Enemies of Freedom: Jean-Jacques Rousseau

There were many enemies of freedom among thinkers and philosophers. However, Rousseau's attack on freedom can be considered possibly the most perfidious of all.

Until he had to get off the horse or carriage, sit on the edge of the road and pour tears out of the euphoria. At least Jean-Jacques Rousseau himself in a letter to 1 of his (a few, due to the fact that he was an antipathic recluse) friends described the minute erstwhile he, while traveling, fell upon the foundations of his philosophical imagination of human nature and a suitable model of the socio-political system. In little distinguished times, specified as ours today, individual might accuse him of drinking that day or even being influenced by alleged harsh pills, due to the fact that it is actually hard to accept that these ideas spawned a conscious mind. In any case, on that day 1 of the most dangerous and aggressive threats to human freedom and the general well-being of man that the planet has always seen has flourished.

There were many enemies of freedom among thinkers and philosophers. However, Rousseau's attack on freedom can be considered possibly the most perfidious of all. Well, his author does not declare himself an enemy of freedom, nor does he peruse her flaws and disorder that she is drawn to. On the contrary, he declares himself not only a large supporter of freedom, but even states that having freedom is simply a condition of humanity. Those who do not have a free choice between different possibilities, are not free from coercion, cannot claim to be human at all.

Rousseau snuck into these clichés behind enemy lines, which means he's mixed between liberals. frequently a superficial analysis of his proposals leads the authors of textbooks or encyclopedic slogans to the mistake of recognizing him as 1 of the large liberal thinkers. This is simply a shameful mistake. Further consideration from this point leads Rousseau to trenches on the other side of the front line.

Like any philosopher dealing with the dilemmas of freedom, Rousseau faces the problem of reconciling the superior value of individual freedom with the necessity of surviving in the community and the resulting limitations and compulsions. While liberals at this point are moving towards reflections on maximization of freedom, co-existence of free people and elimination of interference of power in free elections of citizens, Rousseau is eager to value the content of human choices. For him there are good and bad ways of living, beautiful and insecure, just and wicked, lofty and downfalling, according to Rousseau's taste and against him. That's what he thought, and that's the end of it. It would be simple, of course, if the government by law forced people to make beautiful, good and taste-compatible Rousseau choices. But then people would lose their freedom, and so would humanity. In all madness, however, there is simply a method and this philosophical strategy besides requires rhetorical fictitiousness to call utmost enslavement "freedom."

Well, Rousseau's force on a “good” life is not due to simple decisions of power, its rights or laws. To him they are eternally encoded in the "law of nature," which is holy, unchanging, eternal, which besides appeals to the heart and head of man, so that each man has access to its contents and can easy internalize them, both rationally and emotionally. At the same time that man only “discovers” them, there is no area for him to express any of his own preferences, and he is not asked for approval at any time of dealing with him. Having gained this knowledge, man is armed with the weapons of making always good choices and the danger of generating evil by human individual freedom simply vanishes. And Rousseau may proclaim a triumph in the form of the preservation of the absolute value of freedom (the essence of humanity) and at the same time the absolute value of the sanctified principles (and thus the elimination of evil and wickedness from social life).

Moreover, due to the fact that the "eternal rules" are of course the same for all people, erstwhile they read them correctly, all people will make the same choices in all situation and besides guide their lives. Do you see how cool this is going towards the equally marching gentlemen in brown shirts? The 18th century philosophers (and not only those in whose head the crime was born) lived in the belief that nature is always in full harmony, and that the only "agent of chaos" can be the evil man. Therefore, obedience to all people at the same time with the same laws of nature guarantees uniformity of human choices while formally preserving freedom, as all people (each individual) make a choice of "good".

In the preceding paragraph is the word “obedience”, which we rightly do not associate with freedom. Rousseau runs rapidly to defend us from “thought-crime” and explains that obedience only robs a man of liberty if he entrusts himself in him to another man, authority, authority, any circumstantial centres that can apply orders and prohibitions. Rousseau is not expected to have that. In the most perverse conviction that this intellectual crime genius has always written, we read “giving myself to everyone, I give myself to no one.” The author does not require man to be enslavingly obedient to anyone, but only to decently read the eternal laws of nature and to live in harmony with them. Since they are read by all others the same way, life in harmony with them becomes a “universal will”, almost embodiment and covered by Rousseau in rule by spiritual worship of being, superior principle, and sovereignty of collective life. A man obeys only this will, bows before a certain emanation of attitudes shared by absolutely all the people. This subjection is expected to be compatible with the preservation of full individual freedom, since abandoning “bad and insecure” choices is an act of self-reason, an act of appropriate designation of the law of nature and “dissolution” in the will of the general public. Then people will make a "uniform whole", i.e. a collective. They are trained to “shall humbly endure the yoke of public happiness.”

The better 1 reads the law of nature/common will, the more he obeys it, and so – the attention of the verble – the more free he is (!!!). Freedom means getting free of your own views, needs, interests and preferences. The collectiveity of all citizens exercising universal will conducts control of individuals in this respect, so this control by authority (the "Lawmakers" in the Rousseau nomenclature) is identical to the freedom of the individual. (Yes, yes, control is identical to freedom—in fact freedom and power are identical.) This control is needed, for eternal laws read not all, but only those who have developed the "real self." Apart from it, there is besides a “false self” and people affected with it choose “happily” and not according to Rousseau's tastes. We would say that they actually enjoy freedom and bring a bit of colour into life, but Rousseau has no temper for jokes here. Even sociological social analysis of the origin of these unfortunates from the sign of false same is undertaken – they are frequently artists, intellectuals and another social people of the elite, while the reserve of the actual same is people who are simple, avoiding intellectual efforts and hungering to tell them what to do to "live beautifully". This component of Rousseau's imagination is an early announcement of the sociological nature of totalitarian revolutions, communists or fascists, which in their essence have always been a revolution of frustrated mediocrity from the lower level against people with authentic prosperity and intellectual independence.

Rousseau is further becoming even more plastic in order to leave no uncertainty in the minds of readers of his writings, who with their divided mouths wonder how from absolute freedom we have come to the divine nature of the universal will, the uniformization of the choices of men, the control of the way of thinking, the persecution of the holders of false same and the dissolution of the collective. So he writes that self-control is freedom, and that the shackles we put on ourselves are a tool of our freedom, even freedom brings us these saving shackles. He writes that – yes – a country built by the universal will compels us to a peculiar course of life, but it does not harm freedom, due to the fact that this country is each of us, the state is me, you, us and all people equally knowing the eternal principles.

But let us return to the false self. But not all read the law of nature and control The legislators will surely prove it. What about them? Rousseau makes it clear: all people already dissolved in the universal will have no choice but to flinch with disgust at the sight and thought of the owners of the false same who bring chaos, evil and corruption into the world. Knowing that they had read the eternal laws well, they have the right, and the work to thwart their life goals, to hinder them from pursuing their corrupt imagination of individual happiness. Rousseau demanded the death punishment for those who remained outside the ellipse of state religion in honor of the universal will. And with full religion that this death is in their own interests. He was convinced that these people besides wanted good, but "they do not know it yet." Persecuting them, torture and imprisonment, and yet even death, service to show them their actual desires. If, at any point in this process of punishment, they were given a actual self, they would not only show full knowing of the tortures they suffered, but would be eternally grateful for them. Society and state can and must “make people free”.

In conclusion, what Rousseau was gracious to call "absolute freedom," is simply a model of the most terrible, disgusting and most savage tyranny, totalitarianism, or dictatorship that the human head has always spawned. It's fundamentally a guide to criminals how they should build their regime. The “common will” is simply a tool for uniting people in complete enslavement by imposing a rigid pattern of attitude and behaviour. The author's treatments, convincing of the crucial and kind content of the "common will" are apparent nonsense. The “common will” is an empty pitcher that any bandit-practice can fill with any content, adapting Rousseau's intellectual blooms to Jacobinism, Nazism, communism, fascism, theocracy, police state, or any another form of human enslavement. Rousseau is simply a polite doorman at the door of any known history, the way to genocide.

The human individual is an overriding subject value in liberalism. Rousseau makes it an object, a tool for achieving the homogeneity of society. Useful tools are utilized and useless are disposed of. So it ends as always. Mass murder.