projects – would be made if I afforded to others [the] significance … morality requires[?] … These enquiries concern the motivational ‘hold’ or ‘claim’ on the individual of the directives for dispositions and actions morality proposes … Rousseau provides a remarkably compelling integrated answer to these problems. (Dent, 1989: 162)⁹

Unhindered by any Kantian attachments, Dent clearly states the way in which Rousseau’s achievement lies in his ‘integrated’ attempt to bring together ground and motivation. But, once again, Dent understands his own claim in an overly genetic register. Here, he is referring to Rousseau’s account in Emile of the actual genesis of moral consciousness in a young adult. But it is not surprising that any account of how, as an actual empirical matter, we come to be moral must make reference to how we acquired these motivations. (After all, infants do not arrive on the scene as full-fledged Kantian subjects.)

By contrast, I have indicated a more radical way to read Dent’s remarks, one according to which Rousseau is providing an ‘integrated’ account of the substance of morality itself. The value of such an account is that it shows how our moral and political obligations must be able to demonstrate before the court of reason that they enable the flourishing of real human lives, lives which contain affects and capacities that are not simply reducible to the power of the moral ought to determine our wills. Otherwise, they are but empty exercises of power or social conformity. To transpose this conception into the political sphere, for Rousseau, political arrangements depend for their legitimacy on the stability and meaningful community they enable.

A more in-depth treatment of Rousseau’s theory of obligation will have to understand why and how acting from our obligations expresses our human nature. All I have done is argue for the modest claim that important aspects of SA will have to be modified if we are to fully appreciate the power and force of Rousseau’s views.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Geneviève Rousselière, Jared Holley, Mara Marin and an anonymous reviewer for comments and suggestions. I presented a distant ancestor of this paper at joint author-meets-critics session on Neuhouser’s Rousseau’s Theodicy of Self-Love and Joshua Cohen’s Rousseau: A Free Community of Equals, held at the American Philosophical Association in San Diego, CA, 2011. I thank my co-organisers of that session, Dasha Polzik and Jeppe von Platz, as well as Cohen and Neuhouser, who generously offered comments. I am also grateful to Robert Jubb for his interest in this piece and advice on how to improve it.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

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