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  • Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Rousseau and The Social Contract
  • Matthew Simpson
Christopher Bertram . Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Rousseau and The Social Contract. London: Routledge, 2004. Pp. ix + 214. Paper, $15.95.

The main problem with the interpretation of Rousseau's political thought today is that his theories rarely fit into the categories that define contemporary philosophy. He was neither a liberal nor a communitarian, neither a democrat nor an absolutist, neither a rationalist nor a voluntarist. Yet all these ways of thinking can be glimpsed in his philosophy. The consequence is that readers who are unable to get outside of certain modern prejudices inevitably distort Rousseau's own ideas, interests, and intentions. Typically, scholars take a few passages here and there and assemble a liberal democrat Rousseau or take different passages and make a proto-totalitarian Rousseau. Yet neither of these is Rousseau himself. Christopher Bertram does as well as any recent author in presenting the Social Contract in a way that is both relevant to modern concerns and respectful of Rousseau's particular vocabulary and goals.

The book has two introductory chapters on Rousseau's life and major ideas, followed by seven chapters of summary and analysis of the Social Contract and a conclusion discussing the influence and lasting merits of the work. Given the constraints of the Routledge Guidebook series, Bertram's presentation is highly selective. His choice of emphasis is, however, smart and generally persuasive. He does favor the early parts of the Social Contract, given that his analysis of Book I is almost twice as long as that of Book III even though Book III itself is over twice as long and at least as difficult as Book I. Nonetheless, Bertram gives an accurate and judicious presentation of the main line of Rousseau's argument.

The most valuable aspect of the book is Bertram's emphasis on the ways in which the social pact brings about a change in human nature. This point, while rarely discussed in the literature, is arguably the most important theme of the Social Contract. Large sections of Chapters 5 and 10 of Bertram's book analyze the "remarkable change in man" that the social pact brings about. People who were "men" become "citizens." They change from being individuals who think only of themselves to being citizens who think of themselves only as a fraction of a whole. This change and its consequences pervade Rousseau's theory of civil life, and give the distinctive shape to his basic political ideas: justice, duty, property, and moral freedom. Bertram traces the consequences this doctrine throughout the argument of the Social Contract.

The book does, however, skate over a couple of the more technical problems in Rousseau. Bertram is excellent with some of these issues, such as explaining the odd mathematics in Rousseau's theory of government and speculating on the significance of Condorcet's jury theory for Rousseau's theory of direct democracy. But on other matters he is less expansive. He neglects, for instance, to give a very persuasive argument about why the social pact stipulates exactly what it does. And his discussion of the general will, while nuanced, never really explains what it means for an assemblage of persons to have a will of its own over and above the wills of the individuals who comprise it.

Given the constraints of the format, the only other facet of the book that I believe should have been more fully developed is its discussion of Rousseau's contractualism. Bertram provides a great service simply by making this issue a theme of his analysis, and he offers many significant insights into the question of whether Rousseau was or was not a contractualist. He argues persuasively that he was, but Bertram fails to say much more about it. Rousseau's own acquaintance David Hume offered a series of basic objections to contractualism as a form of political philosophy, which have been revised and amplified in the centuries since. For example, if justice is defined by what people would agree to under certain conditions, how can we specify those conditions without invoking a prior sense of justice? And given that the kind of contract Rousseau...

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