Rousseau's Two Models of Political Obligation

Abstract

IT IS RARE to find a contemporary critical or historical discussion of political obligation that does not in some way claim Rousseau's Social Contract as a positive or negative model. For example, John Rawls,1 Robert Paul Wolff2 and Andrew Levine3 all offer very different treatments of the questions of political obligation (Should anyone obey the laws? What makes a regime or government legitimate?).4 But each of these studies identifies the Social Contract as a principal influence. These writers would surely disagree on Rousseau's ability to answer any of the questions they raise. But they concur in their assessments of his intent. In the Social Contract, they say, Rousseau aims at formulating principles for the construction of the only legitimate or just regime, the sole polity entitled to obedience. Very little of this is strikingly new. But it is intriguing, not to say disquieting, that in book five of Emile Rousseau appears to present a theory of obligation directly counter to that of the Social Contract. The tutor tells Emile to follow the laws of his own native land regardless of their caliber or origin.5 Thus while political obligation in the Social Contract seems to require the deduction of the rules of right politics, obligation theory in Emile appears to be an empirical description of the necessity to obey existing coercive power. In Levine's terms the position of Emile apparently replaces the praise of de jure states with the acceptance of defacto governments. Is Rousseau inconsistent in presenting these two obligation theories? If not, what kind of consistency or relationship exists? Is Rousseau claiming that we have to choose between them to discover a satisfactory framework for political theory and an acceptable attitude for political practice? Given