David James - Rousseau and German Idealism Freedom-Dependence-And-necessity

ROUSSEAU AND GERMAN IDEALISM
The claim that Rousseau's writings influenced the development of

Kant's Critical philosophy, and German Idealism , is not a new one.
As correct as the claim may be, i t does not amount to a systematic
account of Rousseau's place within this philosophical tradition. It also
suggests a progression whereby Rousseau's achievements are eventually
eclipsed by those of Kant, Fichte and Hegel, especially with respect to
the idea of freedom. In this book David James shows that Rousseau
presents certain challenges that Kant and the idealists Fichte and Hegel
could not fully meet, by making dependence and necessity, as well as
freedom, his central concerns in such a way as to raise the question of
whether freedom in all its forms is genuinely possible in a condition
of human interdependence marked by material inequality. H is study
will be valuable for all those studying Kant, German Idealism , and
the history of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century ideas.
DAVID JAMES
is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University

ofWarwick. He is the author of Fichte's Social and Political Philosophy:
Property and Virtue {Cambridge, 2011 ) .
ROUSSEAU AND GERMAN

IDEALISM
Freedom, Dependence and Necessity
DAV I D JAMES
University of Warwick
M CAMBRIDGE
UNIVERSITY PRESS
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David James 2013
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Library ofCongress Cataloguing in Publication data
James, David, 1966Rousseau and German idealism : freedom, dependence and necessity I David James.
pages em
Includes bibl iographical references and index.
ISBN 978-I-107-03785-4 (hardback)
1. Idealism, German. 2. Kant, Immanuel, 1724-1804. 3 Fichte, Johann
Gottlieb, 1762-1814. 4 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 177o-183I.
5 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 1712-1778 - Infl u ence. I . Title.
82743!36 2013
193 - dc23
2013009533
ISBN
978-I-107-03785-4 Hardback
Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of

URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication,
and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain,
accurate or appropriate.
Contents
Acknowledgements
List ofabbreviations
page vii
Vlll
Introduction
1
Ro usseau on freedom, dependence and necessity

Freedom and dependence
18
18
The transition from dependence on things to dependence on men

in the
Second Discourse
The spectre of primitive man in
Reveries ofthe Solitary Walker
Will and necessity
26
39
45
Evil and perfectibility in Kant's liberalism

Kant's liberal theodicy
Kant on radical evil: making exceptions for oneself
A civil society of intelligent devils
Culture and the ethical community

Normativity and history
Imposing order: Rousseau and Fichte on property

The political architect
Rousseau on property
Equality and freedom in Fichte's theory of right
Fichte on property
Imposing order
Interpreting the common will
Political authority in Fichte's later
Rechtslehre
Will and necessity in Hegel's Philosophy ofRight

Hegel's re-conceptualization of the general will
Subjective freedom
The 'state of necessity'
Economic necessity
91
91
96
102
109
II9
130
138
143
143
I 56
!63
1 72
Contents
v1
The limits of subjective freedom
The existence of the general will
Activism and idleness: Fichte's critique of Ro usseau

Fichte's critique of Rousseau
Selfhood and moral freedom
Rousseau on idleness
Fichte on leisure
Ethical activism and the modern division of labour
Bibliography
Index
179
187
1 94
194
1 98
202
207
211
223
227
Acknowledgements
I have benefited from discussions that I have had with Raymond G euss and
Frederick Neuhouser concerning some of this book's main themes. Fred
also provided a set of valuable comments on the book itself. I would also
like to thank an ano nymous reader fo r Cambridge University Press who
provided some other helpful suggestions as to how I might improve the
book. Work on this book was greatly facilitated by a visiting fellowship at
CRASS H (Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities)
and Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, and by a short stay as
visiting scholar at the Forschungszentrum Laboratorium Aufk.larung at
the Friedrich-Schiller-Universitat Jena, for which I would like to thank
Alexander Schmidt especially. I would also like to thank Professor G eorg
Schmidt for inviting me during my stay to present part of my work on
Fichte's theo ry of property in his seminar on early modern theories of the
state.
Parts of the book contain material that appears in the following
articles: 'Ro usseau on Dependence and the Formation of Political So ciety',
European journal ofPhilosophy (forthcoming) , 'The Role of Evil in Kant's
Liberalism', Inquiry 55(3) (2012), and 'Subjective Freedom and Necessity
in Hegel's Philosophy of Right' , Theoria: A journal of Social and Political
Theory 131 (2012).
VII
Abbreviations
Works of Rousseau
C
CC
E
LM
OC
OW
Confessions, trans. Angela Scholar (Oxford University Press,

2000) . Cited by page number.
'Plan for a Constitution for Co rsica', in The Plan for Perpetual
Peace, On the Government ofPoland, and Other Writingr on
History and Politics (The Collected Writingr ofRousseau, Volume
xr ) , ed. Christopher Kelly, trans. Christopher Kelly and Judith
R Bush (Hanover: University Press of New England, 2005) .
Cited by page number.
Rousseau, judge ofjean-Jacques: Dialogues (The Collected
Writingr ofRousseau, Volume r ) , ed. Roger D. Masters and
Christopher Kelly, trans. Judith R. Bush, Christopher Kelly
and Roger D. Masters (Hanover: University Press of New
England, 1990). Cited by page number.
Emile or on Education, trans. Allan Bloom (New York: Basic
Books, 1979) . Cited by page number.
'Letters Written from the Mountain', in Letter to Beaumont,
Letters Written from the Mountain, and Related Writings ( The
Collected Writings ofRousseau, Volume IX) , ed. Christopher
Kelly and Eve Grace, trans. Christopher Kelly and Judith
R. Bush (Hanover: University Press of New England, 2001 ) .
CEuvres completes, 5 vols, ed. Bernard G agnebin and Marcel
Raymond (Paris: G allimard, Bibliotheque de la Pleiade,
19 59-1995). Cited by volume and page number.
'On Wealth and Fragments on Taste', in The Plan for Perpetual
Peace, On the Government ofPoland, and Other Writingr on
History and Politics ( The Collected Writingr ofRousseau, Volume
xr ) , ed. Christopher Kelly, trans. Christopher Kelly and Judith
Vlll
PF
PW1
PW2
RSW
lX
Bush (Hanover: University Press of New England, 2005). Cited

by page number.
'Political Fragments', in Social Contract, Discourse on the Virtue
Most Necessary for a Hero, Political Fragments, and Geneva
Manuscript (The Collected Writings ofRousseau, Volume IV) , ed.
Roger D. Masters and Christopher Kelly, trans. Judith R. Bush,
Roger D. Masters and Christopher Kelly (Hanover: University
Press of New England, 1994) . Cited by page number.
The Disco urses and other early political writings, ed. and trans.
Victor Go urevitch (Cambridge University Press, 1997) . Cited
by page number.
The Social Contract and other later political writings, ed. and
trans. Victor G ourevitch (Cambridge University Press, 1997) .
Reveries ofthe Solitary Walker, trans. Peter France (London:
Penguin, 2004). Cited by page number.
Works of Kant
AA
AHE
LE
PP
RRT
Kant's gesammelte Schriften, ed. Konigliche preuBische {later

deutsche) Akademie der Wissenschaften (Berlin: Reimer/ de
Gruyter, 19ooff.). Cited by volume and page number.
Anthropology, History, and Education, ed. Gunter Zoller and
Robert B. Louden (Cambridge University Press, 2007). Cited
by page number.
Lectures on Ethics, ed. Peter Heath and J . B. Schneewind
(Cambridge University Press, 1997) . Cited by page number.
Practical Philosophy, trans. and ed. Mary J. Gregor (Cambridge
University Press, 1996). Cited by page number.
Religion and Rational Theology, trans. and ed. Allen W. Wood
and George di Giovanni (Cambridge University Press, 1996) .
Works of Fichte
EPW
Fichte: Early Philosophical Writings, ed. and trans. Daniel

Breazeale {Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988). Cited by
page number.
x
FNR
GA
SE
Foundations ofNatural Right, ed. Frederick Neuhouser, trans.
Michael Baur (Cambridge University Press, 2000. Cited by
page number.
J G. Fichte- Gesamtausgabe der Bayerischen Akademie der
Wissenschaften, ed. Reinhard Lauth, Erich Fuchs and Hans
Gliwitzky (Stuttgart and Bad Canstatt: Frommann- Holzboog,
1962ff.) Cited by series, volume and page number.
The System ofEthics, trans. and ed. Daniel Breazeale and
GUnter Zoller (Cambridge University Press, 2005). Cited by
page number.
Works of Hegel
EL
LPH I
PR
VPW
'Enzyklopadie der philosophischen Wissenschaften im

Grundrisse (1830) Erster Teil: Die Wissenschaft der Logik', in
Werke, ed. E. Moldauer and K. M. Michel (Frankfurt am
Main: Suhrkamp. 1970) , vol. VIII. English translation: The
Encyclopaedia Logic: Part I ofthe Encyclopaedia ofPhilosophical
Sciences with the Zusatze, trans. T. F. G eraets, W. A. Suchting
and H. S. Harris (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1991) . Cited
according to section () numbers. A indicates a remark
(Anmerkung) which Hegel himself added to the section, while
Z (Zusatz) indicates an addition deriving from student lecture
notes.
Lectures on the Philosophy of World History: Introduction, trans.
H . B . Nisbet (Cambridge University Press, 1975) . Cited by
page number.
'Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts oder Naturrecht und
Staatswissenschaft im Grundrisse', in Werke, vol. vn. English
translation: Elements ofthe Philosophy ofRight, ed.
A. W. Wood, trans. H . B. Nisbet (Cambridge University Press,
199 1). Cited according to sectio n () numbers. A indicates a
remark (Anmerkung) which Hegel himself added to the
section, while Z (Zusatz) indicates an addition deriving from
student lecture notes. The only exception is the Preface, which
is cited by the page number of the German edition followed
by that of the English translation.
Vorlesungen iiber die Philosophie der Weltgeschichte. Die
Vernunft in der Geschichte, ed. Johannes Hoffmeister
(Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1994) . Cited by page number.
VRP1
VRP2
Philosophie des Rechts. Die Vorlesungen von I8IfT20 in einer

Nachschri.ft, ed . Dieter Henrich (Frankfurt am Main:
Suhrkamp, 1983) . Cited by page number.
Vorlesungen uber Rechtsphilosophie (I8I8-I8]I), 6 vols., ed.
Karl-Heinz Ilting (Stuttgart and Bad Cannstatt:
Frommann-Holzbo og, 1974). Cited by volume and page
number.
Xl
Introduction
The claim that important aspects of the writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau

influenced the philosophy of lmmanuel Kant and the philosophical move
ment inspired by his Critical philosophy known as G erman Idealism, whose
main representatives include Johann Gottlieb Fichte and Georg Wilhelm
Friedrich Hegel, is not a new one. Whether it is taken to be a direct
influence or an indirect one based on a common concern with certain key
concepts and issues, Ro usseau's influence on the development of Kant's
Critical philosophy and on German Idealism is widely acknowledged.'
Typically, the concept of freedom in particular is stressed, as when it is
stated that Hegel's adoption of the 'positive' model of freedom, which
identifies freedom with self-determination and self-realization, places him
in a tradition that begins with Ro usseau and continues with Kant and
Fichte, and then culminates in his own theory of the state as the realization
of human freedom.2
As correct as such claims may be, they do not by themselves amo unt to a
systematic account of Ro usseau's place within this philosophical tradition.
They also suggest some kind of progression, in which Ro usseau's achieve
ments are eventually overshadowed by those of Kant, Fichte or Hegel. In
this book, I set out to provide a more systematic exploration of the signif
icance of some of the central features of Ro usseau's writings in relation to
these philosophers' own theories concerning the ethical, social and politi
cal aspects of human existence, by focusing on the following key concepts:
1
Even when certain connections between Rousseau's writings and the philosophies of Kant, Fichte
or Hegel are explored in some depth, the tendency has been to focus on Rousseau's relation to one
particular ph ilosopher among them. On Rousseau and Kant, see Cassirer, Rousseau, Ka.nt, Goethe,
Henrich, 'The Moral Image of the World', 10ff. and Velkley, Freedom and the End ofReason. On
Rousseau and Hegel, see Fulda and Horstmann, Rousseau, die Revolution und derjunge Hegel. There
are some older accounts that consider Rousseau's writings in relation to more than one of the
philosophers in question. Yet they amount to little more than brief summaries of various apparent
connections that are not, however, analysed in any great detail. Cf. Fester, Rousseau und die deutsche
Geschichtsphilosophie and Gurwitsch, 'Kant und Fichte als Rousseau-lnterpreten'.
1 Cf. Franco, Hegel's Philosophy ofFreedom, 30ff.
Introduction
freedom, dependence and necessity. I show, moreover, that Rousseau poses

certain challenges that none of these philosophers was fully able to meet,
though this is not to deny the significance of their attempts to meet these
challenges. I do not mean to claim that the concepts of freedom, depen
dence and necessity are the only ones that can be successfully employed to
explore the importance of certain features of Rousseau's writings in rela
tion to the philosophies of Kant, Fichte and Hegel. Nor do I wish to claim
that Kant, Fichte and Hegel themselves understood their own respo nses
to Rousseau's writings to be based on these three concepts, although in
the case of freedom they arguably were highly conscio us of their debt to
Rousseau. This book does not, therefore, attempt to show how Rousseau
directly influenced the development of Kant's Critical philosophy and
German Idealism, tho ugh it clearly has some bearing on this issue. Rather,
I focus on the three concepts in question because they seem to me to be
highly relevant to our present-day situation at the same time as they help
to explain, and also to call into question, some of the things that Kant,
Fichte and Hegel have to say about Ro usseau .
This i s especially true o f the concept o f necessity, which appears to
be opposed to that of freedom, while the concept of dependence already
implies the notion of constraint and thus some form of practical necessity,
inviting the question as to how freedom can be conceived as compatible
with necessity. In highlighting the role of the concept of necessity; I show
not only that this concept is integral to a fuller understanding of a number of
central ideas found in the writings of Rousseau, Kant, Fichte and Hegel, b ut
also that their writings provide some rich resources for comprehending the
practical constraints, including less obvious ones, to which human beings
are subject in so far as they stand in relations of dependence with each
other. The existence of such constraints demands an acco unt of freedom
that adequately recognizes their reality and seeks to show how they can
nevertheless be viewed as compatible with the concept of freedom. Since
the importance of the concept of freedom is uncontroversial when it comes
to Rousseau's influence on Kant and G erman Idealism, I shall first explain
the significance of the co ncept of dependence and its relation to the concept
of freedom.
In Rousseau's writings the idea of freedom is closely connected with the

issue of dependence, for, as we shall see in Chapter 1 especially, he views the
question of freedom largely in terms of the dangers posed by a condition
in which one human being is dependent on another human being. This

concern with dependence and the question as to how it can be reconciled
with the idea offreedom is an essential feature of Ro usseau's republicanism.
The connection between freedom and dependence is likewise central to
neo-republican attempts to provide an alternative account of freedom
to the 'negative' one asso ciated with liberalism by means of an appeal to
classical republican sources. Ro usseau, however, highlights a feature of
human dependence that in my view is insufficiently acknowledged and
developed in neo-republican accounts of freedom, which tend to avoid
any appeal to Ro usseau's particular form of republicanism because of its
association with the 'positive' model of freedom.3 These neo-republican
acco unts of freedom consequently employ the concept of dependence,
which is claimed to be largely neglected in modern political theory but is
integral to classical republican accounts offreedom, in such a way that they
themselves neglect an essential aspect of one important earlier account of
this concept. I here have in mind the broader notion of dependence as
a threat to freedom that we encounter in Rousseau's writings as compared
to the narrower notion of dependence employed by neo-republicans.
Neo-republican acco unts of freedom depend on a distinction between
liberal freedom and what is alleged to be a distinctively republican form
of freedom. Republican freedom is understood to consist in freedom from
dependence on the arbitrary wills of o thers, whereas liberal freedom is
understood to consist simply in freedom from interference of an inten
tional, and typically coercive, kind. A person can be free in the liberal
sense when no actual interference occurs b ut the constant possibility of
its occurring nevertheless exists. For neo-republicans, by contrast, it is not
only the fact of being coerced or suffering some other form of intentional
interference that results in the loss offreedom. Rather, the mere possibility
of being subjected by others to coercion or some other form of interfer
ence on an arbitrary basis is enough to render people unfree because of
' For nco-republicans republican freedom is held to be essentially different from the positive model
of freedom associated with the idea of obeying laws that we have ourselves approved. This idea is
exemplified by the democratic freedom which Rousseau is said to endorse. Rousseau is accordingly
treated with some suspicion by neo-republicans in so far as he is associated with the idea of democratic
self-rule and with the populism that they tend to associate with the positive model of freedom. See,
for example, Pettit, Republicanism, 19 and 30. However, as we shall see in Chapter 4, Hegel employs
a positive conception of freedom which involves distinguishing between constraints that are merely
alien, external ones, and constraints that do not need to be viewed in this way because they can
be recognized as conditions of our own freedom, but does not require the direct approval of these
constraints in a democratic assembly. The positive model of freedom does not, therefore, appear
to be inextricably l inked to a vision of democratic self-rule. Indeed, in Chapter 3 Rousseau's own
commitment to democratic self-rule will be shown to be conditional in certain respects.
Introduction
the potential for domination contained in such a situation. The classic

example is that of the slave whose master just happens not to practise inter
ference on an arbitrary basis but could, nevertheless, do so at will and with
impunity if he wished to do so.4 Conversely, a person can lack freedom
in the liberal sense because he or she suffers interference, while remaining
free in the republican sense of non-domination, as when just laws or other
constitutionally circumscribed forms of interference aimed at preventing
dependence on the arbitrary wills of others constrain people's actions.s In
such cases, the constraints in question, as conditions of freedom, cannot
be viewed as constraints that violate individual liberty. 6
For neo-republicans, then, freedom essentially consists in the absence
of domination. In this respect it remains a 'negative' account of freedom.
Republican freedom does not, however, consist in the absence of all forms of
constraint. Rather, some forms of constraint are considered to be compati
ble with the idea offreedom because they serve to guarantee freedom, if only
in the negative sense of preventing unjust interference on the part of others,
which includes being subject to the arbitrary will of another person as well
as more direct, coercive forms of interference. As we shall see, Rousseau
holds the same view because for him securing freedom in the negative sense
of making oneself independent of the arbitrary wills of others requires
submitting oneself to laws that are equally binding on all the individuals
concerned. What Ro usseau also recognizes, however, and what I think neo
republicans largely miss, is the way in which this solution to the problem
of the way in which dependence on o thers threatens to make one person
subject to the arbitrary will of another person is itself made to appear incom
plete by the existence of a particular form of dependence. I shall refer to
this form of dependence as dependence on other human beings as mediated
by dependence on thingr. The essential nature of this form of dependence,
together with the way in which it allows one human being to dominate
another human being, will be discussed in Chapter 1. Recognition of this
form of dependence is admittedly not entirely lacking in neo -republican
accounts of freedom, at least in so far as they view solving the problem of
dependence as an economic and social matter as well as a civil and political
4
5
Cf. Pettit, Republicanism, f., 31fT. and 63f.; Skinner, Liberty before Liberalism, 39ff.
Cf. Pettit, Republicanism, 5, 35ff. and 65f.
See, for example, the statement that 'classical republican writers have never claimed that true political
liberty consists of the absence of interference, since they believed that restraint or interference which
the law imposes on individual choice was not a restraint on liberty but a brake, an essential limitation
intrinsic to republican liberty'. Viroli, Republicanism, 47
one.? The neo-republican account of freedom as independence of the arbi

trary wills of others nevertheless tends to view the main threat to freedom
almost exclusively in terms of direct, typically interpersonal forms of depen
dence, in which one agent is in the power of another agent, whether this
agent is a personal, corpo rate or collective one, with the agent in question
consciously exercising domination on the basis of the superior power that it
enjoys.
Rousseau, by contrast, recognized the existence of indirect forms of
dependence that pose an equal threat to human freedom while being the
result of largely impersonal forces. In the case of the type of threat posed
to freedom by this form of dependence, it is possible to conceive of the
person who dominates another person as not consciously and intentionally
doing so. Rather, he or she may be caught up in a process in which unequal
relations of dependence are spontaneously generated, with the practical
constraints to which these relations of dependence give rise leading people
to behave in certain ways almost as a matter of necessity. Although this type
of process generates outcomes that leave some people with the power to
dominate others without their originally having intended this result, these
people may come to realize how greatly existing conditions benefit them
in relation to o thers, and they will consequently develop an incentive for
sustaining and perpetuating these same conditions.
One response to the claim that relations of dependence generated in this
way present a problem for a neo-republican account offreedom might be to
draw a firm distinction between two kinds of interference that dependence
on others tends to generate: interference on an arbitrary basis which is of an
intentional kind and interference which is of an unintentional kind. lt co uld
then be said that the failure to maintain this distinction undermines the
important distinction between 'securing people against the natural effects
of chance and incapacity and scarcity and securing them against the things
that they may try to do to one ano ther'. 8 Yet the point that Rousseau makes
is not simply that individuals are dominated by an impersonal process over
7
As when it is said that the need exists 'to ensure all citizens the social, economic, and cultural
conditions to allow them to live with dignity and self-respect'. Viroli, Republicanism, 66. Viroli
locates Rousseau's distinctive contribution in the idea of social equality as expressed in the principle
that no one in a republic should be so poor as to be forced to sell himself or so rich as to be able to
purchase the obedience of other citizens. According to Viroli, this requires ensuring that 'everyone
has the right to work and the social rights that will keep him or her from hitting bottom when
misfortune strikes' (67) . See also Pettit's account of the importance of personal socio-economic
independence in Republicanism, 158fT. This raises the question as to what it really means to guarantee
the rights that Viroli mentions and the kind of socio-economic independence envisaged by Pettit. I
explore this issue in Chapter 3 in connection with Rousseau's and Fichte's views on property rights.
Pettit, Republicanism, 53
Introduction
which they seemingly have no control, in which case, as indicated above,

the interference that they suffer, in the form of the constraints generated
by such a process, could still be regarded as unintentional in kind. Rather,
he recognizes that those who happen to gain from this type of process,
in so far as it generates relations of dependence and differences in power
that make it possible for one person to dominate another person, will have
an interest in sustaining and perpetuating the o utcomes of this process.
In acting in accordance with this interest, these people may be thought
to endorse, if only tacitly, a condition in which the fundamental interests
of others are harmed, even if they do not directly intend this particular
outcome but are instead simply concerned with securing and furthering
their own interests. In other words, the unintentional and the intentional
forms of interference generated by relations of dependence and by any
differences in power based on such relations cannot be easily disentangled
once we begin to think, as Ro usseau does, in less static terms, by treating
these relations of dependence and differences in power as the products of
an ongoing process, in which human beings continuously interact both
with nature and with each o ther.
The type of dependence-generating process which I have in mind can,
in fact, be viewed as in some sense a matter of free choice, even when both
it and its particular outcomes are not consciously intended. This is because
this pro cess and its particular outcomes can be regarded as the cumulative
results of countless individual acts of free choice that were consciously
intended. The fact that this process and its particular outcomes are the
unintended, cumulative results of co untless acts of free choice and are,
therefore, ultimately of a contingent nature, is something which the idea
that reform of existing conditions is possible appears to presuppose, whereas
the possibility of reform is difficult to comprehend if the type of process in
question and its particular outcomes are taken to be completely determined
by factors that lie beyond all conscious human control. Such reform may
involve encouraging people to make different choices or, more typically,
imposing constraints on the choices that they may legitimately make. As we
shall see, although Rousseau held out the possibility of reform, he was also
acutely conscious of the difficulties involved in reforming conditions in
the face of the kind of spontaneous dependence-generating process which
he describes, and whose particular outcomes include differences in power
based on material inequality and the potential for domination created by
such differences in power.
In Chapter 1, this process will be shown to be driven by the formation
of needs and by the attempts made by human beings to satisfy their needs
Necessity
by means of material objects. A condition of interdependence based on

need-generation and need-satisfaction, which no single individual or group
of individuals intended to bring about, is then shown by Ro usseau to be a
primary source of domination. This is why he tends to treat the potential
for domination generated by material inequality in a condition of human
interdependence as the model of a situation in which dependence on others
poses a severe threat to freedom. Rousseau's recognition of the way in which
certain forms of domination are not of a directly interpersonal kind, since
they are mediated by material objects that have come to form essential ele
ments in a complex system of need-generation and need-satisfaction, ren
ders more difficult the task of explaining how a condition of human interde
pendence can be organized in such a way that it does not generate relations
of domination. One of the main claims of this book will be that Kant,
Fichte and Hegel also recognized the reality of human interdependence and
that each of them in his own way sought to explain how this interdepen
dence could be viewed as compatible with the idea of freedom despite the
constraints that it imposes on human beings. These philosophers thus came
to wrestle with a particular problem that Rousseau identifies. As I show in
Chapter I, this problem concerns the relation of freedom in the form of the
human will to the necessity that characterizes economic and social relations
in a condition of interdependence. This brings me to the concept of
necessity.
Necessity
While freedom forms a staple topic of modern political philosophy as does,

if to a lesser extent, the concept of dependence given its centrality to neo
republican accounts of freedom, the same cannot be said of the concept of
necessity. Yet the existence of objective conditions over which individuals
have limited control implies the existence of some significant constraints
on human agency. These constraints constitute a practical form of necessity
in the sense that agents are forced to recognize them when forming ends
and, more especially, when seeking to realize these ends in relation to the
natural and the human environments confronting them. Another central
aim of this book is to show that emphasizing the concept of freedom
when discussing Ro usseau's writings in relation to Kant, Fichte and Hegel
threatens to obscure the equally important, if less explicit, role that the
concept of necessity plays in these philosophers' writings, as well as in
Rousseau's own writings.
Introduction
In its most obvious form, practical necessity consists in being compelled

to do something against one's own will by means of force, whether through
the actual use of fo rce or thro ugh the threat of it. As Rousseau puts it,
yielding to force is 'an act of necessity, not of will [ un acte de necessite, non
de volonte]; at most it is an act of prudence' (OC m: 3 54; PW2: 44) . He
cannot comprehend, therefore, how the exercise or the threat of force can
give rise to any genuine moral obligations, for such obligations consist in
the duty to obey even when one is not forced to do so. As we shall see, there
are some less obvious fo rms of practical necessity, such as the ones described
by Hegel in his acco unt of civil society (die burgerliche Gesellschaft) , which
I discuss in Chapter 4 Here we encounter two distinct forms of practical
necessity: a social fo rm of necessity which involves having to conform to
social norms and take into consideration the views of o thers in order to
realize one's own ends within a condition of human interdependence, and
an economic form of necessity which consists in one's thoughts and actions
being determined by the limits imposed by the 'laws' of a market economy,
with these laws being regarded as operating with a quasi-natural necessity
and consequently as largely beyond human control. Although the idea of
necessity as a matter of force easily finds its place both in liberal and in
neo-republican accounts of freedom, because it implies a direct, coercive
form of interference, the other fo rms of practical necessity that I have
mentioned do not, given their impersonal nature.
By the term 'necessity', I sho uld be taken to mean one or more of the
following things depending on the context:
(r) Natural necessity. This type of necessity concerns self-preservation
and, therefore, the basic material needs that must be satisfied if human
beings are physically to survive, both as individuals and as a species.
These natural needs themselves and the means of satisfying them may
become increasingly more refined, generating ever more complex rela
tions of interdependence among human beings and co rrespondingly
higher, if less obvious, levels of constraint.
(2) Necessity in the sense of being compelled to do something against
one's own will, either by the actual use of physical force or by the
threat of fo rce or some other sanction whose effectiveness ultimately
depends on the exercise or the threat of force, as in the case of being
subjected to a fine or to imprisonment.
(3) The necessity exhibited by impersonal economic, legal and social
forces together with any general process shaped by these fo rces. Neces
sity here exists in the sense that these fo rces or processes confront
individuals as something given which they are largely powerless to
Necessity
change, even when the force or process in question may, in fact, have
arisen through various arbitrary acts or through the concatenation of
other contingent facto rs and could, therefore, be otherwise than it is.
This type of necessity need not, therefore, be regarded as fully objec
tive, though it may strike individuals as being so because it constrains
them to act in certain ways. One example of this type of necessity is
provided by law in general, which as a system of positive laws con
fronts individuals as something given which constrains their actions.
Yet law is equally the product of human consciousness and will, and
in this respect it is subject to change and amenable to reform. Another
example is provided by the law-like regularities governing relations of
production and exchange in a condition of human interdependence.
In this case, individuals will be confronted with something given
which appears to have arisen spontaneously and which determines
their thoughts and actions. At the same time, however, these relations
can be thought to be contingent in the sense that they are the cumula
tive, but unintended, results of co untless conscious acts, so that they
co uld, in principle, be o ther than they are. Also , altho ugh some of
these relations will be based on the natural necessity associated with
material needs, many of them may be based on artificial needs which,
as we shall see, may exhibit a subjective necessity while not being
objectively necessary.
(4) Necessity in the fo rm of the practical constraints that natural neces
sity, that is, necessity in sense (I) , or the kind of impersonal force or
process associated with necessity in sense (3) may generate. This form
of necessity concerns, in short, the particular practical constraints to
which human beings are subject as opposed to the general sources of
these particular constraints. For example, people are not directly sub
ject to law in general but to particular positive laws; physical survival
may demand that human beings accept a particular set of mutual con
straints on their actions; getting the object that one wants in order to
satisfy a particular need may require co operating with others in spe
cific ways, and this cooperation will have certain implications with
respect to one's actual ability to do as one wants to do; one's choice of
livelihood may be severely constrained by the economic conditions
brought abo ut by market fo rces.
As I show in Chapter I, Rousseau was well aware of the problems
faced by his own attempt to bring the necessity at work in society under
conscious human control, so as to overcome the threats to freedom that he
associates with dependence on o ther human beings. Bro adly speaking, these
10
Introduction
problems concern the question as to whether the idea of human freedom

can be maintained in the face of the economic or social forms of necessity
that arise spontaneously in a condition of interdependence and come to
form objective conditions that constrain people's actions while producing
outcomes (for example, the rise of material and political inequality) that
may, in the first instance at least, be regarded as unintended ones. The
same type of problem appears in different ways in Kant's philosophy of
history and in Fichte's attempt to apply his theory of property to existing
conditions.
Kant presents us with a spontaneous process by means of which indi
viduals co me to accept certain constraints on their actions. To this extent,
the constraints in question can be viewed as self-imposed ones, rather than
being simply a matter of force. This spontaneous process is seen by Kant
to have certain beneficial, though unintended, consequences with respect
to the idea of freedom, namely, the emergence of civil and political free
dom, on the one hand, and the development of culture and morality, on
the other. Here the idea of necessity is invoked to explain the possibility
of collective human progress viewed in cultural, legal, political and moral
terms. In Fichte's case, by contrast, the human will is accorded the task of
imposing order on the spontaneously generated forces governing society
in the name of equality and freedom. Once again the notion of collective
human progress is at work, though this time such progress is held to depend
on subjecting the forces shaping society to effective conscious human con
trol. The human will is therefore assumed to possess the capacity to act
effectively in the face of the necessity confronting it. We are thus presented
with two distinct approaches, both of which seek to explain the possibility
of human progress: one of which views certain human goods as arising
spontaneously, rather than as the result of an attempt to impose order on a
potentially recalcitrant material, while the other approach involves seeking
to reform existing conditions in accordance with certain ideas concerning
how economic, legal, so cial and political relations must be organized if they
are to realize particular values, namely, equality and freedom. I argue that
Hegel adopts a position which partakes of both these approaches. I iden
tify problems with all three of these approaches. These problems are ones
that Rousseau had already identified in his own account of the relation of
the human will to necessity. Indeed, these problems manifest themselves in
Rousseau's own writings in so far as he himself is concerned with explaining
the possibility of human progress. This brings me to ano ther theme which
is especially important when it comes to assessing one of the main ways in
which Ro usseau's relation to Kant in particular has been interpreted. This
Perfectibility
II
is the theme of perfectibility, which is also found in the philosophies of

Fichte and Hegel in so far as they also endorse the idea of human progress
and seek to explain how it is possible.
Perfectibility
Rousseau is viewed as an impo rtant figure in Kant's development because

of the way in which he not only raises problems that Kant allegedly sought
to solve b ut also provides some of the basic conceptual resources needed to
solve these problems. The no tion of reason plays a crucial role in this type
of interpretation of Kant's relation to Ro usseau. For instance, Rousseau is
characterized as offering a critique of an instrumental form of reasoning
while adopting the idea of a self-legislating reason which opens up the
possibility of a more adequate understanding of human ends. Kant is
then said to develop a theory of reason, both in its theoretical and in its
practical aspects, based on the idea of a new form of rationality centred
on the notion of autonomy, which consists in the self-legislating nature of
reason. In its pure practical form, autonomy finds expression in the idea
that morality is a matter of subjecting oneself to laws of which one is, as
a free and rational being, at the same time the author, so that 'the will
is not merely subject to the law b ut subject to it in such a way that it
must be viewed as also giving the law to itself and just because of this as
first subject to the law (of which it can regard itself as the author) ' (M
rv: 431; PP: 81). In this way, one can identify oneself with - and in this
sense endo rse - the mo ral constraints to which one is subject. This moral
autonomy renders human beings independent of nature at the same time
as it overcomes the evils associated with an instrumental form of rationality
whose ends are determined by nature.9 As we shall see, this type of acco unt
of Rousseau's influence on Kant's development accords with what Kant
himself has to say concerning the significance of Rousseau's writings, while
Kant's own statements on this issue have in turn exerted an influence on
some interpretations of certain aspects of Rousseau's writings.
As regards the idea of human progress and the way in which Kant
interprets Rousseau's writings in the light of such an idea, appeal is often
made to a secularized theodicy which mirrors the traditional Christian view
9 This assessment of Kant's debt to Rousseau is summarized as follows: 'Kant finds in Rousseau the
suggestion that human ity itself, through the development of reason, infl icts on itself all the forms of
"alienation" tending to destroy both freedom and virtue. And that it is also reason, in a certain self
legislative form (as the source of autonomy), that can restore humanity to wholeness and soundness,
uniting freedom and virtue.' Velkley, Freedom and the End ofReason, 37
12
Introduction
of human history. This theodicy begins with an original harmony among

human beings and between human beings and nature. This harmony is
destroyed, however, by a fall from grace which is the effect of human
freedom. Although this fall corrupts human nature and produces evil and
misery for humankind, the possibility of redemption remains, and this
redemption is to be sought in the sources of the evil and misery afflicting
humankind, that is, in human freedom and rationality.10 God is here
cleared of all responsibility for evil because it has entered the world as the
work of human beings. Since the world as created by God is, in its essential
structure, shown to be free of evil, there is nothing to say that it cannot be
reformed in a way which is compatible with genuine human freedom and
happiness, though this does not mean that such reform will actually take
place.
In support of this type of approach, it must be said that Rousseau views
freedom as an essentially human phenomenon. The human being's status
as a free agent already manifests itself at the level of the satisfaction of
animal needs. While other animals are bound by instinct to satisfy their
needs in determinate ways, and would therefore perish in the absence
of a particular means of subsistence, human beings may satisfy the basic
need for food in a variety of ways, and for this reason are not tied to
any particular means of subsistence (OC m: 135 and 141; PW1: 134f. and
140) . Free agency also reveals itself in the way in which human beings
recognize themselves to be 'free to acquiesce or to resist' the impressions that
they receive, whereas other animals mechanically obey such impressions
For the idea, as suggested by Kant himself, that a theodicy can be discerned in Rousseau's writings,
see Cassirer, The Question ofJean-Jacques Rousseau, 7rff. and Neuhouser, Rousseau s Theodicy of
Self-Love, rff. In relation to the problem of dependence, it should be mentioned that Neuhouser
locates the source of evil and possible redemption in amour-propre rather than in reason as such,
by distinguishing between 'inflamed' and beneficial forms of the need to gain recognition in
the eyes of others. Since amour-propre represents a psychological form of dependence on others,
Neuhauser's book represents a major contribution to the issue of the problem of dependence in
Rousseau's writings. However, I am more concerned in this book with a type of dependence on other
human beings that is mediated by dependence on things, rather than with any purely emotional or
psychological form of dependence, because of its centrality to Rousseau's political solution to the
threats posed to human freedom by dependence on others. Nevertheless, as Neuhouser points out,
the desire for recognition from others associated with amour-propre can in certain cases be mediated
by things, as when the possession and consumption of commodities fi g ure in individuals' strategies
for gaining the respect of others. Cf. Neuhouser, 'Freedom, Dependence, and the General Will',
379 .Moreover, as we shall see, equal civic and legal status can be viewed as an important means of
attaining the kind of recognition on which a healthy form of amour-propre depends, so that in this
sense amour-propre is central to Rousseau's political solution to the threats posed to human freedom
by dependence on others. I argue, however, that this status is not by itself enough for Rousseau
when it comes to removing all these threats precisely because it does not address the threats posed
by a type of dependence on other human beings that is mediated by dependence on things.
Perfectibility
13
(OC III: 141-2; PW1: 141) . Since they are not tied to any natural order by
instinct and by a merely mechanical response to external stimuli, human
beings are essentially undetermined with respect to what they are. It is, in
short, possible for human beings to be different from what they happen to
be, for various possibilities remain open to them, even if the choices that
they have already made in response to the conditions and circumstances
in which they find themselves determine what they happen to be at any
given moment in time. This idea finds radical expression in the following
passage from Fichte's Foundations ofNatural Right:
Every animal is what it is: only the human being is originally nothing at all.
He must become what he is to be: and, since he is to be a being for himself,
he must become this through himself. Nature completed all of her works;
only from the human being did she withdraw her hand, and precisely by
doing so, she gave him over to himself. Formability [Bildsamkeit], as such,
is the character of humanity. (GA I/3: 379 ; FNR: 74)
The extent to which the human being becomes 'what he is to be' only
'through himself' is debatable given the practical constraints imposed on
human beings both by nature and by their relations with other human
beings. We shall see, in fact, that Kant and Hegel treat natural necessity
and some other practical forms of necessity as playing an essential role
in the formation of human beings as free and rational agents, so that in
this respect necessity appears to be a condition of freedom and rationality,
at least in terms of their full development. Nevertheless, they agree with
Fichte that human beings can become other than what they happen to
be at any given moment in time and that they may in this way become
what they ought to be. This idea is certainly central to Hegel's philosophy
of history, because for him the faculty of being able to perfect oneself
distinguishes spiritual phenomena from natural phenomena. While the
latter are determined in accordance with unchanging natural laws and as a
result of this, exhibit no genuine capacity for change, human beings possess
a drive of perfectibility (ein Trieb der Perfoktibilitat) , and it is this capacity
that allows them to progress towards a more perfect condition (VPW:
149; LPHI: 124f.). Yet even here the idea of necessity can be detected,
since the talk of a drive suggests something that must eventually manifest
itself.
Rousseau also asso ciates the capacity to become something other than
what one happens to be with 'the faculty of perfecting oneself', a faculty
which pertains to the human species as a whole as well as to the individual
human being (OC III: 142; PW1: 141) . This perfectibility (perfectibilite)
14
Introduction
consists in human beings developing certain latent capacities through their

interaction with the natural environment and, more importantly, with
other human beings. To this extent, interpreting Rousseau's writings in
terms of the idea of a secularized theo dicy, so as to suggest a vital link
between his writings and some of the main aspirations and features of
German Idealism as inspired by Kant's Critical philosophy, makes a lot of
sense. There are nevertheless some problems with this appro ach that I shall
highlight in the course of this book.
To begin with, it is not clear that Rousseau views the process of human
corruption that he describes in the Discourse on the Origin and Foundations
of Inequality among Men, otherwise known as the Second Discourse, as a
matter of the conscious choice of evil as opposed to the good. Rather, as
we shall see in Chapter 1, Ro usseau associates this process of corruption
with the spontaneous generation of unequal relations of dependence based
on material inequality. It appears, therefore, that no one intended this
particular outcome, though, as previously mentioned, this does not rule out
thinking of this outcome as being at a deeper level dependent on individual
free choice. 1 1 As we shall see, it is only once this process has run its course
that Rousseau mentions something which has the appearance of an act of
conscious choice. Yet even then the act in question is described as being
more a matter of necessity than anything else. This brings me to a second
point, which concerns the possibility of reforming existing conditio ns so
as to bring about the transition towards a more perfect condition once the
process through which unequal relations of dependence based on material
inequality are generated has already done its work.
We shall see that Rousseau is acutely conscious of the problems faced by
the idea that the human will, when guided by reason, can shape existing
conditions in such a way as to remove the evils that he associates with
unequal relations of dependence based on material inequality. Rousseau
emphasizes the contingency of such relations when he speaks of 'the for
tuitous concatenation of several foreign causes which might never have
arisen', in the absence of which man 'would eternally have remained in his
primitive condition' (OC III: 162; PW1: 159) . Here the development of var
ious human cognitive and practical capacities together with the emergence
of the evils afflicting humankind which depends on the development of
11
Thus it can be said that existing conditions and the human corruption that characterizes them are
'the cumulative and unforeseen result of a series of free cho ices (conjoined with contingent natural
occurrences) that, in contrast to the Christian narrative, do not involve the conscious willing of
evil' . Neuhauser, Rousseau 's Theodicy oJSe/fLove, 4f.
Perfectibility
15
these same capacities are treated as being anything but inevitable.12 Despite
this contingency, the dependence-generating process which arises on the
basis of the concatenation of various causes assumes the shape of an imper
sonal force in relation to the individuals caught up in it, so that both it and
the particular practical constraints that it generates assume the appearance
of necessity, in the sense of a force confronting individuals as something
given that they are powerless to change and to which they must, therefore,
simply conform. Even if the human will guided by reason attempts to
assert itself in the face of this apparent necessity - and the contingency
that underlies this appearance of necessity implies that such an act of will
is not, in principle, an essentially futile one - Rousseau identifies a series
of difficulties regarding the relation of the human will to necessity. In this
way, he makes genuine human redemption in the form of the perfectibility
of humankind look very uncertain indeed. This problem becomes espe
cially evident in Chapter 2, in which I show that Kant is unable to offer
an acco unt of human progress that accords with his interpretation of the
significance of Ro usseau's writings, and that this failure can be explained
in terms of certain ideas concerning the nature of human society found in
these writings when viewed in conjunction with Kant's theory of radical
evil.
Rousseau, Kant, Fichte and Hegel all associate perfectibility in some
way with the moral freedom which consists in subjecting oneself to laws
(or, more generally, to constraints) that can nevertheless be viewed as self
imposed ones. This moral freedom promises to provide a richer acco unt
of freedom than the one offered by neo-republicanism, which, as we have
seen, treats with some suspicion the positive model of freedom with which
Rousseau, Kant, Fichte and Hegel are associated. A central feature of all of
these philosophers' attempts to reconcile the idea of necessity with that of
freedom is the wish to explain how various practical constraints on human
agency can be viewed as constraints with which free and rational individuals
can in some sense identify themselves. The idea of moral freedom or
autonomy complicates the task of securing freedom in a condition of
human interdependence and in the face of the necessity that this co ndition
generates. Indeed, Ro usseau suggests that some insurmountable obstacles
to human progress must be thought to exist once this progress is conceived
in terms of the idea of moral freedom. The limitations of the neo-republican
11
This absence of necessity helps to explain one important respect in which Rousseau's position can
be said to differ from the one adopted by Hegel, if the latter is taken to view the realization of a
providential plan as being guaranteed by means of a dialectically determined h istorical process. Cf.
Neuhauser, Rousseau s Theodiry ofSelfLove, 4
Introduction
16
account of freedom as absence of dependence on the arbitrary wills of o thers

and the Kantian interpretation of the significance of Rousseau's writings
here to some extent coincide.
The major difference between liberal and republican accounts of free
dom can be said to rest on what constitutes a restraint or constraint on
freedom. For liberals, only direct forms of coercion count as interference
that ought to be prevented for the sake of freedom, whereas for republicans
both interference in this sense and interference in the sense of the potential
for domination produced by dependence on the arbitrary wills of others
count as restraints or constraints on freedom!3 This invites the question as
to which form of constraint represents the worse violation of freedom. If
it is said to be dependence in so far as it generates relations of domination,
it appears that freedom in the sense of absence of domination has prior
ity whenever it comes into conflict with freedom understood as absence
of restraint or interference. 1 4 It is conceivable, however, that the level of
restraint or interference sanctioned by the need to prevent domination
would be very high indeed. This possibility is, I believe, one that nei
ther neo-republicans nor Kantian interpretations of Ro usseau sufficiently
acknowledge.
The potential need for a very high level of state interference designed to
prevent forms of domination based on dependence on the arbitrary wills of
others becomes more evident in the light of Rousseau's identification of a
form of dependence on others that is not of a direct, typically interpersonal
kind, because it is mediated by material objects or by the representative
sign of their value, that is, money. As we shall see, Rousseau's recognition
of the existence of this more complex form of dependence and of its
tendency to generate relations of domination based on material inequality
points to the need for a fully worked-out theory of property which aims to
show how the threat of domination posed by this form of dependence can
be removed. Although Ro usseau does not provide such a theory; I argue
in Chapter 3 that Fichte develops the type of theory of property which
Rousseau could have endorsed given his commitment to the principles
of equality and freedom. This theory of property implies a high level of
restraint or interference on personal freedom. It also suggests the idea of
having to impose order on a po tentially recalcitrant material by means
of human consciousness and will, so that necessity, in the sense of force,
threatens to come into conflict with the moral freedom which consists in
being able to endorse the constraints to which one is subject. In Chapter 4,
'1
Cf. Skinner, Liberty before Liberalism, 82fT.
Cf. Viroli, Republicanism, 54
Perfectibility
certain tensions between the idea of necessity and that of human will are
also shown to exist in Hegel's account of the relation of civil society to the
political state. The issue of the relation of necessity to human will, and its
implications with respect to the idea of human perfectibility, also feature in
my discussion of Fichte's early critique of Ro usseau in Chapter 5 Although
this critique represents the most sustained single account of Rousseau's
writings offered by any of the philoso phers whom I discuss, I have chosen
to discuss it last because it can be best understood in connection with some
of the themes discussed earlier in the book.
From what has been said above, it is probably already dear that I do not
intend to argue, in line with the idea of a secularized theodicy, that the
problems concerning the relation between the human will and necessity
identified by Rousseau are solved by Kant, Fichte or Hegel. Rather, these
philosophers' own failures are instructive because they help us to under
stand what is at stake, and what difficulties are involved, when it comes to
a problem that can hardly be said to have been solved today: the problem
of the extent to which human beings can effectively exercise either indi
vidual or collective conscio us control over the economic and social forces
generated by a condition of interdependence, and to do so, moreover, in a
way that accords with such ideas as equality, freedom and perfectibility in
so far as they inform a conception of the common good.
CHAPTER ONE
Rousseau on freedom, dependence and necessity
In Emile, his treatise on education, Ro usseau draws a firm distinction

between two sorts of dependence: dependence on things, which is said to
come from nature, and dependence on men, which is said to come from
society. Rousseau claims that the first form of dependence is not detrimental
to freedom and that it does not generate any vices, whereas the second
form of dependence is the so urce of all vices (OC IV: 3 11; E: 8 5) . Yet this
distinction between dependence on things and dependence on men is not as
clear-cut as Rousseau makes it sound, for in the Discourse on the Origin and
Foundations ofInequality among Men, or Second Discourse as it is otherwise
known, he himself implies that at a certain stage of human development
dependence on things and dependence on men become closely bound up
with each other. Rousseau sho uld, therefore, have identified a third so rt
of dependence: dependence on men as mediated by dependence on things.
When Rousseau speaks of dependence on other human beings, he often
appears, in fact, to have in mind this dependence on men as mediated by
dependence on things. Rousseau's recognition of the existence of this form
of dependence has some important implications in relation to the political
solutio n to the evils that he associates with dependence on other human
beings offered in his Social Contract.
In the Second Discourse, Rousseau develops an account of dependence on
things and dependence on o ther human beings as mediated by dependence
on things which purports to show how the transition from the former to
the latter type of dependence results in a loss of freedom. In this work,
Rousseau begins by describing what dependence on things alone might
have been like. Ro usseau's portrayal of the condition of primitive man
in the earliest stages of the state of nature as a state of affairs in which
human beings are conceived to be dependent on things alone is his only
presentation of genuine dependence on things alone. This suggests that
19
he does not think that being subject only to this form of dependence
is a real option for modern human beings. Rousseau proceeds to give
us a sense of the nexus of relations in which dependence on things and
dependence on other human beings become bound up with each other in
the state of nature, so that what we have is, in effect, dependence on other
human beings as mediated by dependence on things. This is not to say
that Rousseau is making any historical claims. He himself wished to avoid
any misunderstanding concerning the historical status of his reflections on
the state of nature by stating that they 'o ught not be taken for historical
truths, but only for hypothetical and conditional reasonings; better suited
to elucidate the Nature of things than to show their genuine origin, and
comparable to those our Physicists daily make regarding the formation of
the World' (OC m: 132f. ; PWI: 132) . In o ther words, Rousseau is offering
one possible reco nstruction of how modern social and political conditions,
which are largely characterized by dependence on other human beings as
mediated by dependence on things, arose. '
Rousseau clearly saw the idea of a legitimate social pact as providing
a solution to some of the main threats posed to freedom by dependence
on other human beings. In Emile, having drawn the distinction between
dependence on things and dependence on men mentioned above, Rousseau
introduces the following solution to the evils associated with the second
form of dependence: 'to substitute law for man and to arm the general wills
with a real strength superio r to the action of every particular will' (OC IV:
3n; E: 8 5) . He claims that these measures would produce a condition in
which the laws approximate to natural laws by having 'an inflexibility that
no human force co uld ever conquer', so that 'dependence on men wo uld
then become dependence on things again' (OC IV: 3n; E: 85).
Broadly speaking, the idea appears to be that the establishment of the
right set of laws would remove all arbitrariness from the social relations
existing between human beings in a condition of interdependence, because
1
The issue of the hypothetical or conjectural, as opposed to factual, status of Rousseau's account of
the state of nature becomes more complex if one accepts that a distinction should be made between
the 'pure' state of nature, which is free of all human artifice and convention, and the state of nature
more broadly conceived, because whereas the latter can be said to be based on fact in so far as it
has some reference to the observations of savage peoples made in Rousseau's own time, the former
is purely conjectural, and is to be seen as a statement of the principles or causes which the facts
instantiate or in the light of which they ought to be understood. These principles are said to include
self-sufficiency. Cf. Gourevitch, 'Rousseau's "Pure" State of Nature'. My account of the earliest stages
of Rousseau's portrayal of the state of nature is compatible with such a claim, and even supports it,
in so far as it shows how the principle of self-sufficiency, in the form of dependence on things alone,
is a defining feature of this condition, and that this self-sufficiency is lost in the later stages of the
state of nature and in the transition to political society.
20
all individuals would be equally subject to the laws of the collective body
of which they are members, with these laws determining the legitimacy
(or lack of legitimacy) of each individual's actions in relation to the other
members of this collective body. This absence of arbitrariness turns depen
dence on other human beings into a form of dependence on things alone
in the sense that, as we shall see, the second form of dependence consists in
subjection to something which, by its very nature, operates with necessity
and is not, therefore, something that human beings can change at will.
This analogy between the relations that exist between human beings in a
law-governed condition and dependence on things alone is, of course, an
imperfect one, since the laws in question are created by human beings.
Nevertheless, once these laws are in place they might be thought to operate
with a kind of necessity, in the sense that they must simply be obeyed and,
if they are not obeyed, one knows that any violations of them will almost
certainly be punished. In other words, the laws serve as practical constraints
on human agency, and in order to do so, they ultimately require the use or
the threat of force, which, as we already know, for Rousseau represents a
form of necessity.
Ro usseau's claim that the legitimate social pact removes the kind of
dependence that involves being subject to unequal conditions, as when an
individual is forced to suffer various injustices because of the inferior status
or power which he or she enjoys in relation to others, explains why he thinks
that this social pact produces moral equality between human beings. On
entering into the social pact, each individual agrees to subject him- or herself
to co nditions that apply equally to all (that is, to the conditions stipulated
by the laws, which are universally valid). Consequently, no member of the
legal and political community established in this way has an interest in
making conditions burdensome to others, since these conditions would be
equally burdensome for him or her. Thus when Rousseau claims that each
person 'by giving himself to all, gives himself to no one' (OC m: 36of. ;
PW2: 50) , I take him to mean that although each individual makes him- or
herself dependent on the collective body established by means of the social
pact and on the laws that issue from this co llective body, of which he or
she is a co-legislating member, he or she at the same time avoids becoming
dependent on the arbitrary will of any particular individual or group of
1 This interpretation of what Rousseau means i s entirely different from taking h i m t o b e claiming that
in the civil state 'for each man, other men will no longer be distinguished from things'. Todorov,
Frail Happiness, 23. Rousseau is talking about the laws in their relations to human beings having a
thing-like character, rather than human beings having this character in relation to each other.
21
individuals within society. This is why Ro usseau claims that the citizen's
membership of this collective body 'guarantees him against all personal
dependence' (OC m : 364; PW2: 53) .
Inasmuch as it depends on the existence of legal guarantees against arbi
trary, unjust interference on the part of others, freedom involves more than
the absence of direct, typically coercive forms of interference. Rather, in line
with the republican idea of freedom, independence of the arbitrary wills
of other human beings, which includes freedom from po tential as well as
actual interference, represents another fundamental condition of genuine
human freedom. This independence of the arbitrary wills of others is free
dom of a negative kind. For Ro usseau, however, it does not constitute full
human freedom, even though it forms one essential element of an account
of such freedom, so that to this extent his conception of freedom can most
certainly be identified with the idea of republican liberty understood as
the freedom 'which individuals enjoy under the law and by virtue of a just
political constitution which frees them from a narrow dependence on the
individual will of others'.3
One reason that independence of the arbitrary wills of others do es not
by itself constitute full human freedom is that this independence depends
on democratic freedom, which consists in the collective power of the
members of a political community to determine the laws to which they
are all subject. This in turn means that democratic freedom and the civil
freedom which consists in protection against arbitrary, unjust interference
on the part of others are essentially related in Rousseau's political solution
to the evils to which he thinks dependence on other human beings tends
to give rise. In spite of the suspicion that some neo-republicans have of the
positive model of freedom and of Ro usseau's adoption of such a mo del of
freedom in particular, the idea of republican freedom cannot, therefore,
be completely disassociated from this positive model of freedom once
it is taken to involve 'obedience to laws which have been sanctioned by
individual men', even if at the same time it consists in the negative freedom
that concerns the way in which 'the sovereignty of the law pro tects each
and every one from the wrongs, the affronts and the wilful infringements
of their rights perpetrated by others, whether they be private individuals or
magistrates' . 4 The positive aspect of republican freedom especially relates to
the ideas of moral and demo cratic freedom, for both these forms of freedom
involve acts of self-legislation and thus obedience to laws sanctioned by
) Viroli, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the 'Well-Ordered Society ; 11.
Viroli, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the 'Well-Ordered Society ; 11.
22
individual human beings, in the first case as a rational being as such, and
in the second case as part of a larger, collective body. Rousseau's account
of dependence can, in fact, be related to four distinct types of freedom,
namely, natural freedom, civil freedom, democratic freedom and moral
freedom.
I have just mentioned how civil freedom and demo cratic freedom form
essential elements in Ro usseau's solution to the problem of the way in
which dependence on other human beings threatens to make one person
subject to the arbitrary will of another person or group of persons. Natural
freedom is the form of freedom which primitive man enjoys in the earliest
stages of the state of nature, in which, as we shall see, he is dependent on
things alone. It 'has no other bounds than the individual's forces', and it is
lost on entering the civil condition because it is 'limited by the general will'
(OC m : 365; PW2: 54) . Rousseau here has in mind a form of freedom that
consists in encountering no obstacles when it comes to acting on the basis
of one's desires except the limits of one's own physical and mental powers.
I shall shortly describe this natural freedom in more detail, and we shall
see that it largely depends on the physical and psychological isolation that
primitive man allegedly enjoys in the earliest stages of the state of nature.
The loss of independence that accompanies an individual's entry into the
civil condition is compensated by the civil freedom that is thereby gained,
and which consists in the state's protection of one's own person and one's
property, whose protection previously depended on the absence of other
human beings or on the amount of force that one co uld exercise in relation
to them . Living in a law-governed condition in turn teaches individuals to
restrain their appetites and to act in accordance with universally valid rules
that prescribe their duties to them, thus enabling them to consult their
reason before following their inclinations. This self-mastery constitutes
moral freedom. As Ro usseau himself puts it, 'the impulsion of mere appetite
is slavery, and obedience to the law one has prescribed to oneself is freedom'
(OC m : 365; PW2: 54).
The fact that Rousseau does not identify democratic freedom as a specific
form of freedom can be explained in terms of the way in which it represents
an expression of moral freedom in the specific political form of obeying laws
that one has prescribed to oneself as a co-legislating member of the sovereign
assembly which is established by means of the social pact. The act of
entering into the social pact itself presupposes this same moral freedom, for
this act requires that each individual subjects him- or herself to conditions
that apply equally to all. Only in this way can the constraints to which
one is subject be conceived as self-imposed ones rather than constraints
23
that stem from the will of another person . The capacity for moral freedom
is, therefore, a condition of democratic freedom as Rousseau understands
it both conceptually, since democratic freedom would be unthinkable in
the absence of the capacity to impose constraints on oneself as well as on
others, and existentially, since the sovereign legislative body in which each
citizen exercises moral freedom as a co-legislating member could otherwise
never have come into being in a way that furnishes it with the legitimacy
which derives from having its basis in consent. Rather, political authority
wo uld be based on force alone and it would, therefore, simply consist
in the domination of the weaker party by a stronger one. At the same
time, democratic freedom provides a specific example of the actual exercise
of moral freedom, with the laws agreed upon by the members of the
sovereign assembly determining the bounds of the civil freedom that they
enjoy.
Rousseau's account of moral freedom shows that in his view freedom
is not coextensive with non-interference, even when the absence of inter
ference is taken to include the idea of freedom as independence of the
arbitrary wills of others. Rather, these two negative conceptions of free
dom, both of which appeal to the idea of the absence of something that
is considered to be an evil for human beings, depend on the capacity
for moral freedom, which is presupposed not only by the idea of the
social pact itself but also by civil and democratic freedom, since it is the
exercise of this capacity for moral freedom as the co-legislating mem
ber of the sovereign legislative body that determines the bounds of civil
freedom. To this extent, Ro usseau himself presupposes the existence of
the capacity for moral freedom which he appears to treat as a conse
quence of political society when he claims that this capacity develops sub
sequent to the establishment of the civil condition by means of the social
pact.5
As we shall see, both Kant and Hegel attempt to avoid this apparent cir
cle by treating moral freedom as something that develops in the course of a
spontaneous educative process which takes place in a condition of human
5
This tension in Rousseau's account of freedom is reproduced in the claims that, on the one hand,
the social pact itself 'is an instance of self-legislation', while, on the other hand, human beings
enter into the social pact on prudential grounds based on the desire to preserve themselves, so that
moral freedom, as well as civic and democratic freedom, must be considered to be 'a kind of happy
consequence of the terms of the social pact; but they are neither the citizens' motivation for entering
the contract nor the purpose of the contract itself'. Simpson, Rousseau 's Theory ofFreedom, 96 and
uof. The second claim appeals to a practical necessity which sits uncomfortably with the idea of an
act of moral freedom, while the first claim presupposes the existence of the moral freedom which in
the second claim is treated as an unintended consequence of the formation of political society.
24
interdependence. In this respect they can be seen to follow Rousseau's

lead, since in the Second Discourse he describes a process through which
certain human faculties are developed thro ugh interaction with the natural
environment and with other human beings. The key to understanding
how Ro usseau can both presuppose moral freedom in his theory of the
social pact and treat this freedom itself as a product of political society
is, then, to read the Social Contract in the light of the formative process
described in the Second Discourse. On this reading, the capacity for moral
freedom would have been sufficiently developed prior to the formation
of political society. Its full realization, however, depends on the existence
of the latter, for individuals can properly develop their capacity for moral
freedom only thro ugh exercising this capacity as co-legislating members
of the sovereign body which determines the laws to which they them
selves are subject. The development of the capacity to subject oneself to
laws of which one is the author that results from one's membership of a
democratic assembly then enables individuals to become autonomous in
other ways, for, as we shall see, the idea of moral freedom can be general
ized to include subjecting oneself to any principle of action or constraint
with which one can in some sense identify oneself. Moral freedom is not,
therefore, identical with democratic freedom. Rather, the latter is a sub
species of the autonomy that Rousseau associates with the idea of moral
freedom.
Given its reliance on the notion of self-legislation, Ro usseau's solution to
the threats posed to human freedom by dependence on o ther human beings
is a decidedly voluntaristic one. I show that the spontaneous dependence
generating process that Rousseau describes in the Second Discourse, in the
course of which dependence on things alone is replaced by dependence on
other human beings as mediated by dependence on things, renders this
type of solution highly problematic, especially with respect to the transi
tion from a condition of dependence on other human beings which leads
to the loss of natural freedom to a condition characterized by genuine
civil and democratic freedom, in which independence is regained in the
form of moral freedom. The existence of such a spo ntaneous dependence
generating process invites the following question: how can the transition
successfully be made from a condition in which dependence on other
human beings allows some people or groups of people to dominate others
to a condition marked by the absence of such relations, because all individ
uals enjoy civil, democratic and moral freedom? In other words, although
the Social Contract might be understo od in purely normative terms, rather
than in terms of a historical reconstruction of how political societies
25
evolved, 6 this does not mean that Rousseau was not equally concerned
with the issue of how the principles of a just social and political order
could be put into practice, that is, how his republican solution to the
threats posed to freedom by dependence on other human beings could be
realized. Rousseau's concern with this issue is evident from his discussion
of the relation of the human will to necessity in connection with the for
mation of political society which forms the main theme of the final section
of this chapter.
As regards this relation of will to necessity, Rousseau's recognition of
a spontaneous process in which dependence on other human beings is
mediated by dependence on things makes it especially difficult for him
to explain how the principles of a just social and political order could
be put into practice given certain unintended outcomes of this process.
Rousseau's po rtrayal of these outcomes implies that he is not co ncerned
simply with the problem of direct, interpersonal forms of dependence
that make one person susceptible to domination by others. Instead he
recognizes that there is a more complex, impersonal form of dependence at
work. This form of dependence consists in being subject to an apparently
blind, spontaneous dependence-generating process which, on account of
the practical constraints that it generates, leaves little room, if any, for
genuine acts of self-legislation, whether as an isolated moral agent or as
the member of a community of co-legislating citizens, by means of which
control over one's own life can be gained. Rather, the material inequality
that this kind of process generates makes some people dependent on the
arbitrary wills of other, more powerful individuals, even though these
individuals may not have intended such an outcome.
I shall now give an acco unt of the essential features of this blind, sponta
neo us dependence-generating process with its freedom-endangering con
sequences as described by Rousseau in the Second Discourse. Yet it is not
only in this work that we enco unter the idea of a spontaneous dependence
generating process in Rousseau's writings. In his later Reveries ofthe Solitary
Walker, Ro usseau unintentionally provides us with the means of regarding
this type of process as a largely blind, spontaneous one which generates an
indirect form of dependence, that is to say, dependence on other human
beings as mediated by dependence on things. At the same time, he demon
strates a yearning for the independence allegedly enjoyed by primitive man
in the earliest stages of the state of nature.
6
Cf. Viroli, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the 'Well-ordered Society ; I:tl. In Chapter 3 I highlight the
normative aspects of the Social Contract together with the problems that they raise in connection
with the kind of blind, spontaneous dependence-generating process described in the Second Discourse.
26
The transition fro m dependence on things to dependence on men

in the Second Discourse
In the Second Discourse, Rousseau offers an acco unt of the transition from
a natural or physical form of inequality (one based on greater strength,
for example) to moral or political inequality; which depends on some
kind of convention. He begins by showing what the situation of human
beings might have been like in the absence of all social relations and
when they lacked certain capacities, dispositions and ways of thinking that
presuppose such relations. The transition from the 'pure' state of nature
to a more civilized, social condition marks the transition from dependence
on things alone to ever greater dependence on other human beings. In
large part, however, this transition should be more properly understo od as
the transition from dependence on things alone to dependence on other
human beings as mediated by dependence on thing.r.
A central feature of Rousseau's characterization of primitive man in the
earliest stages of the state of nature is that his needs can be easily satis
fied. This is because these needs are limited natural ones and primitive
man possesses the physical strength and other capabilities that allow him
to satisfy such needs by means of his own activity. Primitive man's needs
and the means at his disposal for satisfying them are, in short, fully com
mensurate. Primitive man is, therefore, in the position to satisfy his needs
witho ut the help of other human beings, which is just as well, since he
hardly ever encounters o thers of his kind and when he do es so it is only
for short periods of time.? Primitive man's independence and isolation in
the earliest stages of the state of nature already point to one reason that
Rousseau has for claiming that dependence on things is not detrimental to
freedom, namely, that primitive man remains self-sufficient. For although
primitive man depends on natural objects for the satisfaction of his basic
needs, 8 he remains self-sufficient in the sense that he can satisfy these needs
thro ugh the use of his own powers. In this respect, primitive man remains
free in the purely negative sense that he is not subject to any constraints
apart from the limits set by his own physical and mental powers and by
the natural environment confronting him. These other constraints would
7
Rousseau describes human beings in the pure state of nature as beings which 'having neither a fixed
Dwelling nor any need of one another, m ight perhaps meet no more than twice in their life, without
recognizing and speaking with one another' (OC III: 146; PW1: 144) .
This appears to be true even with respect to sexual needs, since the sexual act is described by Rousseau
in terms that suggest that the partners treat each other as natural objects that they use only to satisfy
sexual desire, and that they do not, therefore, even need to communicate with each other by means
of speech (OC I I I : 147; PW1: 145).
Dependence on thingr and dependence on men
27
include any obligations that he has to others generated by the necessity of

cooperating with them so as to satisfy his needs and any social conventions.
In both cases, it is impossible for such constraints to arise in the absence
of any genuine social relations.
The way in which primitive man relates himself exclusively to natural
objects is significant because Ro usseau associates dependence on things
more generally with the idea of subjection to laws of nature, as when he
claims that the spectacle of nature becomes so familiar to primitive man
that he becomes indifferent to it (OC III: 144; PW1: 143), and that in the
state of nature 'everything proceeds in such a uniform fashion . . . where
the face of the Earth is not subject to the sudden and constant changes
caused in it by the passions and the inconstancy of Peoples assembled'
(OC m : 136; PW1: 136) . The assumption appears to be that the natural
world, which includes primitive man himself in so far as he exists as a
natural entity, is, on the whole, highly predictable because it exhibits certain
law-like regularities. This subjection to natural laws might be tho ught to
undermine the claim that dependence on things (that is, on natural objects
and nature more generally) is not detrimental to freedom, since it means
that primitive man is subject to natural necessity, not only in the form of
his basic bodily needs but also in the form of the general laws of nature,
which determine and limit the actual ways in which he can satisfy these
needs. Rousseau suggests, however, that primitive man will not experience
his subjection to natural necessity as a form of constraint in the same way
as he would experience his subjection to the will of another human being
as a constraint.
To begin with, primitive man has become hardened to the natural con
ditions that he must endure and he has developed the physical strength and
capabilities required to meet the demands that these conditions impose on
him. Secondly, even in the event of old age and death, which represent the
only physical evils to which Rousseau thinks primitive man will succumb
given his strong constitution, his behaviour resembles that of other ani
mals. Rousseau characterizes this behavio ur as an attitude of resignation;
not least because primitive man will not be to rmented by the knowledge
of death, which presupposes the existence of certain imaginative and rea
soning powers that he would not have needed to develop. Rousseau in fact
limits the horizons of primitive man's conscio usness to a bare minimum,
by claiming that 'His soul, which nothing stirs, yields itself to the sole
sentiment of its present existence, with no idea of the future' (OC III: 144;
PW1: 143) . In other words, although primitive man enjoys some form of
self-awareness, it does not extend beyond the mere sensation of his present

existence; whereas any ideas concerning the future would require a form of
self-awareness based on the more complex notion of his identity through
out time. In this respect, primitive man forms part of a harmonious natural
order and, as part of this greater whole, he does not experience the necessity
which characterizes it as a form of constraint. To do so , he would need,
at the very least, to sense that this natural order was something external
to him. Yet this sense of alienation wo uld in turn demand the kind of
reflection of which Rousseau thinks primitive man in the earliest stages of
the state of nature is simply incapable.
To sum up, there are two particular forms of dependence on things
that Rousseau identifies. First of all, there is dependence on the natural
objects that serve to satisfy primitive man's physical needs. This form of
dependence is not detrimental to natural freedom because primitive man
remains essentially independent in the sense of being able to satisfy these
needs by means of his own activity. He avoids, therefore, the constraints
that the need for the help of others wo uld impose upon him. The second
form of dependence on things concerns primitive man's relation to nature
more generally and his place within the natural world. The only real sense
in which this form of dependence is not detrimental to freedom is that
primitive man has yet to step out of the natural order to which he belongs.
He does not, therefore, experience the natural necessity to which he is
subject as an alien power and as an external constraint on his actions. The
transition to a condition marked by moral or political inequality involves
some significant changes with respect to the first form of dependence on
things, that is, dependence on things in so far as they serve to satisfy
material needs. These changes revolve around the increasing dependence
of primitive man on other human beings for the satisfaction of his needs.
This increased dependence on o thers gives rise to an unnatural form of
necessity to which human beings become subject, tho ugh the extent to
which they experience this form of necessity as an externally imposed
constraint remains unclear.
In the second part of the Second Discourse, Rousseau develops in more
detail an idea that he has already introduced in the first part of this work.
This is the idea that knowledge and reason develop only with the emergence
of new needs. Therefore, as long as primitive man remains in the natural
condition described above, he will lack any incentive to develop his capacity
to reason and to increase his store of knowledge. However, once he begins
to encounter significant difficulties in his attempts to satisfy his needs,
he will be led slowly to develop his capacity to reason so as to overcome
these difficulties. Rousseau thinks that in its initial stages this process of
29
gradual enlightenment does not go beyond mere dependence on things.

The situation begins to change, however, with primitive man's growing
awareness of the existence of others of his kind. This awareness is itself
made possible by his increasing capacity to make comparisons and to
identify common features, that is, to judge, and his recognition of the fact
that the interests that he shares with others of his kind more often than
not make cooperation between him and them desirable.
Irregular and short-lived acts of cooperation lead in time to the estab
lishment of primitive societies. These societies exist in a condition similar
to that enjoyed by primitive man in the earliest stages of the state of nature
in the sense that each society remains isolated from other societies, while
their members' needs are very simple and the implements that they have
invented among themselves suffice when it comes to providing the means
of satisfying these needs. This cooperation nevertheless marks the end of
primitive man's absolute independence in relation to others of his kind,
at the same time as it brings the apparent advantage of allowing human
beings more leisure. Yet it is precisely such apparent advantages as this one
that open the way for future conflict and inequality, as well as leading to the
loss of natural freedom. Close attention must consequently be paid to this
stage in Rousseau's description of the transition from natural or physical
inequality to moral or political inequality.
Although this explanation conflicts somewhat with the actual order in
which Rousseau presents the vario us stages that he associates with the rise
of moral or political inequality, he may be thought here to rely on the
idea of a division of labour, whereby the way in which one member of
the community concentrates on producing the means of satisfying one
particular need in society results in greater efficiency and higher levels
of productivity, though this division of labo ur need not be as rigid and
restrictive as it is in modern societies. Given the natural laziness that
Rousseau thinks characterizes primitive man, this rise in productivity would
not have led to a process of accumulation, with people working the same
amount of time as before in order to produce a surplus. Rather, human
beings would have chosen at this stage to work for a shorter period of time
while producing the same amount as before. This apparent advantage of
living in society with others and of co operating with them had unintended,
disastrous consequences, as Rousseau makes clear in the following passage:
men enjoyed a great deal of leisure which they used to acquire several sorts
of conveniences [plusieurs sortes de commodites] unknown to their Fathers;
and this was the first yoke which, without thinking of it, they imposed on
30

themselves, and the first source of evils they prepared for their Descendents;
for not only did they, in this way, continue to weaken body and mind, but
since these conveniences, by becoming habi tual, had almost entirely ceased
to be enjoyable, and at the same time had degenerated into true needs, it
became much more cruel to be deprived of them than to possess them was
sweet, and men were unhappy to lose them without being happy to possess
them . {OC III: 168; PW1 : 164f.)
This passage marks a turning point, for it shows that the problem in
question is not simply that human beings become less physically robust
than before, a defect that could, in any case, be remedied by their ability to
unite against a common enemy or other challenge facing the community
to which each of them belongs. The main point is that the leisure they
enjoy leads to the generation of new, artificial needs and to the creation
of new commodities that both satisfy these needs and help to produce
them. Such commodities are luxury items because they are not necessary
to human survival. Yet they can be classed as needs rather than as wants
because habit makes them appear indispensable, even when the pleasure
that these items bring diminishes in proportion to the degree that human
beings become habituated to them. In other words, the commo dities in
question appear to be necessary, giving rise to a subjective form of necessity
which is produced and reinforced by so cial forces and pressures. In this
way, human beings become subject to an artificial, or conventional, form
of necessity, of which they themselves are the unintentional creators, in
addition to natural necessity.
Ro usseau nevertheless views increased leisure as being in itself essentially
harmless, as long as the conveniences that an individual enjoys are ones
that he himself pro duces. He suggests that making musical instruments
represents a case in point. This is an interesting example, for even if a
person is able to make the musical instrument which he or she plays,
he or she may come to depend on others if it is the kind of instrument
that can be most effectively employed when accompanied by other instru
ments. While making music in association with others can in this respect
be viewed as a form of dependence on o ther human beings which demands
a certain level of cooperation, it also suggests that dependence on other
human beings does no t necessarily result in the domination of one per
son by another person, even when artificial needs are involved and this
dependence is incompatible with natural freedom, which consists in the
absence of any conventional constraints. Moreover, the activity of mak
ing music in asso ciation with others shows that human interdependence
and the constraints that it generates are not necessarily incompatible with
31
moral freedom.9 After all, Ro usseau acknowledges that moral freedom is

compatible with the fact of human interdependence when he claims that it
is possible to preserve one's moral freedom at the same time as one subjects
oneself to certain constraints in his theory of a so cial pact, which seeks
to explain the possibility of a form of association in which an individual
unites with others b ut nevertheless, in so doing, obeys only him- or herself
and therefore remains 'as free as before' (OC m: 360; PW2: 49f.). The
moral freedom that is in this manner preserved can be characterized in
terms of the concept of self-sufficiency, so that in preserving this freedom,
one retains the self-sufficiency that Rousseau attributes to primitive man,
albeit in a completely different form.
Fichte explicitly identifies mo ral freedom with self-sufficiency (Selbst
standigkeit) when, following Kant, he conceives of pure practical reason in
terms of the idea of imposing objectively valid laws upon oneself. These
laws are categorical because they express an unconditional 'ought' issued
by reason as such and thus imply the existence of an obligation that is
ungrounded in the sense that it commands that we o ught (or ought not)
to do something irrespective of whatever we happen to desire or wish
to do. Such laws can be seen as self-imposed because subjecting oneself
to them must nevertheless be a matter of free choice, as opposed to a
matter of instinct or some kind of unreflective emotional response (for
example, fear) , if moral agency is genuinely to involve willing the good.
The individual moral agent does not, therefore, subject itself to some purely
external constraint; rather, the constraint in question accords with its own
essential (that is, free and rational) nature. Inasmuch as the content of moral
duty depends only on reason as such and is directed at the individual as a
free agent, it depends on nothing more than the 'absolute self-sufficiency'
which consists in a rational being's capacity to determine the laws to which
it subjects itself by means of its own freely undertaken, reflective acts
9 Since dependence is not necessarily incompatible with moral freedom it seems right to claim that
independence is not, for Rousseau, synonymous with freedom, for if it were, freedom would be an
impossibility in a condition of dependence, whereas what Rousseau is attempting to do is not to
eliminate dependence on others altogether but to make it less injurious to freedom by mediating
this dependence by means of laws that accord with the general will. Also, it can be said that freedom
stands above independence in a hierarchy of values and that independence in fact has no intrinsic
value at all. Cf. Neuhauser, 'Freedom, Dependence, and the General Will'. The last claim implies
that independence is good only in so far as it promotes freedom. We can nevertheless think of
independence as being synonymous with freedom once it is construed as self-sufficiency, which may
assume such diverse forms as the natural freedom of primitive man and the moral freedom that
is preserved and realized within the civil condition as determined by laws that are democratically
agreed upon by the members of a sovereign legislative assembly.
32
(GA I/5: 65ff. ; SE: 56ff.) .10 This act of subjecting oneself to law is, so to
speak, performed on the basis of one's own authority rather than on the
basis of some external authority. For Fichte, individuals cannot, therefore,
be compelled to be moral, whether this compulsion exists in the form
of threats or the promise of rewards, or in an attempt to fo rce someone
to hold a theoretical conviction, which in this case presumably means a
conviction concerning whether something is or is not a duty (GA I/ 5: 277ff. ;
SE: 299ff.) .
This moral autonomy recalls Ro usseau's description o f moral freedom
as obedience to the law that one has prescribed to oneself. For Ro usseau,
it is precisely this type of freedom that cannot be renounced witho ut
renouncing one's humanity. Such renunciation would be incompatible with
the nature of the human being because 'to deprive one's will of all freedom
is to deprive one's actions of all morality' (OC m: 3 56; PW2: 45). Although
Fichte identifies autonomy with the specific act of imposing unconditional
moral laws on oneself, the notion of autonomy can be thought to admit of
vario us degrees once it is identified more generally with the act of imposing
any kind of rational principle of action or other constraint upon oneself.
The idea of autonomy understood in these broader terms can be related to
the example of the interdependence and cooperation involved in making
music in association with o thers.
The individual who remains self-sufficient by making his or her own
musical instrument, but then decides to make music with others so as
to realize this instrument's full potential together with his or her own
potential as a musician, becomes subject to the constraints that cooperation
with o thers imposes upon individual human beings. As well as purely
musical constraints, such as having to play pieces of music that allow
the o ther instruments and the other musicians' talent to shine as well
as one's own instrument and musical talent, agreement will have to be
reached concerning such matters as rehearsal times. These constraints can
nevertheless be viewed by the agents concerned as self-imposed ones, in
the sense that they recognize that these constraints are necessary conditions
of their own flourishing as instrument-makers and as musicians. For this
reason, they can freely endorse these constraints as opposed to experiencing
them as purely alien, external ones. Moreover, the individuals concerned
are not compelled to accept these constraints. Each of them could, for
example, decide to avoid the imposition of such constraints by switching
to another instrument which lends itself more to solo performances or
10
This moral self-sufficiency is discussed in more detail in Chapter 5
Dependence on things and dependence on men
33
by simply choosing to forgo the advantages that cooperation with others

brings.
The example of making music in association with others shows that
dependence on other human beings is not necessarily incompatible with
freedom, even though a condition of human interdependence is incompat
ible with natural freedom as Ro usseau understands it. One could, therefore,
conceivably remain morally free while being dependent on others, as long
as this dependence assumes the right form. Incidentally, altho ugh the exam
ple of making music with others might be tho ught to represent a form of
dependence on other human beings as mediated by dependence on things,
since musical instruments are material objects, it could be modified in such
a way as to transform it into a matter of dependence on other human beings
alone, by treating the members of the association as singers whose vocal
talent and voices can attain their full po tential only when heard in harmony
with, or in contrast to, other voices. In other words, the role of material
objects in this kind of example remains an ultimately contingent one. The
form of dependence on other human beings as mediated by dependence
on things that I have in mind, by contrast, concerns material conditions
that must be considered to be necessary, irrespective of whether or not the
individuals concerned are conscio us of this fact.
The kind of voluntary form of association described above can be related
to the idea of a social pact in the following way. In agreeing to enter the
civil condition on the basis of the terms of this pact, individuals exchange
one form of independence, that is, natural freedom, for a different form
of independence, which consists in the self-sufficiency that one enjoys as
an autonomous agent subject to constraints (that is, laws) that one has
imposed upon oneself while being dependent on other human beings.11
" Since these constraints apply equally a s much t o oneself a s t o others, o n e cannot b e said t o be
independent in the sense of being able to do anything that one wants to do. Rather, one can only do
that which does nor harm others and they can only do that which does nor harm oneself. Primitive
man in the earliest stages of the state of nature, by contrast, was not subject to such constraints. He
therefore enjoyed an independence that was potentially incompatible with the freedom of others,
because by exercising this freedom he could have ended up making them do what they did not want
to do, even though this did not actually happen on account of his isolation and self-sufficiency.
Rousseau views this type of independence as different from the freedom which consists 'less in
doing one's will than in not being subject to someone else's' and 'in nor subjecting someone else's
will ro o urs' (OC m: 841; LM: z6of.). Here we can speak of a form of freedom that is nevertheless
compatible with independence in rhe sense of the negative condition of not being subject to the
arbitrary will of others and not subjecting them to one's own arbitrary will. This conception of
freedom also appears in Rousseau's claim that 'I have never believed that man's freedom consists in
doing what he wants, but rather in never doing what he does not want to do' (OC 1: 1059; RSW:
104) . Never doing what one does not want to do can be understood as not being made to act in
accordance with another person's wishes. The idea of moral freedom, however, implies something
34
As we shall see, Kant, Fichte and Hegel also seek to explain in their
own ways the compatibility of freedom as autonomy with the reality of
human interdependence. Rousseau, however, recognizes that explaining
this compatibility is much more difficult than the example of making
music in association with o thers suggests. For while this example of a
voluntary form of association allows some obvio us scope for free choice,
a condition of interdependence that has its basis both in natural necessity
and in artificial needs generates various constraints that are far less easy to
avoid and that consequently may assume the form of an external necessity.
This brings me back to Rousseau's account of the genesis of moral or
political inequality in the Second Discourse.
The development of new, artificial needs increases the degree of depen
dence on other human beings, because each individual becomes unable
to produce the means of satisfying his or her needs by means of his or
her own activity. We begin, therefore, to move ever further away from the
independence enjoyed by primitive man in the earliest stages of the state
of nature. Rousseau clearly thinks that this loss of independence involves
the transformation of dependence on things alone into dependence on
other human beings. However, as the role played by objects of need already
shows, this second form of dependence is itself mediated by dependence
on things, that is, by dependence on objects that are taken to represent the
means of satisfying natural needs or the artificial needs that have taken on
the appearance of needs that must be satisfied, even if objectively they lack
the status of true needs. An increasing dependence on other human beings
does not, therefore, replace dependence on things. Rather, both types of
dependence come to form parts of a single, dependence-generating process.
This process turns out also to be an inequality-generating one, as becomes
evident when we turn to Rousseau's account of the consequences of the
introduction of the arts of agriculture and metallurgy.
The intro duction of these arts leads to a clear and permanent division
of labour, with some men melting and forging iron while others provide
the means of feeding these workers. At the same time, the introduction
of iron and the invention of tools made of it compensate for the fact that
fewer hands are available to provide the means of common subsistence
because these developments make agriculture mo re productive. Natural
more than this merely negative condition of freedom, since it involves subjection to constraints with
which one identifies oneself by means of some kind of reflective act. It is, perhaps, no coincidence
that the last claim appears in one of Rousseau's late autobiographical writings and not in a work
such as the Social Contract, for, as we shall see in Chapter 5, in these writings he appears to renounce
the positive model of freedom which he elsewhere extols.
35
inequalities here become important i n the state o f nature, especially with

regard to the cultivation of the land. For even if the cultivation of the land
may at first have been based on a more or less equal division of land, the
stronger person could work more, the naturally skilful person could work
less but more effectively, and the more ingenious person could find ways
of reducing his share of the labour. Rousseau shows that he considers this
development to have been highly significant in the state of nature when he
invokes a right of property established by means of one's labour to explain
the origins of private property, with those individuals who could claim to
have worked more land than others demanding a greater share of the land.
The resultant ever-increasing material inequality based on property in land
was reinforced and heightened by imbalances in the demand for iron or
food. These imbalances enabled one party to the main division of labour
to demand more for its products, while the other party was co nversely
put in the position of having to demand less for its products. In this way,
unequal relations of dependence arose between human beings together
with material inequality and class divisions.
When the condition described above is compared to the independence
enjoyed by primitive man in the earliest stages of the state of nature, it
becomes easy to understand why Ro usseau thinks that it represents a loss
offreedom . Basically, human beings have become dependent on others for
the satisfaction of their needs at the same time as this dependence has come
to assume one-sided forms, giving some people more power than others.
For Ro usseau, it is not only material dependence on other human beings
that arises in this way. He identifies another form of dependence on other
human beings which may appear not to be a dependence on other human
beings as mediated by dependence on things. The nature of this particular
form of dependence can be brought out with reference to the idea that
in his relation to other human beings each man must 'constantly try to
interest them in his fate' (OC 111: 175; PWI: 170) .
Once a condition of human interdependence has achieved a certain level
of complexity, it will typically be a contingent matter which particular
individuals in society happen to satisfy a need that other peo ple have.
This is especially true when unequal relations of dependence exist, for
one person may depend on others far less than they depend on him or
her, with the result that several individuals end up vying with each other
to provide the goods or services that promise to satisfy a particular need
that this person has. In such cases, success in being chosen in preference
to others may depend on drawing attention to oneself as the person who
is best able to satisfy the need in question and deserves the opportunity

to do so. In the face of competition and po tential indifference, people
will, in short, be forced to interest o thers in their fate by whatever means
possible.
Interesting others in one's fate in this sense may involve making others
believe that one has the qualities and talents that are generally valued in
society, regardless of whether or not one really possesses them, so that, as
Rousseau puts it, 'one so on had to have or to affect them; for one's own
advantage one had to seem other than one in fact was. To be and to appear
became two entirely different things' (OC III: 174; PW1: 170) . A particular
variation on this theme would be the case of someone who, in order to
realize his own plans, needs to convince others to cooperate with him,
by making them believe that what he intends to do is in their own best
interests as well, even if it is not really so . This type of situation is arguably
what Rousseau has in mind when he speaks of someone who makes people
'apparently find their own profit in working for his' (OC III: 175; PWr:
170) . The most desperate case is that of the poor person who must seek
to awaken charitable impulses in others by showing them that he or she
genuinely deserves their charity or any work that they may give him or her.
These examples have in common the fact that an individual is forced, by
whatever means possible, to produce a certain opinion of him- or herself
in others. It is here that Rousseau locates the so urce of a tendency to speak
and to act almost exclusively with an eye to the effect that it has on the
opinions of others. Dependence on the opinions of others can, therefore,
be regarded as a specific form of dependence on other human beings. This
form of dependence is nevertheless rooted in existing material inequalities,
and for this reason it can be viewed as a form of dependence on other
human beings that is mediated by dependence on things.
When it comes to the rich and powerful, there appears to be far less
need to interest others in one's fate and to seek the good opinion of o thers
because of the lack of power that one enjoys in relation to them. Rousseau
points out, however, that the rich need the services of o thers. Yet it is
equally the case that a significant number of people are likely to be keen to
provide these services, so that the rich man is in a powerful position when
it comes to reaching an agreement with others concerning the services that
they are to provide. He does not, therefore, need to concern himself unduly
with what they might think of him. Despite this apparent asymmetry in
Rousseau's account of dependence on other human beings, he is able to
suggest that in a competitive society, within which wealth and reputation
count for a lot, and in which one's standing is always relative to that of
others, the rich will be constantly driven to act in ways that make them
37
appear to be better than their nearest rivals in the eyes of significant others
whose good opinion they seek. The upshot of this phenomenon is that it
is also true of the rich man that 'sociable man, always outside himself, is
capable of living only in the opinio n of others and, so to speak, derives
the sentiment of his own existence solely from their judgment', whereas
primitive man 'lives within himself' (OC 1 1 1 : 193; PWI: 187). Unlike human
beings in the unequal, competitive so ciety described above, primitive man
lives within himself because, as we have seen, his sentiment of his own
existence does not depend on relations to others of his kind. In other
words, primitive man's self-awareness reflects his self-sufficiency.
Of particular significance in the present context is the way in which
Rousseau points to some other ways in which even the rich man's thoughts,
beliefs and actions will be determined by the social system in which he
himself is caught up, and in such a way, moreover, that existing material
inequalities will have a significant role to play in explaining this phe
nomenon. In the fragmentary Discourse on Wealth, Rousseau attempts to
convince a yo ung man, who intends to become rich in order to put himself
in a better position to help the poor, of the hopelessness of such a plan,
by drawing attention to the following problem: how can this young man
expect to retain his ability to feel compassion for the unfortunate and to
give them money once he himself has become hardened by the competitive
world which he must enter so as to become rich, and when his ideas and
maxims will, unknown to him, change with his social situation? (OC v:
469ff. ; OW: 6ff.) Thus altho ugh it may be wrong to claim that dependence
on other human beings in the form of opinion arises only in a society char
acterized by material inequality and competition with respect to material
goods, 1 2 it is still possible to think of such a society as producing its own
distinctive forms of dependence on other human beings in the shape of
opinion, and that this form of dependence on other human beings may, at
a certain level, be determined by dependence on things, in the sense that
material inequality leads opinion to assume a specific character.
The account given above of the forms that dependence on other human
beings as mediated by dependence on things may assume in a competitive
society that is characterized by a high degree of interdependence when it
1 1 Rousseau himself suggests that opinion has a role to play in the state of nature even prior to the
emergence of material inequality when he speaks of an earlier form of society that is characterized
only by natural inequalities as already marking a step in the direction of moral or political inequality,
because of the public esteem earned by the person who sang or danced the best, or was the
handsomest, the strongest or most eloquent individual, and the vices of vanity and contempt, and
shame and envy to which this inequality gives rise (OC m: 169f.; PWr: r66) .

comes to the satisfaction of needs points to the existence of ano ther type of
necessity in addition to natural necessity, namely, an artificial, conventional
form of necessity that results from living in such a society and constrains
the ways in which people conceive of themselves and others as well as how
they act. Rousseau can be credited with having recognized the existence
of both these fo rms of necessity in the Second Discourse when he shows
how dependence on things alone might have been transformed into depen
dence on men, at the same time as he reveals the genesis of the nexus of
human relations based on natural and artificial needs, material inequality
and opinion that is characteristic of modern, market-oriented societies.
Since the material inequality brought about by the introduction of private
property in conjunction with the growing dependence of human beings
on each other with respect to the satisfaction of their needs explains the
evils that Ro usseau describes in the Second Discourse, dependence on other
human beings does not, strictly speaking, replace dependence on things.
Rather, dependence on things becomes increasingly tied up with depen
dence on other human beings. Rousseau might, therefore, have identified
a more complex form of dependence: dependence on other human beings
as mediated by dependence on things.
With this more complex form of dependence in mind, I now intend to
bring out the way in which a distinction between dependence on things
and dependence on other human beings also makes its presence felt in
Rousseau's autobiographical Reveries of the Solitary Walker, in which we
encounter an attempt on his part to solve the problem of dependence on
other human beings in the shape of opinion. I argue that certain things that
Rousseau has to say in this wo rk can be related to the blind, spontaneous
dependence-generating process that he describes in the Second Discourse,
especially in so far as this process generates material inequality. I first need
to highlight two features of this process: its spontaneous character and the
type of necessity that it involves.
As I have already mentioned, the emergence of moral or political inequal
ity is linked to a non-natural form of necessity, since it arises on the basis
of the increasing dependence of one person on another person brought
about by the production and exchange of commodities that are not neces
sary for human survival but have nevertheless come to appear so. Here we
enco unter a subjective form of necessity which is produced and reinforced
by social forces and pressures, together with a more objective form of
necessity that consists in the set of economic and social relations that indi
viduals must enter into, and to which their actions must conform, if they
are to satisfy their needs within a condition of human interdependence. As
The spectre ofprimitive man
39
regards the spontaneous nature of the process that is characterized by such

necessity, it should be noted that for much of the Second Discourse there is
no indication whatsoever that people are conscious of what is happening
to them. Rather, they appear to be caught up in a process of which they
are not really conscious and which they do not seek to control or direct, so
that moral or political inequality turns out to be the unintended o utcome
of a particular, contingent set of circumstances and developments. It is, in
fact, only in Rousseau's acco unt of the fraudulent social contract proposed
by the rich to the poor given in the second part of the Second Discourse that
we encounter anything that resembles a conscious, reflective act of willing.
The intention behind this contract is to dupe the poor into renounc
ing altogether their natural freedom by subjecting themselves to laws that
favo ur the property-owning rich. Conscious action here has its basis in a
pre-existing material inequality that has arisen by means of a blind, sponta
neo us process and was not, therefore, intentionally produced. However, the
individuals or groups who have gained the most from the rise of material
inequality now seek to stabilize and to perpetuate existing conditions so as
to maintain their favourable position in relation to others and to protect
what they have. This impression is reinforced by the way in which the con
tract in question is said to be preceded by an act whereby human beings 'at
last' (enfin) came to reflect on their miserable situation and the calamities
besetting them (OC m : 176; PWI: 172) . This claim implies that up to this
point human beings were not conscious of what was happening to them
and that they were, in fact, simply caught up in a largely blind, sponta
neo us process. Indeed, it is difficult not to think of the sudden intrusion
of the act of conscious willing that results in the fraudulent so cial contract
as having a somewhat artificial character compared with the preceding
narrative of the Second Discourse. As we shall see, Ro usseau's recognition
of a spontaneous dependence-generating process which produces material
inequality, together with different degrees of social and political power, has
some major implications in relation to his proposed solution to the threats
posed to freedom by dependence on other human beings.
The spectre of primitive man in Reveries of the Solitary Walker
In Reveries ofthe Solitary Walker, we encounter an attempt on Rousseau's

part to turn dependence on human beings into dependence on things
alone. He appears, therefore, to treat the condition of primitive man in
the earliest stages of the state of nature as an ideal condition, to which, in
certain circumstances, it would be good to return. This attempt to turn

dependence on human beings into dependence on things alone centres on
a personal response to a state of affairs, with Rousseau conscio usly seeking
to conceal or to suppress his dependence on other human beings. Although
we may doubt the effectiveness of such an attempt to solve the problem
of dependence on other human beings, what looks like a purely personal
attempt on Rousseau's part to deal with the situation in which he finds
himself can be shown to have some wider implications given the precise
way in which he attempts to turn dependence on other human beings into
dependence on things alone.
The late autobiographical Reveries of the Solitary Walker consists of a
series of extended reflections and recollections occasioned by Rousseau's
walks in and around Paris at a time when he had become tormented by
the idea that he was the object of a sustained campaign of persecution
orchestrated by some of his former friends. In these writings, Rousseau
frequently expresses not only his sense of isolation but also his desire
for solitude, since his enforced withdrawal from society has led him to
rediscover his capacity to surrender himself to reverie and thereby achieve
a more authentic experience of selfhood than is possible in society. In
the process of surrendering himself to reverie, Rousseau claims that he is
gradually able to lose all sense of the discrete, fleeting moments of time
that make up human existence, and to free himself from the constant pull
between the past, with its regrets, and the future, with its desires, so as
to gain the simple feeling of his own existence. The source of this feeling
of his own existence, which is characterized by its seeming timelessness
and fullness, is said by Rousseau to lie in nothing 'external to us, nothing
apart from o urselves and our own existence; as long as this state lasts we
are self-sufficient like God' (OC I: 1047; RSW: 89). In this way, reverie
is taken to constitute a form of self-sufficiency, thereby reproducing in its
own unique way the independence enjoyed by primitive man in the earliest
stages of the state of nature.
While the location of the sentiment of one's own existence entirely
within oneself recalls both the sentiment of his own self and the self
sufficiency enjoyed by primitive man, Rousseau adds that although the
possibility of such a state of existence depends on oneself, in the sense that
one should not allow oneself to be continually stirred by passions and to
engage in an active life, it also depends on one's surroundings, in which
there 'must be neither a total calm nor too much movement, but a steady
and moderate motion, with no jolts or breaks' (OC I: 1047; RSW: 89) .
This is because regular movement, such as that of water lapping against
the shore, is required to lull one into a state of mind conducive to reverie,
41
while there must be no sudden or violent movements that would threaten

to rouse one from the reverie into which one has fallen . This dependence on
one's natural environment also recalls the sense of self enjoyed by primitive
man in his independence of other human beings, because it consists in
what appears to be a dependence on things alone. Yet the artificiality of
such approximations to the independence enjoyed by primitive man in the
earliest stages of the state of nature cannot be ignored.
To begin with, Ro usseau's achievement of the simple sentiment of his
own existence depends on a capacity which he must deny that primitive
man possessed, since he would have had no reason to develop it, namely,
a highly developed imagination. Secondly, there is the fact that Ro usseau's
isolation is not absolute. This is shown by the way in which the influences of
society continue to make their presence felt in the Eighth Walk of Reveries
ofthe Solitary Walker, in which Rousseau's acco unt of dependence receives
a curious twist. It is here that what looks like a purely personal attempt on
Rousseau's part to deal with the situation in which he finds himself can be
shown to have certain wider implications, because it captures an essential
feature of the kind of blind, spontaneous dependence-generating process
that Rousseau himself describes in the Second Discourse.
Part of the topic of this reflection is provided by Rousseau's account of
his initial shocked reaction at the discovery of the plot that in his mind was
being hatched against him by some of his former friends and his eventual
attainment of peace of mind. Ro usseau states that although he had at first
reacted with fury and indignation to the failure to accord him the affection
and the respect that he felt he deserved, and that he had made his situation
worse by trying to get to the bottom of the plot directed against him,
he eventually learnt 'to bear the yoke of necessity [le joug de Ia necessite]
without complaining' (OC 1: 1077; RSW: 126) . The necessity in question is
that exhibited by public opinion. In particular, it can be associated with the
way in which the public's judgements concerning a person are the result of
a blind, spontaneous process driven by human passions and the prejudices
that spring from them . In the face of such a process, which Rousseau treats
as operating with something akin to necessity, he came to think of his
situation and his tormentors in the following way:
I began to see that I was alone in the world, and I understood that my con
temporaries acted towards me like automata, entirely governed by external
impulses, and that I could only calculate their behaviour according to the
laws of motion. Any intention or passion that I might have supposed them
to possess could never have provided an intelligible explanation of their
conduct towards me. Thus it was that their inner feelings ceased to matter
42

to me; I came to see them as no more than bodies endowed with different
movements, but devoid of any moral relation to me. (OC 1: 1078; RSW:
127f.)
The guiding idea here is that, given the unintelligibility of their actions,
Rousseau feels entitled to deprive his tormentors of any volition and other
human attributes, treating both them and their actions as phenomena
that obey quasi-natural laws operating with mechanical necessity. This
strategy allows Rousseau to regard himself as powerless in the face of his
tormentors' actions and to think of them as something that his own actions
are incapable of changing. Consequently it makes no sense for him to resist
them or to complain that they are unjust. It also allows him to imagine that
he is alone in the world and, in his dependence on things alone, subject to
natural laws only. Thus although opinion clearly involves dependence on
other human beings, Rousseau treats it as ifit were a case of dependence
on things alone.
In effect, Ro usseau engages in an imaginative act which aims to change
dependence on other human beings in the form of public opinion, with
all its detrimental emotional and psychological consequences, into depen
dence on things alone, enabling him to adopt the following attitude,
irrespective of whether or not it accurately reflects objective conditions: to
'regard all the details of my fate as the workings of pure necessity [fotalite] ,
i n which I should not seek t o fi n d any intention, purpose, or moral cause,
that I must submit to it without argument or resistance since these were
useless' (OC r: 1079; RSW: 128f. ; translation modified) . One may doubt
the effectiveness of this imaginative act, by means of which all volition is
denied to others and both they and their actions are completely reified so
as to turn an emotional and psychological form of dependence on other
human beings into dependence on things alone. This act is nevertheless
highly significant because it captures something distinctive about the way
in which the blind, spontaneous dependence-generating process described
in the Second Discourse, which is to be understood largely in terms of
dependence on other human beings as mediated by dependence on things,
can be conceived.
As we have seen, in Reveries ofthe Solitary Walker Rousseau turns depen
dence on men into dependence on things by depriving his tormentors
and their actions of any volition or other human attributes. At the same
time, there is no reference to the material and social factors that he identifies
in the Second Discourse. Ro usseau nevertheless unwittingly presents us with
the means of reintroducing this more complex form of dependence in a way
43
that anticipates the full development of a market economy and the kind of
blind, spontaneous dependence-generating process that can be associated
with it, and which has material inequality as one of its main outcomes.
This is because Ro usseau's attempt in the Eighth Walk of Reveries of the
Solitary Walker to deprive his tormentors and their actions of any vo lition
anticipates a move made in defence of free market capitalism, even though
his intentions are obviously completely different ones. This time it is not
people's opinions but the set of economic and social relations that emerges
through the choices that they make with respect to particular acts of eco
nomic and financial exchange that is treated as if it were simply a matter
of the behaviour of things. Here, in the same way as Rousseau deprives the
actions of o ther human beings of all intentionality so as to be able to regard
them purely in terms of the movements ofbodies in space subject to certain
laws of motion, human intentionality is suppressed so as to conceive of the
free market and its particular outcomes as an example of a spontaneously
generated order which has not been intentionally produced by any one
person or gro up of persons. This means, or so it is claimed, that it makes
no sense to call the unintended consequences of such an order, among
which we may include material inequality, as unjust.
One proponent of this view, F. A. Hayek, argues that the term 'unjust'
can only be applied to the actions of individuals or to the concerted
actions of the members of a collective body that are consciously designed
to bring about a particular effect, whereas no one can be held responsible
for the unintended consequences of the spontaneous order generated by the
operations of a free market. '3 However, while Ro usseau deprives opinion
of its unjust character by treating it as the unintended, cumulative result
of the behaviour of vario us individual entities that are deprived of all
volition, Hayek treats a condition of material inequality as the unintended
outcome and the cumulative result of many particular acts that may have
been a matter of individual free will. The difference is, then, that Ro usseau
attempts to reconcile himself to his tormentors' actions by conceiving
their actions in terms of the behaviour of purely material objects obeying
fixed laws, whereas H ayek downplays, but does not altogether deny, the
significance of people's intentions with the aim of showing that the material
inequalities generated by a free market cannot be regarded as unjust. In
short, Hayek treats the spontaneously generated order that he has in mind
as the result of countless individual actions that are determined by the
particular purposes that agents have and by the particular choices that
'l
Cf. Hayek, Law, Legislation and Liberty, Volume II: The Mirage ofSocialjustice.
44
they make in the light of these purposes, while maintaining that this
spontaneously generated order itself cannot be viewed as the result of
any conscious intention. In this way, Hayek implies that this order is the
unintended outcome of an impersonal force subject to its own laws of
development. The order in question can be conceived, moreover, as one in
which relations between human beings are typically mediated by material
objects that form the immediate objects of acts of exchange, and thus as
one in which unequal relations of dependence on other human beings
as mediated by dependence on things arise. In this respect, it recalls the
blind, spontaneo us dependence-generating process that we enco unter in
Rousseau's account of the rise of moral or political inequality in the Second
Discourse.
The way in which the particular outcomes of this spontaneous order and
this order itself are treated as if they were not ultimately the consciously
intended products of human will recalls Ro usseau's idea that dependence
on other humans beings might, for certain purposes, be understo od in
terms of dependence on things alone and as subjection to a quasi-natural
necessity. Rousseau's resignation in the face of such necessity reflects a wish
on his part to recreate the condition of primitive man, in the sense that the
most appropriate attitude to adopt in the circumstances would be to submit
oneself to the necessity to which one is subject, rather than engaging in a
futile attempt to change things. In a similar vein, Hayek argues that people
should simply accept and accommodate themselves to the impersonal forces
of the market. He goes so far as to suggest that subjection to market forces
is not detrimental to freedom, even though it involves subjecting ourselves
to the constraints generated by these impersonal forces, when he claims
that 'Freedom means that in some measure we entrust o ur fate to forces
which we do not control. ''4
This claim recalls the idea that primitive man in the earliest stages of the
state of nature remains essentially independent in the face of the natural
necessity to which he is subject. Yet the conditions are surely completely
different, since the free market involves a form of dependence on other
human beings as mediated by dependence on things that, despite the
appearance of necessity that its relations may assume, rests on contingency
to the extent that these relations are ultimately the o utcomes, albeit the
unintended ones, of certain conscious choices that individuals have made.
This element of contingency means that reform of existing conditions is, in
principle, possible, either by enco uraging people to make different choices
14
Hayek, Law, Legislation and Liberty, Volume II: The Mirage ofSocialJustice, 30.
Will and necessity
45
or by imposing constraints on the choices that they may legitimately make,

tho ugh this is not to say that such attempts at reform will not be faced
with considerable practical difficulties. In the next section, we shall see
that Rousseau himself points to the existence of such practical difficulties
in connection with his own attempt to show how one-sided forms of
dependence that allow some people to dominate others might be prevented
or removed.
While Hayek regards the spontaneous order generated by impersonal
market forces as beneficial, because it is allegedly capable of bringing
about 'a greater satisfaction of human desires than any deliberate human
organization could achieve', '5 Ro usseau's theory of the social pact, which is
consciously entered into and, as we shall see, requires reforming society in
acco rdance with certain principles, implies a rejection of the conclusions
that Hayek draws from the possibility of treating a state of affairs which
is at a certain level the result of conscio us action (that is, of individual
agents acting in acco rdance with certain purposes) as if it were not one.
Thus Rousseau's own thought experiment in Reveries ofthe Solitary Walker,
which aims to turn dependence on other human beings into dependence
on things alone by bracketing out the role of intentionality, proves to be
a dangerous strategy for someone for whom dependence on other human
beings is a central concern because of the relations of domination to
which it threatens to give rise. Indeed, the idea of a blind, spontaneous
dependence-generating process, which has material inequality as one of
its main unintended o utcomes, raises a particular difficulty for Rousseau's
own political solution to the evils that he associates with dependence on
other human beings. This is because the existence of such a process suggests
that it may, in fact, be impossible for human beings to assume conscious,
collective control over their destiny, given their subjection to this blind,
spontaneous, dependence-generating process that operates with a quasi
natural necessity. This problem can be best understood in terms of the
relation of the human will to necessity, and I show in the next section that
Rousseau was clearly aware of this problem .
Will and necessity
The problem of the relation of the human will to necessity in Rousseau's

political solution to the threats posed to freedom by dependence on oth
ers arises because this solution invites the following difficulty: how can
'5
Hayek, Law, Legislation and Liberty. Volume I I : The Mirage ofSocialjustice, 63.

any act of human will, as the means of transforming existing conditions
with the intention of removing unequal relations of dependence on oth
ers that are the source of domination, successfully intervene in the blind,
spontaneous process through which such relations of dependence based on
material inequality are generated and reproduce themselves in society? This
difficulty appears to be all the greater when dependence on other human
beings is understo od to be mediated by dependence on things, since the
picture is then complicated by the relation of the will to objects that do not
themselves have a will and are, therefore, subject to their own laws, which
might be held to lie beyond full human control.
The issue I have just highlighted essentially revolves around the question
as to how it is possible for the will to gain any purchase in the kind of
blind, spo ntaneous dependence-generating process, which has material
inequality as one of its unintended consequences, described in Rousseau's
Second Discourse, as would need to happen if human beings are effectively
to shape their social world at the same time as this world continues to
perpetuate itself. Rousseau was well aware of this issue. This is shown by
the way in which at one point in the Social Contract he suggests that the
social pact itself is a result of necessity, as well as being a matter of human
convention that has its so urce in an act of will, when he claims that
I assume men having reached the point where the obstacles that interfere
with their preservation in the state of nature prevail by their resistance
over the forces which each individual can muster to maintain himself in
that state. Then that primitive state can no longer subsist, and humankind
would perish if it did not change its way of being. (OC III: 360; PW2: 49)
In other words, since they are no longer able to preserve themselves by

means of their own powers, and in this sense to remain self-sufficient,
human beings are fo rced to reach some kind of agreement with each other
regarding terms of cooperation, so as to preserve their lives and to satisfy
their material needs. In this way, Rousseau locates the origins of political
society in natural necessity in the shape of the basic conditions of human
survival. The fraudulent social contract of the Second Discourse is likewise a
product of necessity, for the desire to overcome the state of war which arises
on the basis of material inequality is the immediate reason for proposing
this contract, at least in the case of the rich person who
under the pressure of necessity [presse par Ia necessite] , at last conceived
the most well-considered [le plus rijlechi] project ever to enter the human
mind; to use even his attackers' forces in his favor, to make his adversaries
Will and necessity
47
his defenders, to instill in them other maxims and to give them different
institutions, as favorable to himself as natural Right was contrary to him.
(OC I I I : I??; PWI: I72f.)
Here necessity and rational deliberation go together, with some people

employing the capacity to reason in an instrumental fashion so as to secure
their own lives and property in the face of the dangers facing them, and
thereby shape existing conditions in accordance with their own interests.
Elsewhere, however, Rousseau suggests that a completely new beginning
is the only real option when it comes to founding a legitimate social and
political order, with a G od-like legislator giving a people the kind of laws
that are best suited to it, as in his claim in the Second Discourse that in order
to have purged the existing political state of its inherent imperfections,
'the thing to do would have been to begin by purging the threshing floor
and setting aside all the old materials, as Lycurgus did in Sparta, in order
afterwards to erect a good Building' (OC III: r8o; PWr: 1 75 ) .
While the second solution appears to demand a radical break i n history
and the existence of a mythical figure who single-handedly provides a set
of basic laws for the society which is to arise on fo undations that have been
miraculously cleared of any previous corrupt social formations, the first
solution, which recognizes the existence of necessity, raises the following
question: how can the corrupt society described in the Second Discourse
provide the foundations for the introduction of a more just so ciety? This
question demands an answer because some individuals already benefit
from the existing state of affairs that has arisen on the basis of the interde
pendence that characterizes so cial relations and the material inequality to
which this condition of interdependence has given rise. These individuals
will, therefore, have an interest in perpetuating this existing state of affairs,
tho ugh in a way that removes any dangers that it has for them. This type
of scenario is, after all, one with which Ro usseau himself presents us in
the Second Discourse when he introduces the fraudulent social contract.
In short, is it not possible to think of the process described in the Second
Discourse as producing people who are content to make the civil co ndition
burdensome fo r others b ut not for themselves, just as long as they can get
away with it? And what guarantee is there that they will not be able to get
away with it? Indeed, the fraudulent social contract of the Second Discourse
appears to be based on such an attitude and on the kind of reasoning
that characterizes it, with the result that although acts of individual and
collective willing based on rational self-interest are introduced, these acts
aim simply to preserve and perpetuate existing conditions, making it

possible for some human beings to dominate other human beings with
impunity. Rousseau himself alludes to the problem of the way in which
particular social fo rmations are liable to produce certain dispositions in
people, leading a particular form of society to become self-perpetuating,
when he identifies the following vicious circle:
For a nascent people to be capable of appreciating sound maxims of politics
and of following the fundamental rules of reason of State, the effect would
have to become the cause, the social spirit which is to be the work of the
institution would have to preside over the institution itself, and men would
have to be prior to laws what they ought to become by means of them.
(OC m : 383; PW2: 71)
In other words, the successful formation of a po lity with laws that accord
with the general will is only really possible when its members already
have the right kind of disposition and share the same essential values. Yet
it is precisely by living in a polity with such laws that this disposition
and these shared values are produced in a people. This idea looks even
more problematic when the process described in the Second Discourse is
assumed to have already run its co urse, even tho ugh it might be possible
for people with simpler and more wholesome mores, who belong to an
earlier stage of human society, to institute a polity based on the principles
set out in the Social Contract. These tensions in Rousseau's republican
solutio n to the threats posed to freedom by dependence on other human
beings lend force to the argument that the principles o utlined in the Social
Contract could not, in his view, be realized in a modern state such as the
France of his own day but only in a nation such as Corsica, in which the
process of corruption described in the Second Discourse had yet to run its
full course. 1 6
Ro usseau suggests, in fact, that the difficulties that arise in connection
with the first solution mentioned above, which treats the so cial pact as
a result of necessity, are what lead him to consider the implausible sec
ond solution of a Go d-like legislator, when he claims that 'What makes
the work of legislation difficult is not so much what has to be estab
lished as what has to be destroyed; and what makes success so rare is the
impossibility of finding the simplicity of nature linked with the needs
of society' (OC m: 391; PW2: 78) . In o ther words, the corruption of
a society may be so advanced that there is no real option b ut to start
from scratch. Among other things this means beginning with a society
'6
See, for example, Fetscher, Rousseaus Politische Philosophie.
Will and necessity
49
that has not begun to suffer the artificial inequalities and other evils that
Rousseau describes as consequences of an increasing dependence on other
human beings as mediated by dependence on things. Yet the idea of such
a new beginning appears almost fantastic in the face of the blind, spon
taneous dependence-generating process that Ro usseau so skilfully po rtrays
in the Second Discourse. The most that we can seemingly hope for is,
therefore, to bring this process under some form of collective control,
without, however, being able to free ourselves completely from the moral
corruption in our ways of thinking and acting, and in our relations to
others, produced by this pro cess, and of which we ourselves may be barely
consctous.
Although it may be doubted that Rousseau offers a fully convincing
solution to the problem as to how the capacity of the human will to shape
existing conditions can be reconciled with the idea of necessity in the form
of the impersonal, spontaneously generated forces that shape society, his
recognition of the difficulties faced by the task that he sets himself in the
Social Contract is in itself highly significant. This is because it draws atten
tion to the inherent difficulties involved in explaining the transition from
a condition marked by one-sided forms of dependence on other human
beings based on material inequality to a condition in which this form of
dependence together with the threat of domination that it contains have
been removed, even when a set of principles has been identified that pur
port to explain how this new condition must be constituted if it is to count
as a truly just one. It also helps us to understand why Rousseau, for who m
'in the relations between man and man the worst that can happen to one
is to find himself at the other's discretion' (OC III: 181; PW1: 176) , was so
fascinated by the independence, or, rather, the dependence on things alone,
that he describes primitive man as enjoying in the earliest stages of the state
of nature.17 This dependence on things alone appears to have fascinated
Rousseau so much that he felt obliged to produce a work, the Social Con
tract, that seeks to explain how the renunciation of one's natural freedom
might be justified, even when the possibility of a return to a condition
of independence in which human beings are dependent on things alone
no longer exists for modern individuals. In this respect, the loss of natural
freedom is treated as a potential misfortune that every subsequent human
being, in so far as he or she is capable of imagining such a condition of
'7
There is a highly personal dimension to Rousseau's concern with the problem of dependence on
other human beings, as opposed to dependence on things alone, that is signalled by the following
claim about himself in one of his autobiographical writings: 'He bears the yoke of the necessity of
things witho ut difficulty, but not so the yoke of the will of men' (OC 1 : 845; D : 143).

independence, may suffer. It is, in short, a loss that hypothetically affects
all human beings living in modern, highly developed societies, whether or
not they recognize this possibility.
In order to show how this misfortune might be avoided, Rousseau needs
to explain how entry into the civil condition truly compensates for the loss
of natural freedom. He views the advantages of entering this condition not
merely in terms of self-preservation, which is a matter of natural necessity,
but also, as we have seen, in terms of the development of the capacity for
moral freedom. Rousseau points to such additional advantages that human
beings enjoy as a result of leaving the state of nature and entering the civil
condition when he claims that this transition 'produces a most remarkable
change in man by substituting justice for instinct in his conduct, and
endowing his actions with the morality they previously lacked', and that
although on leaving the state of nature man 'deprives himself of several
advantages', on entering the civil state he
gains such great advantages in return, his faculties are exercised and devel
oped, his ideas enlarged, his sentiments ennobled, his entire soul is elevated
to such an extent, that if the abuses of this new condition did not often
degrade him to beneath the condition he has left, he should ceaselessly bless
the happy moment which wrested him from it forever, and out of a stupid
and bounded animal made an intelligent being and a man. (OC III: 364;
PW2: 53)
Ro usseau here implies that the civil condition plays an essential role in
the process whereby individual human beings and the human race more
generally achieve perfection, with the full development of the capacity for
moral freedom being held to depend on entry into this condition. As we
shall see in the next chapter, this is a point that Kant was keen to develop, by
turning Rousseau's suggestion that the human being's cultural and moral
development depends on his or her membership of a legal and political
community into a full-blown moral teleology. Yet it is equally possible
that in a society marked by great material inequality and the potential for
domination that it generates, the independence enjoyed by primitive man
will appear more appealing to some people than do the alleged advantages of
living in a law-governed society. We sho uld not forget, then, the important
qualification that Ro usseau adds concerning the advantages of leaving the
state of nature to enter the civil state in the passage quoted above. This
qualification suggests that the threats to freedom posed by dependence
on other human beings, especially when it is mediated by dependence on
things, may, in fact, constitute an insurmountable obstacle to collective
Will and necessity
51
human perfectibility. I shall argue in the next chapter that Kant fails to do
full justice to this aspect of Rousseau's thought.
Kant, Fichte and Hegel all grapple with the question of the possibility
of both individual and collective human perfectibility in ways that concern
the problem of the relation of will to necessity described by Rousseau,
even tho ugh it is only in Hegel's acco unt of civil society that the concept
of necessity is explicitly invoked. The relation of the will to necessity
nevertheless represents a theme that is implicit in Kant's philosophy of
history and in Fichte's theory of right. In the former case, necessity is viewed
as something that produces certain beneficial, unintended consequences
with respect to human perfectibility, which in its highest form consists in
moral freedom. In the latter case, the will is accorded the role of imposing
order on the blind, spontaneous forces shaping society, because these forces
cannot be trusted to produce the right outcomes unless they are subjected
to conscious human control. Hegel's position, I argue, ultimately represents
an unstable synthesis of these two positions. Certain aspects of Rousseau's
writings will be used both to highlight and to call into question the positions
that Kant, Fichte and Hegel adopt.
CHAPTER TWO
Evil and perfectibility in Kant 's liberalism
Kant's liberal theo dicy
Kant claims that in his earlier works Rousseau presents a conflict between
culture, which is the work of freedo m, and nature, especially in so far
as the human race is a physical species, whereas in Emile and the Social
Contract he seeks to show the course that culture should take, even if it
has not in fact done so, in order to bring about the proper development
of the human race as a moral species and its eventual harmony with itself
as a natural species. Culture is not, therefore, something intrinsically bad.
Rather, when it assumes the proper form, it may lead to the improvement
of the human race measured in terms of its moral destiny. Kant describes in
providential terms the process whereby human beings transcend the moral
corruption for which they themselves are responsible, and which manifests
itself in their social relations with each other. Human beings are said to
leave a state of innocence to enter a state of evil, only to transcend this state
of evil and to achieve moral perfection by means of education (Erziehung)
(M vu: 326f. ; AHE 422f., M vm: n6ff. ; AHE: 169ff.) .
Kant's interpretation of the significance o f Rousseau's writings i n this
way forms part of a narrative that treats human history as a kind of theodicy,
with the transition first being made fro m natural freedom to civil freedom
and then from the latter to a fully moral form of freedom. Rousseau's
writings are also understood in terms of the idea of human perfectibility,
with the possibility that human beings will transcend the moral corruption
brought about by the rise of culture, together with the conflict between
freedom and nature brought about by their departure from a purely natural
order, being seriously entertained. Kant here stresses the idea already hinted
at by Ro usseau himself that the full development of moral freedom depends
on human beings leaving a purely natural condition, in which their needs
and the means of satisfying them are in harmony with each other, to enter
the civil condition.
52
53
There appears, however, to be a major difference between Kant's version

of the first stage of this theodicy, that is, the fall from a state of innocence,
and the version of it that might be attributed to Rousseau, for Kant
develops a theo ry of the radical evil in human nature, whereas Rousseau is
commonly associated with the claim that human beings are naturally good.
In this way, Kant suggests that human beings were never really in a state
of innocence, while Rousseau's theory of their natural goodness demands
a social explanation of their fall from a state of innocence. Yet even here
the case has been made that Kant's position does not essentially differ from
Rousseau's one, as when it is argued that for Kant evil is a social product
roo ted in ambition which expresses itself in the self-conceit of ascribing
greater worth to one's own self than to others, leading one to think that
one is entitled to prefer one's own interests to those of others.' This type of
interpretation of Kant's theory of radical evil has been criticized, however,
on the grounds that Kant views the radical evil in human nature as being
in some sense prior to , and therefore independent of, our membership of
society, even though some forms of evil are able to manifest themselves
only in society. 2
While the second interpretation distinguishes Kant's position from
Rousseau's view that human beings are in some sense naturally good,
which implies a decisive rejection of the notion of original sin, the first
interpretation allows Kant's thesis concerning the radically evil nature of
human beings and Rousseau's thesis concerning their natural goodness to
be viewed as identical, at least in so far as they both treat evil as a social
pro duct.3 Although, as we shall see in due course, there is one important
sense in which Rousseau's account of the human being's natural goodness
accords with Kant's views concerning the social dimension of human evil,
I cast doubt on the identity of these two theses, by demonstrating that the
way in which Kant's theory of the radical evil in human nature determines
his liberalism implies the existence of an individualistic (that is, pre-social)
element in this theory. Kant's liberal conception of a law-governed society
is shaped by his views on the radical evil in human nature in the sense that
1
Cf. Wood, Kant 's Ethical Thought, 286ff. The view that Kant understands evil to be a social product
is also found in Anderson-Gold, Unnecessary Evil, 36ff.
1 For criticisms of Wood's position along these lines, see Grimm, 'Kant's Argument for Radical Evil',
and Jeanine M . Grenberg, 'Social Dimensions of Kant's Conception of Radical Evil', in Anderson
Gold and Muchnik, Kant 's Anatomy of Evil. For Wood's response to some of the criticisms made
of his position, see Allen W Wood, 'Kant and the Intelligibility of Evil', in Anderson-Gold and
Muchnik, Kant's Anatomy ofEvil, 144ff.
J Cf. Allen W Wood, 'Kant's Fourth Proposition: The Unsociable Sociability of Human Nature', in
Rorty and Schmidt, Kant 's Idea for a Univmal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim, 127f.
54
it assumes the existence of moral evil in human beings. In this respect, Kant
can be said to develop an account of a liberal society which is firmly based
on the anthropological assumption that human beings are by nature evil,
with this assumption imposing limits on how we are to conceive of the state
and its basic functions in relation to society, in which the radical evil fo und
in human nature manifests itself while being subject to certain constraints.
Thus the notion that human beings are in some sense evil independently
of any social relations in which they stand with others of their kind must
be thought to possess explanatory priority, even if the radical evil in human
nature can fully manifest itself only in society. In this way, human beings
are held to require the legal and political arrangements that are best suited
to their radically evil nature.
Kant's assumption that human beings are by nature evil sits uncom
fortably with his interpretation of the significance of Rousseau's writings,
for it appears to render even more difficult, if not impossible, the task of
explaining the transition to a condition in which human beings fulfil their
moral destiny. Kant attempts to explain this transition in terms of a sponta
neous, quasi-natural process that is characterized by some degree of human
interdependence, and which is held to generate certain unintended, but
allegedly beneficial, outcomes. Kant gives an account of this transition after
having treated the formation of political society as a matter of necessity in
the same way as Ro usseau does when he locates the source of the so cial pact
in individuals' recognition of the fact that they are no longer in the posi
tion to preserve themselves by means of their own powers. Kant likewise
treats the formation of political society as a matter of natural necessity in
the shape of the conditions of individual self-preservation. Yet as we have
seen, Rousseau worries that a just legal and political order could not be
established when people lack the right moral disposition and mores. Kant,
by contrast, appears to dismiss this particular concern when he claims that
'The problem of establishing a state, no matter how hard it may sound,
is soluble even for a nation of devils (if only they have understanding)'
(AA vm: 366; PP: 33 5) . The idea that a nation of devils could agree among
themselves to establish a state implies that even a set of individuals who
possess evil dispositions could agree to establish a just legal and political
order.
As already mentioned, Kant at the same time sees the civil condition
and culture as forming parts of a teleological process, with genuine moral
freedom representing the final outcome of this process. In this way, the
civil freedom of which even a nation of devils is capable is to be succeeded
by a higher, truly ethical form of freedom, suggesting that history can be
55
interpreted in terms of the idea of human perfectibility. I argue, however,

that the role which Kant's theory of radical evil plays in his liberalism
imposes some decisive limits on human perfectibility in so far as it has a
collective dimension, by rendering the transition from the civil co ndition
and culture to a genuinely ethical form of community highly uncertain,
especially when the transitio n in question is conceived to be a largely
spontaneous one that takes place against a background of human inter
dependence and the po tential for domination to which social relations
of dependence tend to give rise. Here it seems that Kant fails to recog
nize the full force of the challenges posed by Rousseau's awareness of the
way in which dependence on o ther human beings, particularly when it is
mediated by dependence on things, is liable to produce forms of domi
nation and moral corruption. We should, therefore, be extremely wary of
interpreting the significance of Ro usseau's writings in the terms set out by
Kant's interpretation of their significance. There is a certain irony in the
fact that Rousseau, who is commonly associated with the idea that human
beings are by nature good, turns out to be far more sceptical concerning the
possibility of human perfectibility than is Kant, who assumes that human
beings are by nature evil and nevertheless suggests that a liberal society
based on this assumption can provide the foundations for a truly ethical
form of community. These differing assessments concerning the possibility
of human perfectibility are reflected in Ro usseau's and Kant's views on the
role of the state.
The German legal and po litical theorist Carl Schmitt implies that the
opposition between the anthropological standpoints represented by the
idea that humans beings are naturally good and the idea that they are
evil by nature has the po tential to generate radically different political
conclusions, when in The Concept of the Political he proposes classifying
all theories of the state and political ideas according to 'whether they
consciously or unconscio usly presuppose man to be by nature evil or by
nature good'.4 Schmitt claims that all genuine political theories presuppose
that the human being is evil by nature and thus a dangerous and problematic
being. As representatives of the anthropological view that the human being
is by nature evil, he mentions Fichte and Hegel as well as such figures as
Machiavelli and Hobbes, whereas the presupposition that the human being
is by nature good is associated with anarchist and liberal political theories
and their hostility to state intervention.5 Schmitt's ultimate purpose in
drawing such a firm distinction between these seemingly irreconcilable
4 Schmitt, The Concept ofthe Political, 58.
5 Schmitt, The Concept ofthe Political, 6of.

positions concerning human nature and its political implications can be
understood as the wish on his part to justify the agonistic mo del of the
political based on a friend-enemy distinction that he proposes in the same
work. This purpose may have led S chmitt to overemphasize liberalism's
hostility to state intervention as such, rather than to particular fo rms of
state intervention. Moreover, the way in which he boldly attributes the view
that human beings are by nature evil to such philosophers as Fichte and
Hegel might be questioned. Schmitt's listing of the G erman Idealists Fichte
and Hegel as examples of thinkers who hold the view that the human being
is by nature evil, when taken together with his claim that liberal political
theory does not rest on the same assumption, is nevertheless interesting.
This is because it raises the question as to why he does not include Kant, the
philosopher whose Critical philosophy was the main source of inspiration
behind the develo pment of G erman Idealism, in his list of philosophers
who hold the view that the human being is by nature evil. One explanation
of Schmitt's decision to exclude Kant from the list of philosophers who
hold the view that the human being is by nature evil is the liberal character
of Kant's political philosophy, 6 since Schmitt denies that liberal political
theory is based on such a view of human nature.
Kant's political philosophy contains a number of ideas that seem impor
tant to liberals. For a start, Kant advocates a so ciety governed by law
in which people are free to pursue their own conceptions of happiness,
so that to this extent it may be said that he is hostile to state interven
tion. Also, Kant regards the principles of the freedom of all members of
society, the dependence of every member of society on a single common
source of legislation and each person's equality before the law as fun
damental to a republican form of government, and these principles are
ones that liberals arguably value above all others. The fact that Schmitt
himself would have to class Kant's political philosophy as a liberal one
relates to his claim that for liberalism 'society determines its own order
and . . . state and government are subordinate and must be distrustingly
controlled and bound to precise limits'.? We shall see that Kant's views on
the relation of society to the state and, more specifically, on the limited role
of the latter in relation to the former, can be described in precisely these
terms.
This fact by itself appears to undermine Schmitt's neat division of polit
ical theories into ones represented by non-liberal thinkers who operate
6
7
For the view that Kant can be viewed as a liberal, albeit a liberal in the context of the Germany of
his own time, see Williams, Kant 's Political Philosophy, 125ff.
Schmitt, The Concept ofthe Political, 6of.
Kant on radical evil: making exceptiom for oneself
57
with the anthropological assumption that the human being is by nature

evil and those theories represented by anarchist or liberal thinkers who
assume that the human being is by nature good. Moreover, while Kant can
be classed as a liberal thinker despite operating with the assumption that
human beings are by nature evil, Rousseau, who can be co nsidered to be one
of the main representatives of the anthropological assumption that human
beings are by nature good, cannot easily be classed as a liberal thinker. This
is shown by the way in which Rousseau points to a number of problems
with Kant's liberalism in so far as it accepts forms of dependence which
he thinks pose significant threats to human freedom. Given Rousseau's
recognition of these problems, I argue in Chapter 3 that he could have
endorsed the type of theory of property that Fichte develops. This theory
appears to be fundamentally at odds with a liberal conception of property
rights and with hostility to state intervention. At the same time, Fichte, like
Kant, seeks to locate the state within an acco unt of human perfectibility,
by treating it as a condition of genuine moral freedom, though not as an
actual expression of this same freedom, which is held to be something that
lies beyond the state.
Kant on radical evil: making exceptions for oneself
When discussing the question as to whether the human being is by nature

good or evil, Kant rejects the possibility of an intermediate position which
claims either that human beings are neither good nor evil by nature, or
that they are both good and evil by nature. Kant rejects these intermediate
positions because he locates the goodness or evilness of human nature
in an individual's fundamental ethical disposition, which consists in the
adoption of a basic maxim that determines all the particular maxims in
acco rdance with which the individual chooses to act. The human being
wo uld consequently be either naturally good or naturally evil depending
on whether or not the higher-order principle to make respect for the moral
law into the incentive of one's actions had been adopted as the basic maxim
which determines all the particular maxims governing one's actions. Kant
acco rdingly stipulates that by the term 'the nature of a human being' he
means only 'the subjective ground - wherever it may lie - of the exercise
of the human being's freedom in general (under objective moral laws)
antecedent to every deed that falls within the scope of the senses' (AA VI:
21; RRT: 70) . Human beings canno t, therefore, be viewed as neither good
nor evil by nature, since they must either have made or not have made the
maxim to act out of respect for the moral law into their basic principle of

action . Nor can they be both good and evil by nature, since this maxim is
the general maxim which determines the particular maxims that govern an
individual's actions.
This does not mean that human beings cannot choose to adopt the
opposing general maxim, thereby assuming a different ethical disposition.
Kant insists that the basic maxim must be freely chosen, for otherwise an
individual co uld not be held morally responsible for having adopted it. To
say that the human being is by nature evil consequently does not amount to
claiming that it is part of the human essence to be evil, that human beings
are simply born evil, making evil into something merely given rather than
something that is a matter of free choice and, therefore, a product of the
will. In other wo rds, it is only contingently true that human beings are
evil by nature, in the sense that it is always possible to choose to make
respect for the moral law into one's basic principle of action, even if one
does not in fact do so. While this aspect of Kant's account of radical evil
makes his use of the phrase 'by nature' somewhat confusing, he implies
that evil is a constant, if ultimately contingent, feature of human nature,
when he claims that the propensity to evil has 'deep roots . . . in the power
of choice [ Willkur], on acco unt of which we must say that it is fo und in
the human being by nature' (AA VI: 35; RRT: 82). Kant highlights this
propensity to fail to develop the disposition which consists in adopting the
basic maxim to make respect for the moral law into the incentive of one's
actio ns, together with the fact that the individual is ultimately responsible
for this failure, in the following passage:
This evil is radical, since it corrupts the ground of all maxims; as natural
propensity, it is also not to be extirpated through human forces, for this
could only happen through good maxims - something that cannot take
place if the subjective supreme ground of all maxims is presupposed to be
corrupted. Yet it must equally be possible to overcome this evil, for it is found
in the human being as acting freely. (AA VI : 37; RRT: 83)
In order to justify the assertion that we must presuppose that the sub
jective gro und of all maxims has been corrupted by the human propensity
to evil, Kant appeals to experience, claiming that 'We can spare ourselves
the formal proof that there must be such a corrupt propensity roo ted in
the human being, in view of the multitude of woeful examples that the
experience of human deeds parades before us' (AA VI: 32f.; RRT: 8o) . Yet
Kant himself casts doubt on this same appeal to experience when he claims
that the judgement that the agent is an evil human being canno t be reli
ably based on experience, since we cannot observe with sufficient clarity
59
our own maxims, let alone the maxims of others (AA VI: 20; RRT: 70). 8
Although Kant's theory of radical evil in this way raises some thorny issues
concerning whether or not the claims that he makes regarding human evil
are of an a priori or merely inductive nature, and whether they are of a cor
respondingly necessary or contingent kind, such issues need not concern
us here. For even if Kant's claim that human beings are by nature evil rests
on certain inductive generalizations,9 whose validity may be questioned,
when discussing the relation of his theory of radical evil to his political phi
losophy it is possible to work with the weaker claim that human beings may
be evil by nature, and that this is a possibility which any serious political
philosophy must consider. In other words, the claim that the human being
is by nature evil would have the status of a metho dological assumption,
similar in kind to the one found in Machiavelli's Discorsi, in which it is
said that who ever wants to establish a commo nwealth and provide it with
laws must presuppose that all men are evil, and that they will vent the
malignancy that is in them whenever the opportunity to do so presents
itself.10
Having developed a theory of the radical evil in human nature, Kant
certainly needs to operate with such an assumption in his political writings,
for this theory implies that human evil is a sufficiently general phenomenon
to render any reliance on an individual's morality foolhardy, and that a set of
legal and institutional constraints on human agency are therefore necessary.
In order to understand how this methodological assumption operates in
Kant's political writings, we first need to address the issue of what it means
8
On the one hand, Kant speaks of the dishonesty involved 'in not screening incentives (even those of
well-intentioned actions) in accordance with the moral guide' (AA VI : 37; RRT: 84) . The notion of
screening suggests that if we were sufficiently honest with ourselves, we could tell which incentives
had determined us to act in a certain way. On the other hand, when discussing what it means to
have the disposition of a good human being, which requires adopting as the basic maxim of our
actions the maxim always to make respect for the moral law into the incentive of these actions,
Kant claims that any assurance of having done so 'cannot of course be atta ined by the human being
naturally, neither via immediate consciousness nor via the evidence of the life he has hitherto led,
for the depths of his own heart (the subjective first ground of his maxims) are to him inscrutable'
(AA VI : 51; RRT: 95).
9 Kant's appeal to experience seems to fall short of meeting the following stringent condition that he
himself claims must be met to call a human being by nature evil: 'to infer a priori from a number
of consciously evil actions, or even from a single one, an underlying evil maxim, and, from this, the
presence in the subject of a common gro und, itself a maxim, of all particular morally evil maxims'
(AA VI: 20; RRT: 70) . This is not to say, however, that observations made on the basis of experience
cannot result in certain generalizations that can themselves be given a systematic form. Kant himself
claims that deciding whether the human being is by nature good or evil will depend on the results
of anthropological research (AA VI: 25; RRT: 74) . Yet the problem remains as to how we can make
any rel iable generalizations of this kind, given the opacity that he himself suggests prevents us from
knowing what our own maxims really are, let alone those of other people.
10 Machiavelli, The Discourses, nrf.
6o
to fail to make respect for the moral law into the basic principle of one's
actions. This requires offering an explanation of Kant's claim that 'the
statement, "The human being is evil," cannot mean anything else than
that he is conscious of the mo ral law and yet has incorporated into his
maxim the (occasional) deviation from it' (AA VI: 32; RRT: 79) .
Kant identifies various forms o f moral evil. These forms o f moral evil
are as follows: weakness of will when it comes to acting from the incentive
of duty in the face of other powerful incentives; impurity of the will, which
consists in a propensity to adulterate moral incentives with non-moral ones;
and, finally, the depravity or corruption of the human heart, which con
sists in actually subordinating moral incentives to non-moral ones. Kant
appears to identify moral evil specifically with depravity (that is, the actual
subordination of moral incentives to non-moral ones) when he states that
'the human being (even the best) is evil only because he reverses the moral
order of his incentives in incorporating them into his maxims' (AA VI:
36; RRT: 83). The methodological assumption that human beings are by
nature evil, however, requires only that individuals are generally disposed
to subordinate moral incentives to non-moral ones, and that the threat
consequently always exists of their actually doing so. What does it mean,
though, to say that this reversal of the moral order of incentives is char
acterized both by a consciousness of the moral law and by an act whereby
an agent incorporates into his or her maxim the occasional deviation from
this moral order?
Kant appears here to be talking abo ut an agent's propensity to permit
him- or herself to make an exceptio n in his or her own case to the demand
to act from the incentive of duty, even tho ugh he or she otherwise rec
ognizes the validity of the moral law. The basic maxim that characterizes
the agent's disposition would accordingly be something like the following
one: 'Whenever it suits me to do so, I shall not act on the basis of maxims
that I nevertheless recognize to be in accordance with the moral law; or
I shall act on the basis of maxims that I recognize to be contrary to the
moral law whenever I believe that my self-love would be better served by
doing so.' To make an exception for oneself in such cases means being
determined by incentives of self-love either not to act on a maxim that one
recognizes as being commanded by the moral law or to adopt a maxim that
one recognizes to be immoral. The agent concerned could still be thought
to acknowledge the general validity of the moral law, which is a law that we
cannot help but recognize as rational beings and which, therefore, consti
tutes an ever-present incentive within us. Yet in making compliance with
the demands of the moral law conditional on the absence of any powerful
61
non-moral incentives that lead one to exempt oneself from this law, the
agent concerned 'makes the incentives of self-love [Selbstliebe] and their
inclinations the condition of compliance with the moral law - whereas it
is this latter that, as the supreme condition of the satisfaction of the former,
should have been incorporated into the universal maxim of the power of
choice [ Willkur] as the sole incentive' (AA VI: 36; RRT: 83) . Self-love dic
tates, moreover, that the individual, while exempting him- or herself from
the moral law, would want others to recognize this law and to act in accor
dance with it. This is what Kant appears to be saying when he states that
If we now attend to ourselves in any transgression of a duty, we find that we
do not really will that our maxim should become a universal law, since that is
impossible for us, but that the opposite of our maxim should instead remain
a universal law, only we take the liberty of making an exception [Ausnahme]
to it for ourselves (or just for this once) to the advantage of our inclination.
(AA I V : 424; PP: 75f.)
Kant clearly views his association of radical evil with the subordination
of moral incentives to non-moral ones, together with his understanding
of this phenomenon in terms of a propensity in human beings to exempt
themselves from a law whose validity they otherwise recognize, while hop
ing that others obey this law, as relevant to his political philosophy. This is
shown by the following description that he gives of the problem of setting
up a state, which is a problem that allegedly even a nation of devils can
solve:
G iven a multitude of rational beings all of whom need universal laws for
their preservation but each of whom is inclined covertly to exempt himself
from them [ingeheim sich davon auszunehmen geneigt ist] , so to order this
multitude and establish their constitution [ Verfassung] that, although in
their private dispositions they strive against one another, these yet so check
one another that in their public conduct the result is the same as if they had
no such evil dispositions. (AA VIII : 366; PP: 335)
The fact that Kant discusses the problem which even a nation of devils
could solve in terms of the tendency to exempt oneself from universal law
takes care of the claim that the 'intelligent devil' belongs to an essentially
different species to the human species.u This claim is based on Kant's defi
nition of 'devilishness' as the complete elimination of any moral incentive,
and his denial of the possibility of such an absolute elimination of moral
incentives in the case of human beings. Presumably this is a reference to
11
Cf. Anderson-Gold, Unnecessary Evil, 82.

Kant's claim that a diabolical being would be one for which resistance to
the moral law had itself become an incentive, and to his swift denial that
this type of incentive can apply in the case of human beings (AA VI: 3 5 ;
RRT: 82). This fundamental difference between a diabolical being and a
human being does not mean, however, that human beings and intelligent
devils do not share the propensity to exempt themselves from universal law,
though their motives for doing so , and the intensity with which they do so,
may differ. The constitution of the state must therefore be of such a kind
that no one is able to exempt him- or herself from the laws of the state,
as much as he or she would like to do so , while others obey them. This
constitution must, for example, as in Rousseau's account of a legitimate
social pact, consist of laws that apply equally to all citizens, so that it does
not impose conditions on one group of people while leaving others free
of these same conditions. The state must also be able to exercise coercion
to the extent that it proves necessary when it comes to guaranteeing the
effectiveness of the laws.1
Kant's description of the problem that he claims even a nation of devils
can solve, and the way in which this problem relates to the idea of evil as
the propensity to exempt oneself from universal law, herald a wish on his
part to solve a political problem which Rousseau identifies in the following
passage:
Wickedness [La mechancetfj is basically only an opposition of the private
will to the public will, and it is for this reason that there could not be any
freedom among wicked men [les mechans] , because if each one acts according
to his own will, it would thwart the public will or that of his neighbor and
most of the time both; and if he is constrained to obey the public will, he
would never act according to his own will. (OC III: 483 ; PF: 23)
Ro usseau's view of wickedness as the opposition of the private will to

the public will provides the political expression of the opposition between
self-love and universal law that Kant invokes when he speaks of radical evil
as the propensity to subordinate the moral law to o ur selfish interests. For
Rousseau, the opposition of the private will to the public will must destroy
a po litical community if it becomes general, for by constantly seeking to
" It is possible that such a law-governed condition would itself ultimately require the existence of
morality in at least some of its members. It could be argued, for example, that those who institute
and admin ister the laws must be moved by morality rather than by mere prudence. For a discussion
of this issue in relation both to the need that Kant mentions for 'moral politicians' and to his theory
of radical evil, see Paul Guyer, 'The Crooked Timber of ankind', in Rorry and Schmidt, Kant's
Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim. To this extent, the statement that the problem
of establishing a state is one that a nation of devils could solve requires some qualification, though
only with regard to the long-term prospects of maintaining a rightfully constituted state.

exempt themselves from the commands of the public will as expressed in
the form of laws and regulations, individuals will eventually undermine
the authority of the public will itself and render it largely ineffective in the
face of the selfishness governing society. Yet if people are compelled to act
in accordance with the public will while not being inclined to do so on
acco unt of their particular interests, whose realization may demand that
they act in opposition to the p ublic will, the amo unt of constraint that
will need to be applied to preserve the public will co uld be so great that it
wo uld no longer make any sense to speak of them as free, that is, as morally
free, which requires being able to think of the constraints to which one is
subject as in some sense self-imposed ones, as opposed to being subject to
pure necessity in the form of force.
Kant tries to counter such concerns by showing how natural necessity, in
the shape of the desire for self-preservation and an attenuated social drive,
wo uld be sufficient to establish and to maintain political society. Thus
rather than relying on the existence of any natural goodness in humankind,
he argues that a so ciety of individuals who may not be disposed to act in
acco rdance with universal law when their self-interest dictates otherwise
can, nevertheless, result in the establishment of a state, though this is
not something that the agents concerned may have conscio usly intended.
Kant suggests that he is attempting to solve the kind of political problem
identified by Ro usseau concerning the relation between self-interest and
the public will when he makes the following claim:
Now the republican constitution [die republikanische Veifassung] is the only
one that is completely compatible with the righ t of human beings, but it
is also the most difficult one to establish and even more to maintain, so
much so that many assert it would have to be a state of angels because
human beings, with their self-seeking inclinations, would not be capable
of such a sublime form of constitution. But now nature comes to the aid
of the general will grounded in reason [dem . . . allgemeinen, in der Vernunft
gegriindeten Willen] , revered but impotent in practice, and does so precisely
through those self-seeking inclinations, so that it is a matter only of a good
organization of a state (which is certainly within the capacity of human
beings) , of arranging those forces of nature in opposition to one another
in such a way that one checks the destructive effect of the other or cancels
it, so that the result for reason turns out as if neither of them existed at all
and the human being is constrained to become a good citizen even if not a
morally good human being. (AA VIII : 366; PP: 335)
In the next section, I look at how nature allegedly comes to the aid of
the general will and makes possible a republican constitution, by getting
individuals' private dispositions somehow to cancel each other o ut, thereby

overcoming the fatal opposition between the private will and the public
will described by Ro usseau, and rendering an individual's actual disposition
largely irrelevant in the legal and political spheres. This is not the case
with morality, for the agent is obliged to make the incentive of duty into
his or her basic principle of action. In the legal and political spheres,
by contrast, what matters is only that a person's external conduct is in
conformity with the laws and the institutional structures of the state. Kant
here anticipates Fichte's strict separation of right from morality, '3 which
finds radical expression in the following claim:
In the domain of natural right, the good will has no role to play. Right must
be enforceable, even if there is not a single human being with a good will;
the very aim of the science of right is to sketch out j ust such an order of
things. In this domain, physical force - and it alone - gives right its sanction.
(GA 1 /3: 359; FNR: 50)
Fichte explicitly bases his theory of right on the methodological assump

tion of 'universal egoism' (GA I/3 : 433 f. ; FNR: 134) . He can therefore be
said to base it on the assumption that the human being is by nature evil, if
one equates evil with egoism, as Kant does. Kant, however, is more cautious
when it comes to completely separating right from morality. For example,
in the essay On the Common Saying: This May be True in Theory, but it
does not Apply in Practice he makes the following claim, which is cast in
decidedly mo ral terms:
If there is not something that through reason compels immediate respect
(such as the rights of human beings) , then all influences on the choice
[ Willkur] of human beings are incapable of restraining their freedom; but
if, alongside benevolence, right speaks out loudly, human nature does not
show itself too depraved to listen deferentially to its voice. (AA vm : 306;
PP: 304)
The moral necessity of something that, through reason, restrains freedom

by compelling immediate respect is difficult to reconcile with Kant's theory
of radical evil inasmuch as this theory implies that human beings cannot
be relied upon to act in accordance with universal moral principles, even
though, as free and rational beings, they may recognize the validity of
these same principles. Rather, self-love will often incline them to exempt
themselves from such principles. Consequently, it cannot be presupposed
" For an account of Fichte's separation of right from morality, see James, Fichte 's Social and Political
Philosophy, 112ff., Kersting. 'Die Unabhangigkeit des Rechts von der Moral' and Neuhouser, 'Fichte
and the Relationship between Right and Morality'.
A civil society ofintelligent devils

that immediate respect for the moral law rooted in their rational nature
will have sufficient motivatio nal force in the case of human beings.14
For this reason alone, a philosophical account of legal and political
institutions cannot presuppose that individuals will act in accordance with
moral norms, even if the existence and recognition of such norms are
granted. It must instead assume that self-interest will tend to lead indi
viduals to seek to exempt themselves from universal law while hoping that
others will obey it, and provide an acco unt of how laws and institutions can
contain this potentially destructive tendency within certain bounds. Kant's
liberalism represents a response to these demands that can be traced back,
as I have done in this section, to his understanding of the idea that human
beings are by nature evil. At the same time, Kant seeks to lo cate his liberal
theory of society and the state within the kind of theodicy that he claims
can be detected in Rousseau's writings, by showing how the establishment
of the civil condition may eventually lead to the establishment of an ethical
community. Ro usseau, however, provides some strong reasons for doubting
the plausibility of Kant's vision of how co llective human perfectibility is
possible in the face of the radical evil that Kant himself detects in human
nature.
A civil society of intelligent devils
A connection between the idea that the human being is by nature evil and
Kant's political philosophy is already apparent in the Idea for a Universal
History with a Cosmopolitan Aim, which was published in 1784, making it
'4 For an attempt to argue that Kant advocates the strong thesis that human beings are duty-bound to
institute civil society, to collaborate in it, and to obey and support a certain rule of law, see Pippin,
'On the :'vloral Foundations of Kant's Rechtslehri. Kant may well say things that suggest such a
position. However, his theory of radical evil makes a duty-based account as to why human beings
would choose to institute a state highly problematic, since it is far from clear how naturally evil
human beings could be morally motivated to institute a law-governed condition when they have
the propensity to exempt themselves from universal moral principles.
Another objection to the approach that I adopt m ight be to claim that Kant is keen to stress the
normative foundations of right. These foundations lie in providing a solution to a problem which
appears not to rely on any anthropological assumptions concerning the question as to whether
human beings are good or evil by nature. This problem is that even if we imagine human beings
to be well disposed and law-abiding (rechtliebend), everyone in the state of nature has the right
to do what seems to him or her to be right and good. Human beings in such a condition would,
therefore, still not be secure against acts of violence from one another. In short, each individual
remains judge in his own cause when it comes to the issue of how best to protect his or her own
interests (AA VI : 312; PP: 455f.). Nevertheless, as we might have expected given his theory of radical
evil, Kant takes seriously the task of explaining how a nation of rational devils could agree among
themselves to enter a law-governed condition; and in so far as he does so, he reveals the extent to
which his liberalism is shaped by his views on the radical evil in human nature.
66
significantly earlier than Kant's other main political writings. In this essay,
Kant states that the 'greatest problem for the human species, to which nature
compels him, is the achievement of a civil society universally administering
right [das Recht verwaltenden burgerlichen Gesellschaft]' (AA v m : 22; AH E:
112) . The difficulty of the task of establishing a civil society is said to lie in
the human being's need for a master. This need for a master stems from
the fact that the human being
certainly misuses his freedom in regard to others of his kind; and although
as a rational creature he wishes a law that sets limits to the freedom of all, his
selfish animal inclination still misleads him into excepting himself [sich selbst
auszunehmen] from it where he may. Thus he needs a master, who breaks his
stubborn will and necessitates him [ihn nothige] to obey a universally valid
will with which everyone can be free. (AA VIII : 23; AH E: 113)
The human propensity to exempt oneself from universal law, while

hoping that others will obey it, is here held to give rise to the essentially
political problem regarding who sho uld be invested with the authority
and the power to coerce others. Yet the master that human beings need
will himself be a human being and thus a being capable of misusing his
freedom when he has no superior power over him that can compel him to
act in accordance with universal law. In this way, Kant locates the need for
political so ciety in the human being's radically evil nature, while invoking
the idea of such a nature in the case of the master who must be assumed
to share the human propensity to exempt himself from universal law when
self-love dictates that he should do so. Another, more fundamental problem
here presents itself. This problem concerns the question as to why a radically
evil being would ever agree to subject itself to a master, rather than willing
to be left free to exempt itself from universal law whenever it sees fit to
do so. The earlier sections of the same work and, more especially, the idea
of human 'unsociable sociability' (ungesellige Geselligkeit) , provide Kant's
answer to this question.
Kant gives antagonism a central role to play in nature's plan whereby
human beings unintentionally develop their innate capacities and talents,
including the capacity to reason and to act freely, and in so doing advance
the human species as a whole. Antagonism between human beings arises
because, on the one hand, human beings have the propensity to enter into
society with others, for only in society can they feel themselves to be truly
human, while, on the other hand, they are equally unsociable by nature
because they wish to do things their own way. Yet doing things entirely
their own way is not something that human beings can do in society, in

which they can expect to enco unter some resistance on the part of others
to their plans. Such resistance is nevertheless beneficial because it
awakens all the powers of the human being, b rings him to overcome
his propensity to indolence, and, driven by ambition [Ehrsucht], tyranny
[Herrschsucht] , and greed [Habsucht], to obtain for himself a rank among his
fellows, whom he cannot stand, but also cannot leave alone. Thus happen the
first true steps from crudity toward culture, which really consists in the social
worth of the human being; thus all talents come bit by bit to be developed,
taste is formed, and even, through progress in enlightenment, a beginning
is made toward the foundation of a mode of thought which can with time
transform the rude natural predisposition to make moral distinctions into
determi nate practical principles and hence transform a pathologically com
pelled agreement to form a society finally into a moral whole. (AA vm : 2 1 ;
AHE: m)
Kant here makes the following set of claims. In encountering resis

tance on the part of o thers to their plans, human beings are driven to
compete with others, for whom they experience no natural affection but,
rather, a natural antipathy, so that their social drive must be regarded as
an attenuated one. In this competitive environment, ambition, tyranny
and greed result in the emergence of culture and a distinctively human
form of existence, in which certain value distinctions, based on comparing
oneself with others, arise. The antagonisms found in society are thus held
to perform an educative function, with even the vices of ambition, tyranny
and greed proving favo urable to the development of culture, since they
foster a practical form of reasoning, which in its highest form consists in
making moral distinctions. Agreement concerning such distinctions may
eventually replace a form of agreement that is 'pathologically' conditioned.
Despite their beneficial consequences, ambition, tyranny and greed are to
be classed as vices because they consist in acts of comparison that involve
exempting oneself from universal law, from the standpoint of which all
human beings are held to be equal, in the sense that in each case one wants
to accord greater self-wo rth to oneself than to o thers. This is done either
through wanting to show oneself to be superior to others, to dominate
them, or to have more than they have.
A few remarks are here in order. First of all, there is the question as to how
we are to understand the difference between a pathologically conditioned
form of agreement and its successor, the moral form of agreement. Kant's
talk of a moral whole in the passage quoted above implies the notion of
an ethical community in which rational beings act in accordance with
the moral law while freely making respect for this law into the incentive
68
of their actions. This is clearly not a condition whose existence can be

relied upon given the radical evil that Kant detects in human nature.
The pathologically conditioned agreement to form a society, by contrast,
refers to Kant's understanding of the formation of political society in
terms of the way in which individuals are forced to renounce their 'wild
freedom' by subjecting themselves to laws and state authority, once they
recognize that the lawless pursuit of their own inclinations wo uld result
in their mutual destruction (M VIII: 22; AHE: 112). It is because it is
ultimately based on natural necessity in the shape of the desire for self
preservation that this form of agreement can be described as 'pathologically'
conditioned. Moreover, since it has its roots in natural necessity alone, it
is a form of agreement of which even a nation of intelligent devils is
capable.
Here we encounter one reason that Kant has for claiming that indi
viduals' private dispositio ns strive against one another and, in so do ing,
check one another, so that as regards these individuals' public conduct, the
result is the same as if they had no such evil dispositions. The desire to
preserve themselves may lead individuals to recognize that, assuming that
others share the same interest, the best solution for them all wo uld be the
establishment of a system of laws which ensures that each and every indi
vidual is protected from acts of violence and does not, therefore, need to
act violently towards others. Moreover, since their self-preservation requires
that they cannot be judges in their own cause, in which case the lawless
condition that they themselves wish to escape wo uld persist, individuals
are forced to curb their tendency to exempt themselves from universal
law, while ho ping that others obey it, by putting in place an external
power with the authority to judge and to compel them to act in con
formity with universally valid laws. Kant himself says as much when he
claims that the schemes of human beings conflict with each other to such
an extent that they simply could not have reached agreement on their
own accord to enter political society. Rather, they are compelled to do
so because 'omnilateral violence and the need arising fro m it must finally
bring a people to decide to subject itself to the coercion that reason itself
prescribes to them as means, namely to public law, and to enter into a
civil comtitution' (M VIII: 310; PP: 307) . Thus through sheer practical
necessity human beings may end up behaving peaceably in relation to
each other, irrespective of whether or not they are truly inclined to do
so. This raises the question of the precise nature of the transition from
the pathologically conditioned form of agreement which results in the
civil condition to a truly ethical form of agreement and community, since

the strictly amoral nature of the former condition makes the transition
to the latter condition appear far from obvious. I return to this issue
shortly.
A second point concerns the role of the self-love which is the source of
radical evil in human beings because it leads them to exempt themselves
from the demands of the moral law. Kant's understanding of this self-love
allows us to gain a better idea of the kind of antagonism which he has in
mind in his account of human society. In Religion within the Boundaries
ofMere Reason Kant identifies two forms of self-love. The first of which
he terms 'mechanical' self-love, which does not require the use of reason
and includes the desire for self-preservation, the propagation of the species
and preservation of offspring and, finally, the social drive to enter into
community with others (AA VI: 26; RRT: 75) . When Kant claims that this
form of self-love does not require the use of reason, we may assume that
he means it is simply a matter of instinct and purely natural desires. The
second form of self-love is said to involve a predisposition to humanity,
because it consists in the inclination to gain worth in the opinion of others
and, as such, it relies on the ability and tendency to compare oneself with
others and to make judgements concerning one's own situation and worth
based on such comparisons (AA VI: 27; RRT: 75) . This form of self-love
consequently appears to be closely connected with the social drive that
leads human beings to enter into society with each other. This society is
not, however, to be equated with what Kant calls civil society, that is, a
society governed by laws. It is instead a form of society that could exist
in the state of nature. The second form of self-love might, for example,
represent an unintended o utcome of the satisfaction of the social drive that
for Kant belongs to the first form of self-love, in the sense that human
beings are first driven to seek the company of others and only then develop
a tendency to compare themselves with them. Such sociability does not
rule out the possibility of the kind of conflict between human beings that
poses a threat to their self-preservation and is, therefore, inimical to the
first form of self-love. For making comparisons with others may lead to
attempts to prove to oneself that one is better, richer or more powerful
than these others are by trying to force them to recognize this conception
of one's own self-worth and to offer what one co nsiders to be adequate
tokens of this recognition . Yet others may resist these attempts to elicit
such recognition from them .
Kant's distinction between these two forms of self-love invites com
parisons with Ro usseau's distinction between amour de soi (or amour de
soi-meme) and amour-propre, a distinction which Kant expresses in terms
70
of the distinction between 'self-love' and 'self-conceit'.'5 For Ro usseau,

amour de soi is a natural sentiment which inclines every animal to con
cern itself with its own preservation, whereas amour-propre is a relative
sentiment because it depends on comparing oneself with others and caring
about what they think of oneself. The second fo rm of self-love is con
sequently a sentiment that can arise only in so ciety. It also depends on
the development of the reasoning capacities that enable human beings to
make comparisons. The development of these reasoning capacities is itself
only possible in society, whereas Rousseau thinks that primitive man in the
earliest stages of the state of nature would have had no incentive to develop
them. Given that amour-propre has yet to develop in the earliest stages of
the state of nature, primitive man does not experience any harm that he
suffers as some kind of affront, that is, an act which represents a failure
on the part of others to demonstrate sufficient recognition of the status
that he possesses in his own eyes. In accordance with Ro usseau's portrayal
of the earliest stages of the state of nature as a condition in which human
beings are dependent on things alone, primitive man is instead like other
animals to the extent that he experiences any hostile acts as nothing more
than 'natural occurrences, without the slightest stirring of arrogance or
resentment, and with no other passion than the pain or pleasure at success
or failure' (OC m: 219f. ; PW1: 218) . Although Ro usseau claims that amour
propre 'inspires men with all the evils they do one another' (OC m : 219 ;
PW1: 218), it has been argued that he also considers it to be beneficial to
humankind as long as it assumes the appropriate fo rm.' 6 This type of self
love is not, therefore, intrinsically bad; rather, it is good or bad depending
on whether or not it assumes a beneficial form or the 'inflamed' form of
vanity.
Kant clearly regards neither of the two forms of self-love that he identifies
as being intrinsically evil, since they do not necessarily result in resistance
to the moral law. Elsewhere in Religion within the Boundaries of Mere
Reason, he goes so far as to claim that ' Considered in themselves natural
inclinations are good, i.e. not reprehensible, and to want to extirpate them
would not only be futile but harmful and blamewo rthy as well' (AA VI: 58;
RRT: 102) . This claim represents one example of how Kant's conception
of radical evil is based on his theory of freedo m. Kant can be said to
hold the view that inclinations do not by themselves constitute sufficient
'I Cf. Wood, 'Kant and the Intelligibility of Evil', 164 and Wood, 'Kant's Fourth Proposition: The
Unsociable Sociability of Human Nature', n7.
'6 The most sustained attempt to bring out the positive aspects of amour-propre is to be found in
Neuhauser, Rousseau s Theodicy ofSe/fLove.
71
reasons or incentives to act for a free agent; rather, they become so only
through a free agent making it his or her rule to act on a given inclination
in certain circumstances.'7 The inclinations connected with self-love are,
therefore, mo rally indifferent, that is, 'good' in the negative sense of not
being reprehensible. In the case of the first type of self-love, the inclinations
can even be regarded as positively good in the sense that they have been
implanted in us by nature for our own benefit as members of an animal
species, while the second type of self-love can be considered goo d in so far
as it is the means whereby culture develops as if in accordance with some
plan of nature (AA vm: n6ff. ; AHE: 169ff.) . These two forms of self-love
nevertheless generate vices when they are wilfully pursued beyond a certain
limit. The 'mechanical' form of self-love may result in gluttony, lust and
wild lawlessness in relation to other human beings (AA VI: 26f ; RRT: 75) ,
while the seco nd form of self-love may produce what Kant calls the 'vices
of culture' (Laster der Cultur), including envy and joy in other people's
misfortunes, when it extends beyond the inclination to gain equal wo rth
in the opinions of others (AA VI: 27; RRT: 75).
The claim that the second form of self-love is harmful only when it
extends beyond the inclination to gain equal worth in the eyes of others
is said to show how 'Kant is the best interpreter of Rousseau', because
he helps shed light on Ro usseau's account of amour-propre by drawing a
firm distinction between its natural form, which consists in the desire to
secure 'equal standing along with others', and its perverted, unnatural form,
which consists in wanting to be superior to others.' 8 Kant implies, then,
that the second form of self-love, which appears to correspond to amour
propre, need not assume a pernicious form, even if it tends to assume such
a form in human society. The idea that it is only in society that self-love
tends to assume a pernicious form allows Kant's acco unt of the connection
between self-love and human evil to be related to one of the main ways in
which Ro usseau regards human beings as by nature good. Altho ugh Kant's
acco unt of this connection in this respect also appears to support the claim
that he, like Rousseau, sees evil as a product of society, it also invites the
question as to how society can be reconstituted so as to avoid the evils
associated with the second form of self-love and in this way to promote
human perfectibility.
For Rousseau, primitive man in the 'pure' state of nature is good in the
negative sense that his isolation means that his interests seldom come into
.
'7
'8
Cf. Allison, Idealism and Freedom, 175

Rawls, Lectures on the History ofPolitical Philosophy, 198ff.
72
conflict with the interests of others. There may well be occasions when
his self-love, in the form of the desire for self-preservation, leads him to
harm others. Yet at this stage of the state of nature even the desire fo r self
preservation is tempered by the natural sentiment of pity (OC III: 125f. ;
PWr : 127) . '9 Such occasio ns would in any case be so rare that primitive man
could not develop a habitual, rather than merely momentary and fleeting,
desire to harm others. This form of natural goodness consists in an absence
of the disposition to harm others which itself depends on the absence of
social relations. Such relations appear, in fact, to be necessary conditions of
human evil for Rousseau, who claims that 'it is in fact impossible that a man
who is and who wants to be alone could or would wish to harm anyone,
and consequently that he could be a wicked person [un mechant]' (OC r:
455; C: 445; translation modified) . The idea of someone who 'wants to be'
alone suggests, moreover, the possibility of regaining one's natural goodness
by withdrawing from society, so that once again Rousseau's account of the
human being's natural goodness turns out to be of a purely negative kind.
The message is clear: a habitual desire to harm others can arise only in a
society characterized by a high degree of human interdependence brought
about by the increased number and complexity of needs, including the
psychological need for recognition from others associated with amour
propre, that must be satisfied, together with a corresponding increase in
the number and the complexity of the available means of satisfying these
needs.
The purely negative character of this natural goodness is compatible with
Kant's interpretation of Ro usseau's claim that human beings are by nature
go od; for according to Kant, Ro usseau means that the human being is 'good
in a negative way; that is, he is not evil of his own accord and on purpose,
but only in danger of being infected and ruined by evil or inept leaders and
examples' (AA vu: 327; AHE 422) . Although Kant is here fairly specific
about the possible causes of evil, he suggests that evil may be viewed more
generally as the result of the influence exercised by one human being on
another human being. In this way, he links Rousseau's views on the natural
go odness of humanity to the idea that it is only in society that evil arises.
Rousseau, however, doubts whether it makes any real sense at all to speak of
someone who lacks any abiding social relations to o thers of his kind and the
reasoning capacities presupposed by the concept of duty as being naturally
'9 This is one of the main reasons that Rousseau claims aga inst Hobbes that 'since the state of Nature
is the state in which the care for our own preservation is least prejudicial to the self-preservation of
others, it follows that this state was the most conducive to Peace and the best suited to Mankind'
(OC m : 153; PW1: 151).
73
good, when he claims that human beings co uld have been neither good
nor wicked in the state of nature (OC III: 152; PW1: 150) . In a condition
of human interdependence, by contrast, plenty of opportunities exist for
people's interests to clash. In such an environment human beings can easily
develop the disposition to harm others. Rousseau appears to claim, in fact,
that people will necessarily develop such a disposition in society, at the same
time as he asserts the idea of humanity's natural goo dness in the face of
the constant experience which, he concedes, teaches us that human beings
are wicked. He states, for example, that society 'necessarily moves men to
hate one another in proportion as their interests clash' (OC III: 202; PW1:
197f.) .20 I return to the idea that a disposition to harm others because their
interests run counter to our own is an inevitable product of society when
I look at Kant's attempt to apply his interpretation of the significance of
Rousseau's writings to his own account of human perfectibility as measured
in terms of moral progress. The differences between Kant's and Rousseau's
views concerning the so urce of human evil will then become more evident,
and Rousseau's account of how individuals in society develop an inclination
to harm the interests of others will serve to highlight certain tensions that
exist in Kant's acco unt of human perfectibility, in so far as it proclaims
the possibility of a transition from culture to a genuinely ethical form of
community.
Kant mentions the concept of culture in connection with the form
of self-love that corresponds to Ro usseau's notion of amour-propre when
he remarks that 'nature itself wanted to use the idea of such a com
petitiveness (which in itself does not exclude reciprocal love) as only
an incentive to culture' (AA VI: 27; RRT: 75). This claim is compat
ible with the roles played by antagonism and such vices of culture as
ambition, tyranny and greed in nature's plan as described in Idea for
a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim. It also concerns the issue
of the type of environment in which individuals who are characterized
by their unsociable sociability and motivated by self-love enter into com
petition with each other and exhibit the vices of culture while, uninten
tionally, advancing culture, as if in accordance with some hidden plan of
nature. Certain features of a commercial or 'civil' society, in which there
is competition between individuals and laws exist protecting people from
10 Rousseau appears to have been so struck by the idea that in a condition of human interdependence
furthering one's interests dictates harming others, even when one cares for and esteems these others,
that he made it into his personal maxim to avoid any situation in which the pursuit of his own
advantage would require damaging someone else's interests, thereby placing his own interests in
opposition to duty (OC 1: 56; C: 54.) .
74
violence and securing their property, appear especially significant in this

regard. 21
Kant describes civil society as 'that society which has the greatest free
dom, hence one in which there is a thoro ughgoing antagonism of its mem
bers and yet the most precise determinatio n and security of the boundaries
of this freedom so that the latter can coexist with the freedom of others' (AA
vm: 22; AHE: n2) . This description of civil society shows that, on the one
hand, the civil condition is one in which antagonism between the mem
bers of society is kept within certain bounds, by ensuring that one person's
exercise of freedom does not violate another person's right to exercise his or
her freedom. On the o ther hand, these limits to personal freedom must be
precisely determined so as not to violate the civil freedom which they are
designed to protect, and which gives human capacities and talents a proper
chance to develop. For Kant, freedom of trade appears to operate within
these limits. It should not, therefore, be subject to state intervention. This
is shown by his claim that the infringement of civil freedom will have
disadvantages in relation to all trades and to commerce and with respect
to human freedom in general, because by hindering 'the citizen who is
seeking his welfare in any way he pleases, as long as it can subsist along
with the freedom of others . . . one restrains the vitality of all enterprise and
with it, in turn, the powers of the whole' (AA vm: 28; AHE: II?) . Fo r why
should we think of infringements of civil freedom as being disadvanta
geo us to trade and commerce unless the activities asso ciated with trade and
commerce themselves belong to the sphere of human activity that should
not be subject to external interference? This view of civil freedom suggests
that even if the antagonisms of the free market generate economic and
social inequality, the existence of this inequality does not by itself provide
sufficient justification for state intervention as a means of controlling these
antagonisms.22 At the same time, an individual's desire for a sense of equal
" One can discern the kind of 'invisible hand' doctrine associated with one of the most famous
theorists of such a society, namely Adam Smith, in Kant's account of how individuals acting in
accordance with self-interest unintentionally promote the advance of culture. For Smith's possible
influence on Kant's thought, see Fleischacker, 'Values behind the Market: Kant's Response to the
Wealth ofNations', in which, however, a note of caution is expressed about attempting to explain
Kant's use of an invisible hand mode of explanation of social phenomena in terms of his reading of
the Wealth ofNations in particular. Smith's own use of the phrase 'an invisible hand' is in any case
to be found in his earlier The Theory ofMoral Smtiments, in which it is used in connection with not
only the unintended benefits of human industry but also the unintended, but nevertheless allegedly
equitable, division of the means of human subsistence. Cf. Smith, The Theory ofMoral Sentiments,
183ff.
, Kant accords the state some redistributive powers relating to welfare provision when he claims that
'The general will of the people has united itself into a society which is to maintain itself perpetually;
and for this end it has submitted itself to the internal authority of the state in order to maintain
75
self-worth may be satisfied by the equal status that he or she enjoys before
the law and as the citizen of a particular state. This recognition does not
those members of t h e society who are unable t o maintain themselves' (AA VI : 326; PP: 468) . This
claim does not imply any acceptance of the redistribution of wealth except in extreme cases and for
anything more than instrumental reasons, as when, for example, widespread poverty threatens to
bring about the dissolution of the state because of the social unrest that it causes. A passage from
Kant's lectures on eth ics concerning the duty of beneficence has nevertheless been cited as evidence
of his view that material inequality constitutes an injustice. Cf. Wood, Kant's Ethical Thought, 7
The passage in question reads as follows:
But since respect for rights is a result of principles, whereas men are deficient in principles,
providence has implanted in us another source, namely the instinct of benevolence, whereby
we make reparation for what we have unjustly obtained. We thus have an instinct for
benevolence, but not for justice. By this impulse men take pity on another, and render back
the benefits they have previously snatched away, though they are not aware of any injustice;
the reason being, that they do not rightly exam ine the matter. One may take a share in the
general injustice, even though one does nobody any wrong by civil laws and practices. So if
we now do a kindness to an unfortunate, we have not made a free gift to him, but repaid
him what we were helping to take away through a general injustice. For if none m ight
appropriate more of this world's goods than his neighbour, there would be no rich folk, bur
also no poor. Thus even acts of kindness are acts of duty and indebtedness, arising from the
rights of others. (AA XXVII : 415 ; LE: 179; emphasis added)
As the passage in question makes clear, Kant treats this injustice as a moral matter rather than a
matter of right, by claiming that one may participate in the general injustice without committing
an injustice according to civil laws and institutions.
Although it may be possible to develop an interpretation that sees Kant as allowing more room
for state intervention with respect to welfare provision than at first appears to be the case, such
attempts are instructive when it comes to ascertaining the l imits of such intervention. I shall here
focus on one such argument against attributing to Kant a min imalist interpretation of the role of
the state. This argument rests on the claim that the state itself has the moral duty of benevolence
towards its members in the shape of the moral responsibility to ensure their material well-being,
which is, of course, compatible with the claim that benevolence is a moral matter rather than a
matter of right in a strict sense. On this basis, it is argued that the state is obliged, first of all, to
protect individual rights and then to promote the happiness of its members. While the state's first
function takes precedence over the second one, these functions do not inevitably conflict with each
other. Cf. Rosen, Kant's Theory offustice, 173ff.
In relation to the topics discussed in this chapter, I would respond by claiming that even if Kant's
acceptance of such state intervention is granted, he still leaves room for the vices of culture to have
free play, which is something he considers to be necessary for the development of culture, since the
kind of state intervention argued for here is entirely different from the kind of state intervention
which seeks to eradicate such vices (for example, through education). Kant can therefore still be
said to be hostile to state intervention at least in this second sense. More significantly, even if the
state's obl igation to protect individual rights is not necessarily incompatible with the obl igation to
promote the happiness of its members by means of certain redistributive measures, it would be
when the welfare of all its members, or even just a majority of them, could only be guaranteed
by a radical redistribution of resources that some people would argue violates the individual right
to property. In other words, there is a limit beyond which the task of promoting happiness in the
shape of material well-being and access to resources ought not to be pursued given the primacy of
individual rights, including the right to property. The presumption seems to be, then, that state
intervention should be avoided as much as possible, so as to prevent any potential breach of this
limitation on the obligation to promote happiness. In this respect, we may again speak of hostility
to state intervention, although one that is tempered by recognition of the moral (and not merely
political) necessity of state intervention with respect to welfare provision.

imply the exclusion from civil society of such vices as ambition, greed and
even tyranny, as long as they assume a certain form, of which economic
domination of others can be regarded as an example. In any case, as long as
they do not assume a form that involves the direct coercion of others, these
vices appear impossible to subject to law without narrowing the bounds
of civil freedom in ways that would conflict with Kant's conception of
civil society as a society in which the bo unds of freedom must be clearly
determined by means of law.
Thus Kant's position can be described as a liberal one in the sense that
it views the state and the government as subordinate to society and treats
their powers as something that must be controlled and bound to precise
limits in the interests of human freedom. At the same time, the position
that Kant adopts allows some room for the human propensity to exempt
oneself from universal law to express itself, in the sense that ambition, greed
and tyranny all involve violations of the equality that characterizes human
beings as moral persons, that is, as beings with essentially the same status
in virtue of their capacity to subject themselves to laws of pure practical
reason. For ambition means wanting to appear better than others are, greed
means wanting to have more than they have, and tyranny means wanting
to exercise superior power in relation to others. In allowing the vices of
culture free play within society, while preventing the radical evil in human
nature from resulting in the mutual destruction of the individual members
of society, Kant's liberalism is arguably one that even a nation of intelligent
devils co uld endorse.
The economic sphere in particular can be regarded as compatible with
the idea of unsociable sociability which informs Kant's conception of
human society. To begin with, we can think of individuals as being driven
into society with others for whom they feel no natural affection because
they wish to satisfy their needs, which can only be done by means of var
ious acts of exchange. In other words, they enter into society as a matter
of necessity based on recognition of their dependence on others for the
satisfaction of their needs. In attempting to engage in acts of economic
exchange, individuals may experience resistance on the part of others,
whose opinions concerning such matters as what goo ds are to be produced
and their estimation of the market value of these goods may differ from
their own. They must nevertheless learn to accommodate themselves to
this resistance or develop the means of overcoming it. Thus once again
human beings turn out to be subject to necessity, which this time assumes
the form of certain practical constraints that are imposed upon them by
their needs and by the marketplace in which they seek to satisfy these needs.
77
The economic sphere is, moreover, the type of environment in which

we might expect to enco unter the vices of culture, since it is characterized
by competition and the desire for gain. The vices of ambition and greed
are thereby allowed to manifest themselves and to enjoy a certain amount
of free play, while tyranny may arise in the form of the domination of
others who are economically dependent on oneself. To this extent, the
claim that Kant's anthropology 'is based on a shrewd perception of how
people have made themselves in society - especially in mo dern bourgeois
society'23 seems right in so far at it implies the existence of an essential link
between a society determined by the principles of economic and political
liberalism and a central feature of Kant's anthropology, namely, his theo ry
of radical evil. However, the idea that it is a matter of how people have
made themselves in society suggests that human evil itself entirely depends
on social relations, whereas the importance of Kant's theory of radical evil
for his liberalism shows that this idea must be subjected to an important
qualification. This qualification is that Kant assumes individuals to be evil
prior to their entry into society, even tho ugh their evil dispositions can fully
manifest themselves only in society. Such an assumption is evident from
the way in which Kant's liberalism is based on the assumption that human
beings will seek to exempt themselves from universal law whenever their
self-love dictates that they sho uld do so, while hoping that others will obey
it, and that their entry into political society must therefore be explained
as a matter of {non-moral) practical necessity. Kant's liberalism in this
way presupposes an individualistic fo rm of evil which is independent of
social relations in the sense that it consists in a propensity whose existence
cannot be explained in so cial terms, even if the actual ways in which this
pro pensity manifests itself can be explained in such terms. To bring out
the full extent to which Kant's liberalism is shaped by his views on human
evil, I shall now return to the issue of the transition from a pathologically
conditioned form of agreement between human beings, of which even a
nation of intelligent devils is capable, to the form of agreement based on a
harmony of ends established by means of the moral law that characterizes
the truly ethical fo rm of community suggested by the idea of a moral
whole. Here Kant's moral teleology, together with his interpretation of the
significance of Ro usseau's writings in terms of this moral teleology, will be
shown to fo under on Rousseau's own acco unt of evil as a product of social
relations.
1 ' Wood, Kant 's Ethical Thought, 291.

The role that the vices of culture play both in society and in the develop
ment of culture is highly relevant to Kant's understanding of the transition
from the kind of law-governed civil society which even a nation of devils
could endorse to an ethical community, because it leads to a major dif
ficulty in explaining this same transition. Kant adopts a positive attitude
to the vices of culture, among which he includes the vice of vanity, when
he proclaims, 'Thanks be to nature, therefore, for the incompatibility, for
the spiteful competitive vanity, for the insatiable desire to possess or even
to dominate! For without them all the excellent natural predispositions in
humanity would eternally slumber undeveloped' (AA VIII: 21; AH E: 112) .
This statement implies that the vices of culture are to be welcomed in so
far as they serve to heighten the antagonisms that characterize civil society
and, in so doing, promo te the development of culture. It appears, then,
that these vices could only be condemned from a moral standpoint once
they had fulfilled their function in nature's plan.
Although this plan consists in the eventual formation of society into a
moral whole, the idea of an ethical community made up of rational beings
who exercise full autonomy by willing in accordance with the moral law
from the motive of respect for this law is clearly essentially different from the
kind oflegal and political community described by Kant. It could be argued
that Kant thinks of the latter as constituting a preliminary stage in the
establishment of a truly ethical community, because right involves the legal
enforcement of certain moral ends that derive from the status of persons as
ends in themselves (for example, the duty not to murder) when the good
will to obey these duties is lacking, and it also helps to create the conditions
for the exercise of a good will by removing factors, such as fear, that may
lead individuals to act immorally. 24 Their membership of political society
also gets human beings used to living under laws of which they themselves
are the authors in so far as they are able to recognize the rationality of the
laws that their representatives have made on their behalf. Yet despite the
instrumental role that right may be thought to play in relation to morality,
the inevitability of the transition from the civil condition to a truly ethical
form of community, in which the perfection of humankind understood in
terms of its moral destiny is achieved, remains far from obvio us.
Kant himself states that the transformation of a naturally evil human
being, whose actions nevertheless conform to legal norms, into a morally
14 Cf. Riley, Kant 's Political Philosophy, 15.
79
good human being requires not simply reform but 'a revolution in the
disposition [ Gesinnung] of the human being', a revolution of which the
human being must be supposed to be capable but whose possibility it is
difficult to comprehend (AA VI: 47; RRT: 92) . If the possibility of such
a revolution in the disposition of an individual human being is difficult
to comprehend, how much more difficult must it be to comprehend how
this revolution can take place at a collective level. Consequently there
appears to be some tension between the optimism of the earlier Idea for a
Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim, with its emphasis on human
progress as the result of a largely blind, spontaneous process, and the later
Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason with its more pessimistic
view of human nature. In the later work, Kant makes clear that an ethical
community, as an association of human beings under laws of virtue as
opposed to coercive laws, is essentially different in kind from any existing
legal and po litical community (AA VI: 9 5f. ; RRT: 130f.).
When Kant's civil society is viewed in relation to his acco unt of the
transition from a society based on a pathologically conditioned form of
agreement to a moral whole, it must be tho ught to belong firmly to the type
of so ciety based on a pathologically conditioned form of agreement. Civil
society looks, in fact, very much like a place that has been abandoned to the
radically evil tendencies in human nature, while the mutually destructive
po tential of these tendencies is kept in check by means of law and a
coercive state, whose powers must be clearly defined and limited so as to
preserve civil freedom. It is difficult, therefore, to know how civil society, as
a condition in which the antagonisms that exist between partly unsociable,
partly social beings and the vices of culture to a large extent have free play,
could in time lead to the establishment of a truly ethical condition. After
all, it would make just as much sense, if not more, to claim that these
antagonisms and vices would lead to the moral corruption of the whole
human race at the same time as they promote culture. Indeed, Kant's use
of the term 'culture' is itself a potential source of confusion.
On the one hand, culture can mean simply the arts and the sciences.
Kant might then be seen to argue that although the development of culture
is accompanied by moral corruption, this is the price that needs to be
paid for human progress, in which case he would be according culture a
value which is determined independently of its relation to morality. This
type of interpretation is not ruled out by Kant's claim that :All culture
and art that adorn humanity, and the most beautiful social order, are
the fruits of unsociability, through which it is necessitated by itself to
discipline itself, and so by an art extorted from it, to develop completely
8o
the germs of nature' (AA VIII: 22; AHE: II3). The discipline in question
can be thought to arise from the practical constraints generated by a
system of interdependence in which individuals must to some extent limit
their self-love and activiry, so as to be able to live peaceably alongside
others and to cooperate with them in so far as it proves necessary in
relation to the effective pursuit of their own interests. Yet this type of
interpretation sits uncomfortably with some of the central features of
Kant's ethical tho ught, and the following claim in particular speaks against
it: 'everything good that is not grafted onto a morally go od disposition, is
nothing but mere semblance and glittering misery' (AA VIII: 26; AHE: n6) .
This suggests a moralized concept of culture, which, rather than treating
culture as possessing any value independently of morality, considers it to
be dependent on moraliry for its worth. On this basis, Kant distinguishes
between having become moral (moralisirt) and being civilized (civilisirt) or
cultivated (cultivirt) (AA VIII: 26; AHE: n6) . Thus, in order for the arts
and the sciences to become the true fruits of culture as well as civilization,
they would have to conform to the demands of moraliry.
This distinction simply brings us back to the problem of explaining the
transition from civil sociery, as characterized by the civilized and cultivated
manners of its members, to a truly ethical condition characterized by its
members' moraliry.25 The full force of this problem can be illustrated
with reference to the following passage in which Rousseau stresses the
moral corruption that manifests itself in the vario us means that individuals
employ to further their own interests at the expense of the interests of
others:
What a wonderful thing, then, to have put men in a position where they
can only live together by obstructing, supplanting, deceiving, betraying,
destroying one another! From now on we must take care never to let ourselves
be seen as we are: because for every two men whose interests coincide,
perhaps a hundred thousand oppose them, and the only way to succeed
is either to deceive or to ruin all those people. This is the fatal source of
the violence, the betrayals, the treacheries and all the horrors necessarily
required by a state of affairs in which everyone pretends to be working for
the profit or reputation of the rest, while only seeking to raise his own above
theirs and at their expense. (OC n : 968f. ; PW1 : 100)
This passage captures in more radical form the kind of antagonism that
Kant describes as being characteristic of social relations. This time, however,
>5
Kant appears to concede that the inability to explain the transition from a condition in which
human beings are only civilized and cultivated to one in which they are also moral would serve
largely to justifY Rousseau's seeming preference for a state of savagery (AA vm: 26; AHE: n6).
81
the emphasis is placed very much on the pernicious effects of this antago
nism with the aim of suggesting that this antagonism cannot be justified
in terms of the way in which it helps to realize some higher end. Rather,
Rousseau operates with a very different assumption concerning a society
in which individuals are brought together through their needs, whether it
has to do with their material needs or with the need to receive recognition
from others so as to construct and reinforce their own conceptions of their
self-worth.
The assumption in question is that these individuals' selfish interests will,
more often than not, dictate harming the interests of their competitors for
material goods and recognition, though in order to further their interests,
people may have to conceal their real intentions. Self-interest and morality
are here made to appear incompatible in society, so that a society in which
self-interest is given a high degree offree play, as it is in Kant's civil society,
will be one in which genuine morality becomes virtually impossible. The
inclination to harm others is not, however, the result of the evil rooted in
human nature; rather, it is the result of the experience of finding that one's
own interests cannot be effectively pursued in harmony with the interests
of others. Yet this do es not mean that the inclination to harm o thers will
not in time become habitual and, therefore, a constant feature of human
society. Rousseau suggests, in fact, that the propensity to harm others to
which self-love gives rise in connection with certain economic and social
relations represents some kind of cosmic principle in the following passage:
The constitution of this universe does not allow for all the sentient beings
that make it up to concur all at once in their mutual happiness [;] but since
one sentient being's well-being makes for the other's evil, each, by the law
of nature, gives preference to itself, regardless of whether it is working to its
own advantage or to another's prejudice. (OC m: 1902; PW2: 173)
Rousseau here assumes that mutual happiness is impossible because it

belongs to the very nature of the universe that the means of attaining
individual happiness are finite and that these means cannot, therefore,
be distributed in such a way as to satisfy everyone's interests. Rather, the
interests of some people can only be realized by harming the interests of
others, whether this is done directly or indirectly. An example of direct
harm would be that of a businessman who employs ruthless, but perfectly
legal, methods to eliminate his rivals. An example of indirect harm would be
that of a wealthy parent who hires a top lawyer to exploit a legal loophole so
that his or her child can attend a state school with an excellent reputation,

even though this school is not the child's local school, and in so doing
deprives a local child from a poor family of a place at the same school.
As both of these examples show, harming the interests of o thers can easily
take place against the backdrop of a law-governed condition in which civil
freedom is guaranteed by the state. Thus Rousseau's point is not so much
that a conflict of interests makes political society itself impossible. His point
instead appears to be that the interests that lead individuals to enter political
society as a matter of necessity, such as the interest in personal security, are
by themselves incapable of producing genuine social bonds. These bonds
instead require a conscious identification of oneself with the common good
and the corresponding willingness to subordinate one's particular interests
to this common good. In a condition in which such social bonds do not
exist, as we may assume to be the case in Kant's nation of devils, human
beings would constantly try to exempt themselves from universal law, in the
sense of pursuing their particular interests at the expense of the common
go od, whenever they had the chance to do so.
The assumption that a habitual desire to harm others is a general feature
of society, especially a competitive society in which the greatest prize is
held to be wealth and material well-being, rather than honour, say, renders
any belief in a harmony of interests problematic.2 6 At the same time, it is
certainly no less plausible than the assumption on which Kant's philosophy
of history appears to be based when it explains human progress in terms of
a hidden plan of nature, with such progress being regarded as the largely
spontaneously generated, as opposed to consciously intended, beneficial
outcome of a process in which self-interest is given a high degree of free
play. The fact that a law-governed society does not by itself rule o ut the
possibility that individuals will have, or will develop, the disposition to
harm others for the sake of their own interests suggests that the idea of
human beings collectively transcending the civil condition to enter a truly
moral condition is, in reality, extremely difficult to reconcile with Kant's
16
This is not to say that this conflict of interests cannot take place against the background of certain
shared interests, such as the need for security. Rousseau himself states that 'while the opposition of
particular interests made the establishment of societies necessary, it is the agreement of these same
interests which made it possible. What these different interests have in common is what forms the
social bond, and if there were not some point on which all interests agree, no society could exist.
Now it is solely in terms of this common interest that society ought to be governed' (OC m: 368;
PW2: 57) . Rousseau implies, however, that correctly identifying this common interest itself depends
on the existence of a genuine social bond, when he claims that 'when the social bond is broken in all
hearts, when the basest interest brazenly assumes the sacred name of public good; then the general
will grows mute, everyone, prompted by secret motives, no more states opinions as a Citizen than
if the State had never existed, and iniquitous decrees with no other goal than particular interest are
falsely passed under the name of Laws' (OC 1 1 1 : 438; PW2: 122) .

acco unt of civil society, even if he succeeds in explaining why human
beings, who are assumed to be by nature evil, will be forced to renounce
their natural freedom by subjecting themselves to laws and state authority.
Kant's failure to explain the transition in question can be viewed as
the result of an attempt on his part to develop consistently the legal and
political implications of his theory of radical evil. Kant also develops the
implications of the idea that freedom forbids forcing human beings to be
moral; an endeavour which, he claims, wo uld deprive human beings of the
very freedom upon which moral agency itself depends (AA VI: 9 5; RRT: 131) .
This claim can b e related back to Rousseau's worry that genuine freedom
wo uld not be possible among a nation of wicked human beings because
their freedom would have to be removed. As Rousseau recognizes, this
concern raises the question as to whether the moral dispositions and mores
of a people can really be treated as a matter of indifference when it comes
to establishing and maintaining a just social and political order.27 Kant
responds to this concern by limiting state intervention. Yet this solution
comes at the price of allowing the evil tendencies that he identifies in human
nature to have a high degree of free play in civil society and accepting the
legitimacy of certain forms of domination based on economic and social
power. In this respect, Kant's interpretation of Rousseau's writings in terms
of a theodicy begins to look highly questionable. First of all, the evils
that Rousseau associates with dependence on other human beings are far
from being overcome. Thus although Kant describes the co nstitution to
which even a nation of devils could agree as a republican one, and his
characterization of civil society as a law-governed condition agrees with
17
This is why Rousseau, despite the way in which he himself often invokes the sanctity of the laws,
views education as the means of creating the right kind of disposition in people at the same time as
he exhibits a distrust of laws. This distrust can be explained in terms of the problem identified in
the Second Discourse that law may serve as the instrument of self-interest by securing the property
rights of those who already happen to possess property and wealth in the face of the demands of
the increasingly restive poor. Rousseau's scepticism with regard to the possibility of preventing law
from becoming an instrument of self-interest is evident from the following statement: 'Putting the
law above man is a problem in politics which I l iken to that of squaring the circle in geometry' (OC
III: 955, PW2: 179). He also speaks of the futil ity of expecting people to obey the law when they
lack the disposition to do so: 'Prohibiting the things people ought not to do is a clumsy and vain
thing to do unless one begins by making these things hated and scorned, and the law's disapproval
is only effective when it confirms one's own judgment. Whoever goes about instituting a people
has to be able to rule men's opinions and through them to govern their passions' (OC III: 965f.;
PW2: 189). His advice to the Poles is, therefore, to introduce an education which forms individuals
in such a way that they 'will be patriotic by inclination, passion, necessity' (OC III: 966; PW2: 189).
A patriotic education must, in other words, produce individuals who are already disposed to scorn
objects that are contrary to the public and national good and are consequently forbidden by law.
They will then 'obey the laws and not elude them because they will suit them and will have the
inward assent of their wills' (OC m: 961; PW2: 184) .

Rousseau's definition of a republic as 'any State ruled by laws, whatever
may be the form of administration', the spirit of Kant's republic must be
thought to differ greatly from Rousseau's republic in so far as the idea
that 'the public interest alone governs' forms another essential part of his
definition of a republic (OC III: 379 ; PW2: 67) . Secondly, given the nature
of Kant's republic, human progress is ultimately reduced to the emergence
of civil and political forms of freedom, for these forms of freedom by no
means conclusively point beyond themselves to the emergence of the moral
freedom which represents for Kant himself the highest form of freedom.
We are left, in fact, with a society that has been largely abandoned to
the radically evil tendencies in human nature, which are allowed free play
in the name of civil freedom and the interests of human cultivation and
civilization, while the destructive potential of these tendencies is kept in
check by means of law and a coercive state. As we have seen, this society
is one in which human beings, who desire their own self-preservation and
seek to satisfy their needs, are forced to accept certain constraints on their
actions in order to realize these same ends. In this way, Kant's liberalism
provides a clear example of Schmitt's claim that for liberalism 'society
determines its own order and . . . state and government are subordinate
and must be dis trustingly controlled and bound to precise limits'. For it
implies that the state's role is restricted to that of containing the destructive
potential of the forces that determine society, and that these same forces
should otherwise be allowed free play for the sake of human progress.
The claim that radical evil is for Kant the product of society must
therefore be subjected to an important qualification, opening up a clear
gap between his position and Rousseau's position on the source of evil. The
way in which Kant's theory of radical evil shapes his liberalism suggests
that human beings get to live in the kind of so ciety and under the kind of
constitution that is best suited to their radically evil nature, which is held
to exist independently of the social relations in which their evil dispositions
manifest themselves. These evil dispositions can manifest themselves only
in society because the vices of culture are of an essentially relational nature.
A natural individual living in isolation could not be termed truly greedy
because calling someone greedy depends on being able to compare what
he or she takes for him- or herself with what others take from the common
stock, while ambition requires comparing how well one is doing in relation
to others, and tyranny demands the existence of someone who happens
to be in a much weaker position than oneself and can therefore be easily
dominated. Kant's theory of radical evil nevertheless implies that human
beings are in an important sense predisposed to develop and exhibit the

vices of culture on account of their propensity to seek to exempt themselves
from universal law, while hoping that others will obey it.
Consequently, it is not entirely right to claim that, 'In Kant's unflattering
portrait of human nature, it is easy eno ugh to recognize ourselves as modern
capitalism has made us. '2 8 It is not so much modern capitalism that has
made us: rather, we have made it, in the sense that a capitalist fo rm of
society is the one most suited to radically evil beings, which is what Kant
assumes human beings to be. To this extent, we are just as responsible
for shaping it as it is for shaping us, if not more so. This is an essentially
different thesis from Ro usseau's one that human beings are naturally good
but that in society they become evil thro ugh developing the disposition to
harm others, because harming others is the only way in which they can
effectively pursue their own interests and satisfy their needs. I shall now
highlight another major difference. This difference relates to Kant's failure
to engage fully with Ro usseau's central concern of providing a political
solution to the evils that he associates with dependence on other human
beings; and it suggests that a political solution to these evils may require
imposing more in the way of order on society than Kant is willing to allow.
We have seen how in the Second Discourse Rousseau describes a blind,

spontaneous process whereby unequal relations of dependence arise on the
basis of material inequality. Dependence on other human beings as medi
ated by dependence on things is here made into a fundamental problem
which requires a specifically political so lution if the evils that Ro usseau
associates with human interdependence are to be overcome. In contrast,
although Kant's liberalism involves a clear commitment to the principle of
equality, Kant does not regard material inequality, even when it gives rise
to unequal relations of dependence that allow for the domination of one
person by another person, as inco mpatible with the principles of a just legal
and political order. This viewpoint is evident from the following passage:
But this thoroughgoing equality of individuals within a state, as its subjects,
is quite consistent with the greatest inequality in terms of the quantity and
degree of their possessions, whether in physical or mental superiority over
others or in external goods and in rights generally (of which there can be
many} relatively to others; thus the welfare of one is very much dependent
upon the will of another (that of the poor on the rich} ; thus one must obey
18
Wood, Kant 's Ethical Thought, 334.
86

(as a child i ts elders or a wife her husband) and the other directs; thus one
serves (a day labourer) and the other pays him, and so forth. (AA vm : 291f. ;
PP: 292)
While the reference to external goods in this passage indicates Kant's

acceptance of material inequality, the reference to rights relates to how
he even allows material inequality even to determine a person's political
status by drawing a distinction between active and passive citizenship. This
distinction is based on the quality of being independent. The independence
in question consists in being in some sense materially one's own master, as
when one owns the tools with which one works together with that which
one produces by means of them . In this respect, independence is made
conditional on the legal possession of property. Conversely, one of the
main ways in which a perso n lacks independence is in having only his own
labour to sell, thereby making him dependent on the person who purchases
this labour. An active citizen has the right to vo te, whereas a passive citizen
lacks this right while enjoying equal legal status and also the right to
be able to work himself up to the position of an active citizen (M VI:
314f. ; PP: 457ff.). Kant's distinction between active and passive citizenship
thus assumes both the existence of material inequality and certain unequal
relations of dependence. From the standpoint of right, these relations of
dependence are regarded as perfectly legitimate ones, despite the potential
for domination that they contain.
Kant, like Rousseau, nevertheless employs the idea of an original contract
as the means of judging the legitimacy of laws and constitutions. Kant
describes this original contract as
only an idea of reason, which, however, has its undoubted practical reality,
namely to bind every legislator to give his laws in such a way that they
could have arisen from the united will of a whole people and to regard each
subject, insofar as he wants to be a citizen, as if he has joined in voting for
such a will. For this is the touchstone of any public law's conformity with
right. (AA vm : 297; PP: 296f.)
Although Kant denies the facticity of the original contract, even as a

regulative idea it cannot escape the realm of fact altogether. This is because
the idea of such a contract can have a retrospective function as well as a
prospective one. The latter function would be when the legislator employs
the idea of an original contract to frame laws and a constitution that do
not as yet exist. The former function would be when the idea of an original
contract is used to judge the validity of existing laws and constitutions.
Clearly, there is no guarantee that these laws and constitutions will accord

with the idea of an original contract. In other words, norm and fact may
diverge.
The laws and constitutions that the idea of an original contract is
employed to judge in accordance with its retrospective function will be
products of a historical process. This process could be conceived as similar
in kind to the blind, spontaneous dependence-generating process, which
has material inequality as one of its main unintended outcomes and is
stabilized by means of a set of laws that favo ur the property-owning rich,
described by Ro usseau in the Second Discourse. It could also be conceived
as similar in kind to the process that Kant himself describes in the Idea for
a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim, in which the vices of culture
are allowed free play in society with unintended, but allegedly beneficial,
consequences. If we stop Kant's providential plan of nature at this point,
as I think we should on account of the difficulties involved in explaining
the transition from civil society to a truly ethical form of community,
the regulative idea of an original contract would be employed to determine
whether or not the existing laws and constitutions that have arisen in the
course of history are ones to which human beings, who are assumed to
be radically evil, could have consented.
Given this retrospective function of the regulative idea of an original
contract, it may turn out, for example, that radically evil human beings
would endorse existing conditions because these conditions give them
the chance to dominate others while minimizing the risks involved in
doing so. These radically evil human beings may consequently endorse
the idea of subjecting themselves to co nditions that are, at a formal level,
the same for everyone else, while hoping that these conditions will pro
vide enough leeway to allow them to dominate others, if only indirectly,
without their being dominated in turn, or at least not to the same extent
as they dominate others. As we have seen, civil society as described by
Kant offers such an opportunity to dominate others because individuals
are legally protected from any direct forms of co ercion, at the same time
as they have the opportunity to gain wealth and to dominate o thers in
the economic and social spheres by means of the greater power that they
may enjoy as beneficiaries of the material inequality which is allowed to
develop in civil so ciety. In contrast, Rousseau's concern with the threats to
freedom posed by forms of dependence on other human beings that are
mediated by dependence on things means that he cannot so easily accept
material inequality as something to which people could have consented
while remaining committed to the principles of equality and freedom.
This brings me back to the claim that Kant is the 'best interpreter of
88
Rousseau', because he clearly distinguishes a natural form of amour-propre,

which consists in the desire to secure equal standing along with others, from
its perverted, unnatural form, which consists in wanting to be superior to
others.
This claim invites the question as to how exactly the natural desire for
equal standing with o thers can be secured. It may be said that securing this
equal standing will primarily consist in establishing a legal and political
framework in which the equal status which one person enjoys in relation
to all o ther persons is recognized. This view of the matter is suggested by
the following hypothetical model of two 'idealized' social worlds. In one
social world, the 'world of public equality', people have equal standing
as citizens in a political order which places sovereignty in the hands of
the people as a body. Equality is, in other wo rds, manifested in the equal
rights that human beings enjoy as citizens of a political order whose laws
and institutions protect and embody these rights, with these laws and
institutions themselves being expressions of the people's will. This equality
can exist despite socio-economic inequality because the latter does not
undermine the equal worth which human beings enjoy in relation to each
other. In the second social world, by contrast, there is no public equality,
that is, no institutionally recognized equality, to offset the socio-economic
form of inequality. 29
Setting up the issue at stake in this way makes it sound as if what essen
tially matters is that people are accorded equal recognition in the form of
equal legal and political status, so that their sense of their own worth is
affirmed and the tendency to value themselves more highly than others is
counteracted by their being made to acknowledge their equality with oth
ers, while these others are reciprocally made to acknowledge their equality
with them. This equal recognition does not preclude a significant degree
of socio-economic inequality. Rousseau, it is suggested, is attempting to
explain the possibility of this social world in which legal and political,
but not socio-economic, equality obtains. Yet the idea that equal legal
and political recognition, as important as it may be, could on its own
offset socio-economic inequality in a way that Rousseau wo uld regard as
acceptable seems wrong given his concern with the problem of the way in
which dependence on other human beings as mediated by dependence on
things tends to generate forms of domination, which may be masked, but
not removed, by the establishment of certain legal and political forms of
recognition. In short, as much as the kind of social world portrayed above,
19 Cf. Cohen, Rousseau, 117.

which has a decidedly Kantian appearance, accords with Rousseau's views
on civil freedom and demo cratic freedom, his concern with the problem
of the way in which dependence on other human beings as mediated by
dependence on things tends to generate forms of domination means that
there are for him clear limits to which any legally and institutionally rec
ognized formal equality can, in fact, offset socio-economic inequality.3 A
more robust statement concerning permissible degrees of socio-economic
inequality is therefore needed; and given the way in which Rousseau iden
tifies dependence on other human beings as mediated by dependence on
things as one of the main sources of domination, a theory of property
rights would represent the obvious starting point for a fuller discussion of
this issue. Rousseau, however, does not offer a clear account of property
rights, including the particular issue of the extent to which they sho uld be
curtailed for the sake of equality and freedom.
In the next chapter, I argue that Fichte provides the kind of theory of
property which Ro usseau might have consistently developed. Moreover,
by linking the concept of property with the principles of equality and
freedom in the way that it does, this theory helps to explain some of
the things that Ro usseau does say about property rights. In this respect it
is Fichte, rather than Kant, who turns out to be the 'best interpreter of
Rousseau'. Fichte's theory of property implies that in the name of equality
and freedom extensive limitations must be imposed on the right of property
understood in the liberal sense of the right to exclude o thers from the use or
benefit of something and to dispose of it as one pleases. The need to impose
such limitations on property rights in the liberal sense raises the question
of the relation of the normative aspects of Fichte's theory of property to
Jo
The full force of this problem is not sufficiently appreciated by Kantian interpretations of Rousseau
that seek to show that he is the proponent of the idea of some kind of Rechtsstaat. Ernst Cassiter, in
his The Question offean-facques Rousseau, maintains that material inequality in the form of property
rights is of minor importance for Rousseau, because ir is, like physical inequal ity, unavoidable, so
that here 'ends the realm of freedom, and the real m of fate begins', while the state is 'exclusively
concerned with securing an equal measure of rights and duties' (6o) . Yet Cassirer also allows that
the state may interfere with property rights 'insofar as the inequality of property endangers the
moral equality of the subjects under the law - for instance, when such inequality condemns specific
classes of citizens to complete economic dependence and threatens to make them a plaything in the
hands of the wealthy and the powerful. In such a situation, the state may and must interfere' (6o).
The problem here is that Cassirer's recogn ition of the need for state intervention in such a situation
implies not only that material inequality is significant for Rousseau but also that the task of securing
people's moral equality, in the sense of making them independent of the arbitrary wills of others
by means of state intervention, may, in fact, be incompatible with the kind of property rights that
a Kantian Rechtsstaat is meant to protect. I suggest in the next chapter that such incompatibility
must indeed be thought to exist given the model of property rights which Rousseau could have
consistently developed, even if he did not in fact do so.

existing conditions, which can be regarded as the result of a largely blind,
spontaneous dependence-generating pro cess, which has material inequality
as one of its unintended outcomes. This outcome is then preserved and
perpetuated by means of laws that favour existing property-owners, so that
an o utcome that may originally have been unintended becomes one that is
consciously intended.
As we have seen, Rousseau suggests that transforming existing conditions
in such a way as to remove the threats to freedom posed by dependence
on other human beings as mediated by dependence on things may ulti
mately require the existence of a unique individual capable of imposing
order on the particular interests and the social forces that have emerged
spontaneously in the course of human history. Certainly Rousseau shows
little faith in the idea that a legitimate social and political order can be
generated spontaneously when he states that 'It is precisely because the
force of things always tends to destroy equality, that the force oflegislation
ought always to tend to maintain it' (OC III: 392; PW2: 79) . A similar
need to impose order on society so as to realize the ideals of equality and
freedom is suggested by Fichte's theory of property. Here the idea of a
social contract in its prospective function comes to the fore, since it is more
a matter of transforming existing conditions in accordance with certain
principles than of asking to what extent these conditions already reflect
these principles. This is not to say, however, that these two functions are
mutually exclusive; for having asked to what extent existing conditions
embody certain normative principles, one may then go on to ask to what
extent these conditions need to be transformed in accordance with these
same principles. This type of political solution to the threats posed to free
dom by dependence on other human beings as mediated by dependence
on things raises its own problems, however, on account of the way in which
it emphasizes the role of human conscio usness and will as the means of
imposing order on the blind, spontaneous forces and particular interests
that o therwise determine society.
CHAPTER THREE
Imposing order
Rousseau and Fichte on property
In the Social Contract, Rousseau employs the following architectural image:

Just as an architect, before putting up a large building, observes and tests the
ground to see whether it can support the weight, so the wise institutor does
not begin drawing up laws good in themselves, but first examines whether
the people for whom he intends them is fit to bear them . (OC III: 384f. ;
PW2: 72)
In this passage, Ro usseau suggests that it is only by developing a plan

which fully takes into account existing conditions and the nature of a people
that the individual entrusted with the task of founding a state can hope to
provide the foundations of a lasting political community. He might even
appear to advocate a pragmatic approach to the introduction of laws and
institutions. Given the potentially recalcitrant nature of the material upon
which the 'wise institutor' must work, he may have to avoid introducing
laws that he knows to be objectively go od and introduce instead laws that
suit the nature and the conditions of the people who are to be subject to
them. This compromise is the price which must seemingly be paid if the
human will is to gain any purchase in the blind, spontaneous dependence
generating process that Rousseau describes in the Second Discourse.
Rousseau's use of an architectural image places him in a tradition which
includes Hobbes, who employs such an image while expressing some serious
do ubts concerning the longevity oflaws and institutions that are introduced
so as to impose order on an unruly people:
For men, as they become at last weary of irregular j ustling, and hewing one
another, and desire with all their hearts, to conforme themselves into one
firme and lasting edifice; so for want, both of the art of making fit Lawes,
to square their actions by, and also of humility, and patience, to suffer the
rude and combersome points of their present greatnesse to be taken off,
Imposing order
92
they cannot without the help of a very able Architect, be compiled, into any
other than a crasie building, such as hardly lasting out their own time, must
assuredly fall upon the heads of their posterity.
I
Hobbes's doubts concerning the success of even 'a very able Architect'
relate to what for Ro usseau amounts to an inflamed form of amour-propre,
which consists in resistance to having one's high opinion of oneself, whether
real or pretended, undermined by being made to recognize one's equal
status with others. This status implies that their interests count as much as
one's own interests and that one ought, therefore, to pursue one's interests
in a way that is compatible with the interests of others. The prevalence of
this moral failing suggests that the successful performance of the political
architect's task will require imposing order on a potentially recalcitrant
material. Yet this approach invites a problem which Adam Smith describes
in co nnection with what he calls 'the man of system' .
The man of system develops a n ideal plan, and h e cannot suffer the
slightest deviation from this plan when it comes to its implementation.
This requires thinking of the members of society as akin to different pieces
on a chessboard that he can arrange at will according to the details of
his plan; whereas in reality these individuals have their own principles
of motion, in the form of their interests and prejudices, and these principles
of motio n may differ fro m the ones that the man of system wishes to impart
to them. 2 The man of system may therefore have to impose principles on the
individual members of society that are essentially different from the ones
actually motivating them, and these principles will accordingly assume an
alien appearance. In such circumstances, individuals may become subject
to necessity in the sense that they are constrained to act in certain ways
by means of force, which can be taken to mean either the threat or the
actual use of force. The success of the man of system's plan will in this
way depend not only on some very uncertain means, namely his (or the
state's) ability to coerce people into behaving in certain ways when they are
not disposed to do so, b ut also on ignoring these agents' moral autonomy,
which consists in being subject to co nstraints that they in some sense
impose upon themselves, as opposed to these constraints being externally
imposed on them.
We have seen that Rousseau expresses a similar concern by suggesting
that the formation of a polity with laws that accord with the general will
is only really possible when the members of this polity already have the
I Hobbes, Leviathan, 221.
1 Cf. Smith, The Theory ofMoral Sentiments, 233f.
93
right dispositions and share the same essential values. In the light of this
problem, and the role that Rousseau accords to moral freedom in ensuring
that individuals remain as free as before when they enter the civil condition,
we can see why Ro usseau's political architect must take into consideration
the material to which he seeks to apply any plan . Yet in relatio n to the
right of property, there are, I shall argue, some definite limits to the extent
to which Ro usseau could consistently advocate a pragmatic approach.
Rather, he must consider the political architect to be charged with the task
of introducing a set of fundamental laws and institutions that are subject
to certain normative constraints in so far as they aim to prevent the rise of
forms of domination that have their basis in unequal relations of depen
dence on other human beings that are themselves generated by material
inequality.
Rousseau has been accused of expressing contradictory views concerning
property) I argue that the apparent inconsistencies in his views on property
can be explained in terms of a failure to distinguish more carefully between
the conceptual and the temporal priority of property rights in relation to
the state. Rousseau does draw such a distinction but he does not at the same
time fully develop its implications. In the case of temporal priority, property
rights are understood to exist prior to the state, if only provisionally. In
the case of conceptual priority, property rights have a normative status
which determines some of the main functions of the state and what may or
may not count as a legitimate claim to a property right, irrespective of any
appeals to some notion of temporal prio rity. By drawing this distinction
more clearly than Rousseau does, it becomes possible to make sense of
his views concerning both the fo undational nature of property and the
idea that the state becomes the master of all its members' goods once the
social pact has been concluded.4 The consistency of Ro usseau's position,
however, becomes evident only when it is considered in the light of the
theory of property developed by Fichte, who in his own way appeals to the
idea of a political architect.
Given the need for a political architect, and the way in which a theo ry
of property may act as a constraint on this political architect's attempt to
1
1
This assessment of Rousseau's views on property is offered in MacAdam, 'Rousseau: The Moral
Dimensions of Property'.
As regards the foundational nature of property, it is claimed that 'Rousseau's statement that property
is the foundation of civil society, law and the system of justice is, or is meant to be, a statement
of fact. It is not a favourable value judgment.' MacAdam, 'Rousseau: The Moral Dimensions of
Property', 191. I suggest that Rousseau thinks that property can be the foundation of civil society
in a positive way, but only when it assumes a certain form and when the measures that this form
demands have been put in place.
94
Imposing order
institute a just legal and political order, I am led to ask whether the theory
of property which Fichte explicitly develops, and which Ro usseau could
have develo ped, ultimately demands an authoritarian solution which is
more in line with Hobbes's employment of an architectural image than
with the more pragmatic approach signalled by Rousseau's use of the
image of a political architect. By inviting the idea of imposing order on
a potentially recalcitrant material, this type of solution suggests that the
moral freedom of at least some individuals will be compromised, since they
will be constrained to act in accordance with principles with which they
themselves do not identify. One way of avoiding such a conclusion might
be to differentiate between what individuals actually will and what they
ought to will, in which case subjecting them to principles that they ought
to will, but do not in fact will, would not in itself constitute a violation of
their moral freedom.
This distinction between what individuals happen to will and what
they ought to will can be discerned in Rousseau's account of the problem
presented by a situation in which an individual's will happens to be contrary
to the general will which he or she should have as a citizen, in the sense
that his or her particular interests diverge from the common interest,
leading him or her to act in opposition to the general will. In such cases,
the individual concerned must be constrained to obey the general will
should he or she refuse to do so. This need for coercion, Rousseau claims,
means no thing other than that he or she 'shall be forced to be free',
because obedience to the general will is the guarantee against all personal
dependence (OC III: 364; PW2: 53) . In other wo rds, in willing something
opposed to the general will, an individual acts contrary to his or her
own fundamental interest in ensuring that the conditions of his or her
independence of the arbitrary wills of o thers are secured. Consequently,
in constraining an individual to obey the general will, the state guarantees
this same individual's freedom in the negative sense of the absence of any
actual or potential domination by others.
Rousseau returns to this issue when he considers the question as to how
a person can be both free and subject to laws to which he or she has not
personally consented, as may happen in the sovereign assembly when a law
is passed which the person in question has opposed. Ro usseau implies that
this person must have been simply mistaken abo ut the general will and that
his or her error is shown by the fact that a majority of citizens approved the
law. If this person's particular opinion had nevertheless prevailed, he or she
would, in fact, have ended up doing something other than what he or she
had intended, and he or she would not, therefore, have been free (OC m :
95
440f. ; PW2: 124) . I n other words, this person would have either subjected
him- or herself to a potentially freedom-endangering law or failed to ensure
the safe passage of a law designed to guarantee his or her own freedom as
well as that of others. On this view of the matter, in consenting to the terms
of the social pact when these terms include a commitment to recognize the
authority of majority decisio ns, one becomes subject to laws that can be
viewed as self-imposed ones in accordance with the idea of moral freedom
even when one in actual fact opposes such laws. One remains morally free
because one had originally consented to certain procedures by means of
which the content of the general will can most reliably be determined.
However, in connection with this particular explanation of how indi
viduals may remain free even when they are subject to laws to which they
themselves did not directly consent, Rousseau once again raises the issue of
the dispositions and mores of the individuals concerned. This time the issue
has to do with the dispositions and mores on which the effectiveness of
the procedure for determining the general will itself depends, for Ro usseau
states that this procedure 'presupposes . . . that all the characteristics of the
general will are still in the majority: once they no longer are, then regard
less of which side one takes there no longer is any freedom' (OC m: 441;
PW2: 124) . This statement brings us back to the issue of whether or not
the act of subjecting individuals to principles, or to their legal and institu
tional embodiments, is compatible with their moral autonomy when these
individuals themselves do not directly endorse such principles or laws and
institutions. Among these principles we may include the ones governing
the institution of property.
In claiming that individuals can be forced to be free, Ro usseau suggests
that in certain cases the constraints to which individuals are legitimately
subjected may indeed be experienced as alien, external ones, because they
are simply compelled to obey them, turning their acceptance of these
constraints into a matter of necessity rather than freedom. Moreover, in
the absence of the right dispositions and mores, even the majority of citizens
may be incapable of recognizing the general will, so that any attempt to
subject people to principles or laws and institutions that are genuinely
expressive of the general will must be liable to encounter resistance or,
at best, they will be only grudgingly accepted. In contrast, the optimal
situation would surely be one in which subjection to objectively valid
constraints was accompanied by a corresponding subjective element, which
consists in not experiencing these constraints as alien, external ones. Thus
in certain circumstances the lawgiver appears to be faced with the difficult
choice of adopting a pragmatic approach, which may require compromising
Imposing order
principles that are genuinely expressive of the general will, or a more
autho ritarian approach, which is nevertheless meant to be compatible with
the idea of moral freedom.
The notion of a lawgiver is itself problematic in relation to the idea of
moral freedom because, as we have seen, the kind of democratic freedom
which Ro usseau endorses represents a subspecies of this form of freedom.
Moreover, it is as members of a sovereign assembly that individuals actually
exercise the capacity for moral freedom and thereby develop themselves as
autonomous beings. In this respect, the kind of authoritarian solution sug
gested by Hobbes's use of an architectural image poses a twin threat to the
idea of autonomy. Consequently, if there are any good reasons for thinking
that Rousseau is ultimately committed to this type of solution - and I
shall argue that there are such reasons - the idea of human perfectibility
will once again appear to be subject to certain potentially insurmountable
obstacles. Since Fichte's theory of property represents a plausible acco unt
of how an institution may embody the principles of the general will, it pro
vides the perfect basis for exploring this issue in more depth. At the same
time, it gives us a good idea of what a fully developed Ro usseauian theory
of property might look like. I shall therefore begin with an acco unt of
Rousseau's views on property and then turn to Fichte's theory of property.
Rousseau o n property
Rousseau appears to say conflicting things about property rights. He claims

in the Discourse on Political Economy that 'property is the true foundation
of civil society [/a societe civile] , and the true guarantee of the citizens'
commitments' (OC III: 263; PW2: 23) . In the same work, he makes clear
that property is fo undational in the sense that if individuals lacked any
go ods that could be forfeited as a punishment, they would have nothing
to fear and wo uld, therefore, feel free to avoid their duties and to 'scoff at
the laws' (OC m : 263; PW2: 23) . Property is fo undational, then, because it
guarantees that the citizens will fulfil their obligations towards o ther citizens
and towards the state itself. Rousseau also claims that 'the foundation of the
social pact is property, and its first co ndition that everyone be maintained
in the peaceful enjoyment of what belongs to him' (OC m : 269f.; PW2:
29f.). This claim makes it sound as if the main function of the state
is to protect private property and that property rights are prior to the
state. Indeed, Rousseau himself proclaims that 'the general administration
is established solely to insure private property [/a propriete particuliere],
which is prior to it' (OC III: 242; PW2: 4) . The state's role in pro tecting
97
pro perty rights is even held to constitute the essential difference between
legitimacy and tyranny with respect to the exercise of political power, and
between obligation based on consent and conformity achieved by means
of force:
For since all civil rights are founded on that of property, as soon as that is
abolished, none other can exist. Justice would no longer be anything but a
chimera, and government, a tyranny; and since the public authority would
not have any legitimate basis, no one would be bound to acknowledge it,
except insofar as he would be constrained to do so by force. (OC III: 483 ;
PF: 22)
In the Social Contract, however, Rousseau claims that 'with regard to its
members, the State is master of all their goods by the social contract which
serves as the basis of all rights within the State' (OC III: 365; PW2: 54) . Prop
erty rights here appear to be completely dependent on the state which must
be assumed to possess the right and the power to decide how property is
allo cated, irrespective of what people happen to possess at any point in time
prior to the social pact. Rousseau even treats this dependency on the state
as a useful means of political control: 'For since private property is so weak
and so dependent, the G overnment needs only a little force and, so to speak,
leads the people with a movement of its finger' (OC III: 949 ; CC: 164) .
These apparently conflicting statements concerning property, some of
which suggest that property rights are prior to , and independent of, the
state, while o thers suggest that the state has absolute control over its citizens'
property and is the source of property rights, can be reconciled when a firm
distinction is made between temporal and conceptual forms of prio rity with
respect to property rights as guaranteed by the state. As regards temporal
priority, Ro usseau's statements concerning the right of the first occupant
are especially relevant, since an appeal to this right represents an obvious
means of justifying property rights that are held to be temporally prior to,
and independent of, the state. Ro usseau claims that this right is only 'weak
in the state of nature' but 'respected by everyone living in civil so ciety'
(OC III: 365; PW2: 55) . This claim indicates that the state's task will be
to guarantee a right of pro perty which already exists in the state of nature
but is rendered highly uncertain because of the general insecurity that
characterizes this condition.
In relation to this apparent temporal priority of property rights in
relation to the state, Rousseau speaks of the 'positive' act that makes a man
the proprietor of some goods while excluding him from all the others. He
identifies this positive act with the act by means of which the right of the
Imposing order
first occupant becomes a 'true right' only after the right of property has been
established (OC III: 365; PW2: 54) . The context implies that this act is to be
associated with the institution of a power capable of judging any disputes
concerning property rights and of enforcing its decisions. In this respect
property rights themselves depend on the existence of such a power and are,
therefore, first established along with it. Although this interpretation of the
act in question does not rule out the possibility of a seamless transition from
the right of the first occupant and all that an individual possesses in virtue of
this right to the right of property, the idea of a power that determines what
can rightfully be considered to be a person's property implies that some
claims based on an appeal to the right of the first occupant can be treated
as spurious ones. This raises the question as to how the body charged with
determining this issue is to distinguish between legitimate and spurious
claims concerning property rights based on an alleged right of the first
occupant.
Ro usseau stipulates three conditions to which the right of the first
occupant is subject. These conditions must all be satisfied if any claim based
on an appeal to this right is to be regarded as a valid one. First of all, any
land occupied should not already be inhabited. This condition is essentially
uninformative, for the demand that it expresses is analytically contained in
the idea of the right of the first occupant. It does, however, provide evidence
of an orientation on Rousseau's part towards understanding the right of
property in terms of a right to land. The second condition is that one
should occupy only as much land as one needs to subsist. This condition
implies that others also have a right to the means of subsistence and that
one ought, therefore, to take this right into consideration when claiming
the right to a piece of land, even if one were the first person to occupy and
to work upon this piece of land.
Ro usseau here imposes a strong constraint on property rights. This
constraint can be traced back to his claim that man's 'first law is to attend
to his own preservation, his first cares are those he owes himself', and the
claim that, since they are all born equal and free, human beings 'alienate
their freedom only for the sake of their utility' (OC III: 3 52; PW2: 42) . The
second claim shows the extent to which Rousseau's thoughts on property
are shaped by his identification of equality and freedom as the principal
ends of every system of legislation which aims at the greatest good of all
(OC III: 391; PW2: 78) . It also shows that freedom (that is, natural freedom)
can be legitimately renounced only when it is in an individual's interest to
do so. Taken together, these two features of the second claim imply that no
one could be reasonably expected to reno unce his or her natural freedom,
99
which consists in the right to everything that one's own physical powers
can command, in the absence of any guarantee of being able to preserve
oneself, which means being able to attain the means of subsistence. I argue
below that this constraint on the alienation of one's natural freedom and
the right to everything asso ciated with it is so strong that it has some major
implications when it comes to interpreting Rousseau's theory of property
in the light of the idea that the social pact aims to remove unequal relations
of dependence.
The third condition to which the right of the first occupant is subject is
that one sho uld take possession ofland 'not by a vain ceremony, but by labor
and cultivation' (OC m : 366; PW2: 55) . By Rousseau's own admission, this
condition is highly problematic in so far as deciding whether or not it has
been met is concerned. As we have seen, in the Second Discourse Ro usseau
points out that although the cultivatio n of land may have initially been
based on a more or less equal division of land, some people could in time
come to claim a greater share of the land than others because the stronger
person could do more work, the naturally skilful individual co uld work
more effectively than o thers could, and the more ingenious individual
could find ways of reducing his share of the labo ur. These three sources
of inequality explain why the second condition that one should occupy
only as much land as one needs to subsist must be invoked. The third
example of how someone may claim a greater share of the land is especially
significant because it points to a particular problem with the right of the
first occupant.
The ingenuity of the individual who finds ways of reducing his share of
the labour co uld be identified with the ability and the willingness to develop
methods or tools that allow a piece of land to be cultivated with less effort
and with greater speed. In this respect, material inequality co uld be justified
in terms of just deserts. Yet this ingenuity could also be identified with the
ability to reduce one's share of the labour by duping others into working
more to one's advantage than to their own advantage. For example, the
individual who manages to reduce his share of the labo ur merely supplies
crude, ready-formed tools that he has chanced to encounter, b ut which
other people lack, either because they have failed to recognize the potential
that these objects have as tools or because they have simply not encountered
the objects in question. Here luck might be thought to play a much greater
role than industry or talent. Then, as a condition of using these tools, the
individual in question gets others to agree to award him a disproportionate
portion of the land which has been cultivated by means of these tools,
basing this right to a greater share of the land on the spurious claim that
100
Imposing order
supplying these tools amo unts to an indirect means of cultivating a far

greater part of the land itself.
This scenario accords with the general mood of deceit and treachery that
characterizes the second part of the Second Discourse, which begins with
the claim that the 'first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, to
whom it occurred to say this is mine, and found people sufficiently simple
to believe him, was the true founder of civil society' (OC m : 164; PW1:
161) . Ro usseau here anticipates the fraudulent social contract that he later
introduces. With this contract the gullible poor are tricked into submitting
themselves to laws that benefit the property-owning rich, who claim that
these laws are necessary when it comes to ending the condition of war
which has by this time arisen in the state of nature, whereas it was, in
fact, the introduction of private property which gave rise to deadly conflict
in the first place. Then there is the way in which Ro usseau, shortly after
explaining some of the possible causes of inequality with reference to the
right of the first occupant, speaks of the dominance of appearance over
reality. One example that he gives of this phenomenon is the individual
who makes o thers 'really or apparently find their own profit in working for
his', placing him 'under the necessity of deceiving all those he needs if he
cannot get them to fear him and does not find it in his interest to make
himself useful to them' (OC m: 175; PW1: 170f.). Given this background
and the particular example of the individual who reduces his share of the
labour by means of his greater ingenuity and willingness to deceive others,
it appears very difficult indeed to determine whether the third condition
which Rousseau identifies, that is, that one sho uld take possession of land
by labo uring upon and cultivating it, has genuinely been met even in cases
of primitive accumulation, upon which all subsequent acts of accumulation
are based.5
5
In Book Two of Emile, the tutor seeks t o make his pupil grasp the idea of property b y going back to
the origin of property. This is done by encouraging the pupil to plant some beans and to tend them
carefully. The right of the first occupant appears to be explicitly invoked when the gardener comes
along and justifies his destruction of the plants that have grown as a result of the pupil's labour on
the grounds that the pupil has thereby destroyed the melons that the gardener himself had planted
and that had already begun to grow on the same plot of land, which had previously been cultivated
not only by the gardener himself but also by his father before him. Rousseau here ignores any worries
about the legitimacy of the right of the first occupant, possibly because consideration of them lies
beyond the reasoning powers that the pupil currently possesses. This particular means of making the
idea of property more concrete also raises certain questions given some other features of Emile. For
example, is the plot of land really the gardener's legal property, even if both he and his father before
him have cultivated it? After all, in Book One Rousseau suggests that it would be better if the pupil
were of noble birth, and the plot of land may therefore legally belong to the pupil's father, or even
to the pupil himself if, as Rousseau claims, he ought also to be an orphan.
101
The right of the first occupant suggests a situation in which individuals

consent to the establishment of the state so as to secure legal pro tection for
what they already possess, with any further acts of acquisition or alienation
of property being governed by law. On this model, property rights are based
on temporal priority in the sense that they originally derive from a set of
historical claims based on the right of the first occupant, although this right
does not by itself, in the absence of legal protection, constitute an actual
right of property. Even in relation to the acquisition of land, however,
Rousseau points to a completely different scenario when he claims that
'Regardless of the manner of this acquisition, the right every individual has
over his own land is always subordinate to the right the community has
over everyone, without which there would be neither solidity in the social
bond, nor real force in the exercise of Sovereignty' (OC III: 367; PW2: 56) .
Here any claims based on the right of the first occupant, even if they satisfy
the conditions that Rousseau himself sets out, appear to be subordinated
to the collective demands of the community, including the need to foster
social cohesion, with the collective determination of property rights being
taken to represent a genuine expression of popular sovereignty and the
community's absolute authority in relation to its individual members.
This view of the relation of property rights to the state implies that
these rights are not unconditionally grounded in any form of temporal
priority. Rather, the state determines what property rights exist within the
political community established by means of the social pact, irrespective
of how any particular pieces of land or any particular goods happen to
be distributed at any given moment in time, including at any point in
time before the conclusion of the social pact. This feature of Rousseau's
acco unt of property raises the question of whether property rights are to
be established in a purely arbitrary manner by the state or in accordance
with certain norms. Given the commitment to equality, freedom and to
avoiding unequal relations of dependence that characterizes Rousseau's
political tho ught, I shall argue for the second case.
Rousseau's so cial pact requires the establishment of a political form of
equality, which co nsists in being subject to conditions that apply equally to
all members of the political community established by means of this pact.
Since, for Rousseau, achieving such equality requires eliminating unequal
relations of dependence among human beings that arise on the basis of
material inequality and pose a major threat to freedom because they allow
some people to dominate others, it may well be that collective control of
property will be a condition of securing this end. In his theory of prop
erty, Fichte argues for the collective control of property on precisely such
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Imposing order
grounds. Moreover, property rights are for him most certainly not based
on any kind of temporal priority. They do, however, exhibit a conceptual
priority, in the sense that property rights determine some of the main func
tions, and thus the essential structure, of any rightfully constituted state. In
this respect, Fichte supplies a clearer and more rigo rous, but nevertheless
recognizably Rousseauian, theory of property, which explains how prop
erty rights may count as genuine expressions of the general will and how
property itself may form an institutional embodiment of the principles
of equality and freedom. At the same time, Fichte's theory of property
allows us to think of property as playing a fo undational role in the state,
as Rousseau claims it does.
Fichte develops his theory of property in the Foundations of Natu
ral Right, and he seeks to develop its implications further in The Closed
Commercial State. Although the concept of right (Recht) forms the central
concept of the Foundations ofNatural Right, the concept of property comes
to play an increasingly explicit role in this wo rk because Fichte treats the
concept of property as a further determination of the concept of right.
In order to understand Fichte's theory of property and its compatibility
with Rousseau's commitment to the principles of equality and freedom ,
w e must, therefore, first look a t how the concept o f property develops out
of the concept of right, and at how it embodies the principles of equality
and freedom.
Equality and freedo m i n Fichte's theory of right
In the Foundations ofNatural Right, Fichte seeks to demonstrate that the

concept of right is a condition of self-consciousness, by showing that the
latter presupposes the capacity to distinguish oneself from other individuals
who are, nevertheless, of the same general type as oneself. This general type
is that of a finite rational being capable of forming its own ends and acting
in accordance with these freely chosen ends in relation to the material
world confronting it. Right is a condition of individuality because the
exercise of free choice represents the act thro ugh which a finite rational
being distinguishes itself from other such beings by means of its own
activity, and this act requires the existence of a sphere of activity which
is free of external interference by others. The co ncept of right concerns
the demarcation of this sphere, which broadly corresponds to that which
Rousseau calls civil freedom.
The task of demonstrating that the concept of right is a condition of self
consciousness is undertaken in the first main division of the Foundations
Equality andfreedom in Fichte s theory ofright
103
of Natural Right. Even at this stage, the concept of right appears to be

oriented towards an account of property rights in the form of a division of
the world into separate, exclusive spheres. 6 This division is associated with
the idea of efficacy (that is, the exercise of the capacity to act in accordance
with ends that one has freely formed) and with the idea of a world in which
such efficacy must be constrained, so as to allow the freedom of one person
to coexist with the freedom of others, in the following statement:
Now if, as is certainly the case, the effects of rational beings are to belong
within the same world, and thus be capable of influencing, mutually dis
turbing, and impeding one another, then freedom in this sense wou ld be
possible for persons who stand with one another in this state of mutual
influence only on the condition that all their efficacy be contained within
certain limits, and the world, as the sphere of their freedom, be, as i t were,
divided among them. (GA l/3 : 320; FNR: 9f.)
While the requirement that the world be divided into separate spheres
of freedom so as to prevent conflict between human beings entails the
existence of some constraints on freedom, these constraints must in some
sense be self-imposed ones, fo r otherwise the individuals subject to them
wo uld not be able to think of themselves as free. In other words, their
moral freedom, broadly construed, would be compromised. As Fichte puts
it:
since these beings are posited as free, such a limit could not lie outside
freedom , for freedom would thereby be nullified rather than limited as
freedom; rather, all would have to posit this limit for themselves through
freedom itself, i.e. all would have to have made it a law for themselves not to
disturb the freedom of those with whom they stand in mu tual interaction.
(GA l/3: 320; FNR: ro)
It must, in short, be possible to conceive of the constraints to which

one is subject as resulting from an act of self-limitation, as opposed to
their being the result of force or some other external power. As we shall
see, Fichte eventually identifies this act of self-limitation with the idea of
a contract into which individuals freely enter so as to preserve themselves
and their property in a legal and political community in which the state has
both the right and the power to coerce individuals. This does not mean,
however, that property rights somehow exist prior to the state. In this
6
Although at this stage in the Foundations of Natural Right Fichte speaks of 'right' and only later
introduces the term 'property', he already uses the term 'property' to describe the sphere in question
in his Rechtslehre from r8r2 (GA Illr3: 204) .
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Imposing order
way, Fichte's doctrine or theory of right (Rechtslehre) implicitly employs

Rousseau's notion of 'a form of association that will defend and protect
the person and goods of each associate with the full common force', and
in which each member, while uniting with all the others, nevertheless
obeys only him- or herself and therefore remains 'as free as before' (OC
m : 360; PW2: 49f.). What is original abo ut Fichte's position is his theory
of the property rights that the state must protect. This theory can be used
to render Ro usseau's acco unt of property more consistent than it at first
appears to be, so that Fichte and Rousseau can also be said to be in broad
agreement concerning that which the form of association described above
is meant to pro tect.
Fichte's theory of right has a number of other features in common with
Rousseau's theory of the social pact. The individuals who enter into a
condition of right with others subject themselves to a law that applies
universally. They do not, therefore, subject themselves to conditions that
apply to themselves but not to others, nor do they subject o thers to condi
tions that do not apply equally to themselves. In this respect, individuals
in a condition of right do not expose either themselves or o thers to the
danger of becoming subject to the arbitrary will of ano ther person and to
the domination to which such unequal relations of dependence threaten
to give rise. Indeed, since Fichte accepts that individuals stand in relations
with other individuals that inevitably lead them to exercise some influence
on one another, one of the main tasks of a theory of right must be to explain
how individuals can nevertheless remain independent in such a condition.
This task is identified in the following passage:
Persons as such are to be absolutely free and dependent solely on their will.
Persons, as surely as they are persons, are to stand with one another in a
state of mutual influence, and thus not be dependent solely on themselves.
The task of the science of right is to discover how both of these statements
can exist together: the question that lies at the basis of this science is: how is
a community offree beings, qua free beings, possible? (GA 1/3: 383; FNR: 79)
This passage shows that although Fichte treats right as a matter of

identifying the conditions of the peaceful coexistence of individuals, he
also recognizes the reality of human interdependence. As we shall see, the
move from mere coexistence to interdependence becomes fully explicit in
The Closed Commercial State, in which Fichte seeks to develop the economic
implications of his theory of right.
The fact that Fichte, like Ro usseau, appeals specifically to the idea that
in subjecting oneself to laws of a certain kind, one at the same time retains
105
one's freedom on entering the civil condition, is evident from the following
passage:
I am not subjecting myself to the changeable, arbitrary will [ Willkuhr] of a
human being, but rather to a will that is immutab le and fixed. In fact, since
the law is exactly as I myself would have to prescribe it, in accordance with
the rule of right, I am subjecting myself to my own immutable will, a will
I would necessarily have to possess if I am acting rightfully and therefore if
I am to have any rights at all. I am subjecting myself to my will, a will that
is the condition of my capacity for having rights at all. (GA I/3: 398; FNR:
9 5f.)
In this passage, Fichte is claiming that a person does not lose his or
her freedom on becoming subject to the kind of 'immutable and fixed'
will mentioned above, and to the laws that give concrete expression to
this will, because he or she gains the freedom which consists in being
guaranteed a determinate sphere in which to exercise free choice effectively
without unj ust interference by others. Guaranteeing oneself such a sphere
is an end that each and every rational being can be expected to adopt,
since such a being has a fundamental interest in being able not only to
form its own ends but also to seek to realize them in the material world
confronting it. An individual does not, therefore, subject him- or herself
to an alien will in becoming subject to universally valid laws. He or she
instead becomes subject to his or her own rational will, thereby remaining
free, tho ugh not in the same sense as before, that is to say, naturally free
with the right to everything. This act of subjecting oneself to a universally
valid will which is not alien to one's own will corresponds to the transition
from natural freedom to civil freedom fo und in Ro usseau's theory of the
social pact, a transition which Rousseau himself describes as follows: 'What
man loses by the social contract is his natural freedom and an unlimited
right to everything that tempts him and he can reach; what he gains is
civil freedom and property in everything he possesses' (OC m : 364; PW2:
53f. ) . This passage brings us back to the issue of the precise nature of
the property which is gained in the transition from natural freedo m to
civil freedom. Fichte's theory of right represents a concerted and original
attempt to address this issue.
In Fichte's theory of right, the concept of property is introduced in
connection with the co ncept of original rights ( Urrechte) . These original
rights are contained 'in the mere concept of the person as such' (GA
l/3: 390; FNR: 87) . In other words, original rights have to do with the
conditions of rational agency in general taken together with the assumption
106
Imposing order
that finite rational beings do not exist in isolation from each other. In
his acco unt of original rights, Fichte introduces the right of property in
connection with the need for the world to exhibit regularity and order
if a rational being is effectively to realize its freely formed ends within
it. He does not deny that the world and the objects within it undergo
change in accordance with natural laws. A rational being can, and ought
to , anticipate such changes when forming its ends and seeking to realize
them. What Fichte has in mind are preventable changes brought about by
human interference (GA 1/3: 406f. ; FNR: 105f.) . Consequently, respecting
the property rights of others will consist in restricting the exercise of one's
own freedom so that it does not interfere with the exercise of their freedom
in so far as it depends on having control of parts of the external world and
of certain objects within this world.
In effect, Fichte's initial statement concerning property rights amounts
to a reiteration of his conception of right as a relation which allows finite
rational beings to coexist in such a way that each of them is guaranteed
a personal sphere in which to exercise free choice. This time, however,
the relation in question is taken to involve an explicit relation to material
objects. It is therefore of a more complex kind than any purely direct,
interpersonal relation between finite rational beings. Yet the idea that
property rights are conditio ns of an agent's causality in the sensible world
does not by itself explain how far each individual's property rights may
legitimately extend. As Fichte recognizes, his theory of right demands an
account of the limits to property rights because right aims to prevent
conflict between human beings, and as he himself had pointed out earlier,
it is only 'if another person is related to the same thing at the same time
that I am does there arise the question of a right to the thing, which is
an abbreviated way of talking about - and this is what it sho uld really be
called a right in relation to the other person, i.e. a right to exclude him
from using the thing' (GA I/3: 360; FNR: 51) .
Fichte is here stating that it only makes sense to talk of rights when a
relation to other human beings with whom one can come into conflict is
assumed to exist, whereas one can have power over a thing b ut not a right
to it, because right implies the existence of an obligation and it makes no
sense at all to speak of a thing as being obliged to respect one's claim to
be the owner of it. As we shall see, in developing the implications of the
idea that right essentially concerns relations between human beings that
are typically mediated by material objects, Fichte is led to question the
possibility of original rights, the idea of which requires abstracting from
the actual, determinate material relations that exist between human beings.
-
107
We shall see, moreover, that it is no accident that he speaks in the passage

quoted directly above only of use rights ('a right to exclude him from using
the thing').
Fichte points o ut in his deduction of the concept of an original right
that a person in the sensible world is conceived to be isolated and thus as
having 'the right to extend his freedom as far as he wills and can, and - if
he so desires - the right to take possession of the entire sensible world' (GA
I/3 : 412; FNR: m ) . This right is 'infinite' in the sense that the condition
which requires its limitation (that is, the existence of other persons with
whom the first person potentially stands in a relation of mutual influence)
is absent. A condition in which a person exists in complete isolation does
not, in short, even demand a theory of right. Such a theory becomes
necessary only when coexistence with others renders the right to extend
one's freedom as far as one's power allows one to do problematic, because if
'such freedom were infinite . . . then the freedom of all - except for that of
a single individual - would be canceled' (GA I/3 : 411; FNR: 109). Thus the
task of explaining the actual extent of each person's freedom in relation to
the freedom of others is one that a genuine theory of right must undertake
and fulfil. Fichte implies, moreover, that this task must be undertaken in
acco rdance with the principle of equality in the following passage, which
he claims, in the footnote to it, captures what Rousseau means by the idea
of a general will:
If a million human beings exist alongside one another, each individual may
very well will for himself as much freedom as possible. But if the will of all
were to be united into one concept as in one will, this will would divide the
sum of possible freedom into equal parts, with the aim that all would be
free together, and that therefore the freedom of each would be limited by
the freedom of all the others. (GA 1/3 : 400; FNR: 98)
At this stage, the precise sense in which this division of freedom is

one into 'equal' parts remains unclear. Fichte nevertheless shows that an
essential connection exists in his mind between the notion of equality and
the act of mutual limitatio n demanded by the concept of right when he
claims that, 'since all are equal, each person rightfully limits the freedom of
every other person by as much as these others limit his freedom' (GA I/7:
88). The division of freedom which Fichte associates with the concept of
right must therefore consist in limiting freedom so as to make possible the
freedom of all, because everyone has the equal right to be free. If someone's
right to freedom is not respected, this person would lack any genuine reason
for renouncing the right to everything which he or she enjoys in the state
108
Imposing order
of nature, beyond that of simply desiring to preserve his or her own life. In
this way, equality and freedo m turn out to be the primary objects of right.
The primacy of freedom as a legal and political principle can be brought
out with reference to Fichte's views on the status of self-preservatio n. Fichte
claims that there
is no separate right to self-preservation; for it is merely contingent that, in
a particular instance, we happen to be using our body as a tool, or things
as a means, for the end of securing the continued existence of our body
as such. Even if our end were more modest than self-preservation, other
persons would still not be permitted to disturb our freedom, for they are
not permitted to disturb it at all. (GA 1/3: 409 ; FNR: 108)
The idea behind this claim is that we will the existence of our own body
ultimately because the latter constitutes the immediate instrument by
means of which we interact with others and with the material world with
the intention of realizing our freely formed ends, whatever they happen to
be. What we are really willing is, therefore, the realization of these ends,
whereas securing the continued existence of our own body is something that
is willed o nly on account of this more fundamental end. Self-preservation
is willed, in other words, only as 'the condition of all other actions and
of every expression of freedom' (GA l/3: 408f.; FNR: 107) . It does not,
therefore, count by itself as a sufficient reason for renouncing the right to
everything that one enjoys in the state of nature, at least not in so far as
one conceives of oneself as a free agent which seeks to realize its ends in
the material world confronting it. After all, securing one's own life could
be achieved by renouncing one's freedom, as when an individual agrees to
become the slave of someone who has the power to kill him or her.
In making equality and freedom central to his theory of right, Fichte
incorporates into this theory the two objects that Ro usseau identifies as the
principal ends of every system of legislation which aims at the greatest good
of all. Fichte, however, develops more forcefully than Rousseau does the
implications of this claim in relatio n to the right of property. His theory
of property in this regard provides a mo del of how Rousseau might have
developed a more thorough account of property rights that are taken to be
founded on the principles of equality and freedom, thereby making prop
erty into a prime example of an institution which embodies the principles
that determine what does or does not count as a genuine expression of the
general will. It remains to show how exactly Fichte's theory of property
explains the way in which the institution of property, as he conceives it,
embodies the principles of equality and freedom.
Fichte on property
109
Fichte on property
Fichte implies that there must be some kind of agreement between human
beings if they are to coexist peaceably when he states that ll property is
grounded in reciprocal recognition, and such recognition is conditioned by
mutual declaration' (GA I/3: 418; FNR: 117) . This claim is not, as it stands,
incompatible with the idea of a right of the first occupant as the ground of
property rights, for the recognition in question co uld be based either on
declaring what one already possesses as one's rightful property and on o thers
accepting this declaratio n, or, if there is any disagreement, on all the parties
concerned modifying their claims until general agreement concerning their
respective property rights is reached. Indeed, Fichte himself goes on to speak
of temporal priority as having the potential to ground property rights, as
long as this means of determining such rights has been agreed upon (GA
l/3: 420; FNR: 120). Yet the context in which this claim is made needs to
be borne in mind.
The section on the concept of an original right is followed by a section
on what Fichte calls 'the right of coercion' (das Zwangsrecht) . Here the issue
concerning how and to what extent coercion may be justifiably exercised in
relation to individuals who have violated 'the law of right' (das Rechtsgesez)
is raised. Fichte invokes the problem of being the judge in one's own cause
in such matters. Given the problematic nature of any rightful exercise
of coercion in the absence of an independent power entrusted with the
task of judging impartially and with the authority to enforce its decisions,
Fichte argues for the necessity of a third party which is not a particular
individual but is instead the commonwealth that results from the union
of all individual wills. Thus the concept of an original right thus turns out
to presuppose other elements of right, leading Fichte to call the idea of an
original right 'a mere fiction', and to claim that there 'is no condition in
which original rights exist; and no original rights of human beings' (GA
I/3: 403f. ; FNR: 102) . The possibility of rights at all in the absence of
state authority is, in short, denied. As Fichte puts it: 'there is no natural
right [Natu"echt] at all in the sense often given to that term, i.e. there can
be no rightful [rechtliches] relation between human beings except within a
commonwealth and under positive laws' (GA I/3: 432; FNR: 132). Although
the claim is clearly that all rights, including the right of property, depend
on the existence of state authority, this claim does not by itself rule out
the possibility of basing property rights on a right of the first occupant,
or a modified version of this right. The state co uld, for example, simply
play the role of deciding whether or not an appeal to this right is valid in
no
Imposing order
a particular case. We shall see in due course, however, that Fichte adopts
the position that the state determines the distribution of property rights
in a way that makes no appeal whatsoever to what individuals happen to
possess at any given point in time.
By explaining the necessity of the commonwealth in terms of the prob
lem of individuals becoming judges in their own cause, Fichte's theory
of right once again resembles Rousseau's theory of the social pact. This
time the connection has to do with Rousseau's explanation as to why the
alienation of each individual's rights on entering into the social pact must
be of an absolute kind:
since the alienation is made without reservation, the union is as perfect as
it can be, and no associate has anything further to claim : For if individuals
were left some rights, then, since there would be no common superior who
m ight adjudicate between them and the public, each, being judge in his
own case on some issue, would soon claim to be so on all, the state of nature
would subsist and the association necessarily become tyrannical or empty.
(OC III: 361; PW2: 50)
In addition to the insoluble problems that wo uld allegedly arise if indi

viduals retained some rights as opposed to alienating all of their rights,
especially the right to judge when and to what extent coercion should be
exercised in relation to other individuals, there is surely another, more fun
damental reason that Ro usseau has for advocating the total alienation of
rights in the case of property rights in particular. The reason in question is
that the social pact is designed to prevent the establishment of unequal rela
tions of dependence that threaten to allow one party to dominate another
party, at the same time as it overcomes the inconveniences of the state of
nature. Rousseau himself claims that the clauses of the social pact
rightly understood, all come down to just one, namely the total alienation
of each associate with all of his rights to the whole community: For, in the
first place, since each gives himself entirely, the condition is equal for all,
and since the condition is equal for all, no one has any interest in making it
burdensome to the rest. (OC III: 36of. ; PW2: 50)
Clearly, Rousseau sees the alienation of all of one's rights as being inti
mately bound up with the creation of a condition in which no individual
is subject to obligations that do not apply equally to others; whereas if
one person were to become one-sidedly dependent on other individuals,
whose greater wealth derives from property rights based on the right of the
first occupant, he or she would find him- or herself in a position in which
Fichte on property
Ill
these others could arbitrarily impose upon him or her obligations to which
they themselves are not subject. Hence Rousseau's stipulation that 'as for
weal th, no citizen be so very rich that he can buy another, and none so
poor that he is compelled to sell himself' (OC m : 391f. ; PW2: 78) .? Such
obligations might include, to give but one example, the obligation to pro
vide the means of satisfying the needs of others at the minimum cost and
inconvenience to themselves , i rrespective of the costs and inconveniences
suffered by the person who is made to fulfil this obligation on the basis
of the unequal relations of power that his or her dependence on others
generates.
The task of preventing unequal relations of dependence from arising
renders the idea of the right of the first occupant problematic because in
the Second Discourse Rousseau paints a picture of a large degree of material
inequality based on this right prior to the fraudulent social contract that
he introduces in this work. A fundamental problem with this contract
is, therefore, that it sanctions and helps to sustain a condition in which
one-sided forms of dependence exist on the basis of material inequal ity.
This shows that Rousseau does not think that the amount of land and
goods possessed by individuals will, almost miraculously, correspond to that
which is required to establish mutual , as opposed to one-sided, relations
of dependence between h uman beings, so that possession simply needs to
be transformed into property rights by means of legal sanctions backed
by the threat or the actual use of force. Thus even apart from the worry
that the right of the fi rst occupant may be based on spurious claims,
there is the problem that recognizing the validity of this right threatens to
subvert the main purpose of a genuine social pact, which is to overcome
the disadvantages of the state of nature in such a way that no individual
loses h is or her independence by becoming dependent on the arbitrary wills
7
This passage and ot hers l i ke it that sel limits 10 permissible degrees of material i neq uali ty have been
i n terpreted i n such a way as to make these limi LS appear essen tially disti nct from the normative
elemenLS of Ro ussea u's theo ty of the general wi ll, because they are allegedly 'fixed not by the content
of the general will i tself. . . but by an acco u n t of the condi tions req u i red for the stability of the
society of the general will'. Cohen, Rousuau, 53 For Cohen, such conditions of social stabi lity are
not cons t i tutive elements of a legitimate social and poli tical order. Rather, they form elements of
'a political sociology' as opposed to 'the phi losophical conception of poli tical legi ti macy' (57). This
disti nction stri kes me as i m possible 10 mai ntain i n the face o f Rousseau's clear concern about the way
i n which material i neq uali ty generates u neq ual relations of depende nce, and his view that one of the
cen t ral aims o f the social pact itself will be 10 prevent or to overcome such relations of dependence i n
accordance w i th t h e pri nciples of equal i ty a n d freedom. I n other words, l i m i ts on perm issible degrees
of material inequa l i ty belong 10 the con tent of the general will, whereas viewing them as condi ti ons
of social stabi l i ty alone i mplies that they are esse n t i ally conti ngent co nditions of freedom, in the
sense that they could be dispensed w i th i f i t turned out that social stabi l i ty could be guaran teed
without them.
112
Imposing order
of others. As we shall see, Fichte invokes the idea of temporal priority in

relation to property rights only to drop it at a later stage in his development
of the concept of right for the same type of reason. In so doing, Fichte rejects
the idea that a right of property can pre-exist the contract by means of which
a common will is generated, whereas, in a note, he attributes to Rousseau
(mistakenly in my view) the idea of such a right based on the formation of
objects, despite Ro usseau's assertion that an individual alienates all of his
or her rights on entering into the social pact (GA l/4: 15; FNR: 177) .
Thus far, it may seem that freedom has been understood only negatively
in terms of non-interference and the absence of dependence on the arbi
trary wills of others. Fichte, however, suggests that freedom ought also to be
understood more positively both as the capacity and as the power to realize
one's freely formed ends in the world. In this respect, while independence
is a condition of freedom and may itself be classed as a form of freedom in
a merely negative sense, it is not coextensive with the concept of freedom.
Rather, there is a form of freedom which goes beyond the merely nega
tive conditions of non-interference and independence. This is the moral
freedom which consists in acting in accordance with principles that are
self-imposed. In its most fully developed form, this freedom consists in
the autonomy that, as previously mentioned, Fichte himself describes as
a type of self-sufficiency. In other words, although Fichte operates with
two distinct forms of self-determination in his theory of right and in his
ethical theory, which are free choice and moral autonomy respectively, 8
right already points beyond itself by guaranteeing the conditions of moral
agency. While this agency rests on the capacity for free choice, its actual
exercise demands acting in accordance with objectively valid moral prin
ciples and, in particular, with the duties that these principles generate in
relation to o ne's own will.9
Fichte himself alludes to this feature of right when he claims that
although humanity 'separates itself from citizenship [vom Biirgerthume]
in order to elevate itself with absolute freedom to the level of morality [zur
Moralitiit] . it can do so only if human beings have first existed within the
state' (GA 1/4: 17; FNR: 178f.). Given the way in which Fichte's theory of
property points beyond the merely negative conditions of non-interference
and independence, it helps to flesh out the claim that Ro usseau's theory of
property turns out to be more consistent than it first appears to be once
it is viewed in relation to his fundamental concern with the autonomy of
.
8 Cf. Neuhouser, 'Fichte a n d the Relationship between Right a n d :'vi oral ity' .
9 I discuss this issue more fully in Chapter 5 in relation to Fichte's ethical activism and his later theory
of property.
Fichte on property
113
the individual.1 Fichte's theory of property manifests the same concern

and, as we shall see, in so doing it provides an explanation of Rousseau's
claim that property is the foundation of political society without relying on
any notion of temporal priority when it comes to explaining the relation
between property rights and the state.
In order to explain how individuals may remain free while subject
ing themselves to law, Fichte employs the idea of a 'civil contract'
(Staatsbiirgervertrag) ." The agreement to enter into this contract repre
sents the more concrete expression of the act of self-limitation which is
essential to Fichte's theory of right in so far as it seeks to explain how con
straints on natural freedom can be regarded as self-imposed ones, rather
than constraints that are imposed by means of force and are thus obeyed
merely as a matter of necessity. This contract is itself made up of various
contracts. These are the property contract, the protection contract and the
unification contract. In the present context, what Fichte has to say about
the property contract is of most relevance.
This contract is one that 'gro unds the relation of right between each
individual and all other individuals in the state' and its object is said to be
'a particular activity' (GA l/4: 20; FNR: 183f.) . Fichte means the activity
by means of which an individual is able to live. This is not, however, to
be understood as an appeal to self-preservation for its own sake. Rather,
as previously mentioned, freedom remains the fundamental value while
self-preservation is only the means of realizing this value in the case of
finite rational beings. Fichte here appeals to the nature of human agency
11
Cf. Teichgraeber, 'Rousseau's Argument for Property'.

Fichte had already appealed to the idea of a contract in his Contribution rowards Correcting the
Public 's judgement ofthe French Revolution from 1793 In this work, we encounter a contract theory
of the state based on the claim that since they can only be legitimately subject to laws that they
have laid upon themselves, individuals have an inalienable right to annul unilaterally any contract
into which they have entered. They therefore have an inalienable right to change the constitution
of the state, which must itself rest on a contract, because only a civil society (burgerliche Gesellschaft)
founded on a contract made between its members is a truly rightful one, whereas all existing
constitutions can be criticized on the grounds that they are based on the right of the stronger ( GA
1/r: 236) . Fichte's contract theory of the state even allows for the formation of separate states within
a larger state should people consent to such an arrangement, provided that the members of the state
which separates itself from the rest of the state do not have interests that are directly opposed to the
interests of the citizens of the original state, and that each state respects the command of natural
right not to restrict the lawful freedom of another state (GA 1/r: 291ff.). Thus the state turns out to
be a highly precarious form of association, which is determined by the interests governing society,
as long as these interests do not directly conflict with certain universal interests, especially the desire
for peace. Some major differences between this contract theory of the state and Rousseau's one,
despite Fichte's use of some key terms employed by Rousseau, are noted in Schottky, Untersuchungen
zur Geschichte der staatsphilosophischen Vertragstheorie im 17. und 18. jahrhundert (Hobbes - Locke
Rousseau und Fichte) mit einem Beitrag zum Problem der Gewaltenteilung bei Rousseau und Fichte,
343ff.
114
Imposing order
in general, by claiming that the acts of forming ends and seeking to realize
them in the material world are essentially future-oriented ones that depend
on a person's ability to preserve him- or herself as a living organism. The
essential connection between human agency and the human body finds
immediate expression in a physical feeling, namely, the pain caused by
hunger or thirst (GA I/ 4: 21; FNR: 185) . It is in the light of this essential
connection between human agency and the human body that we are to
understand Fichte's claim that to be able to live is 'the absolute, inalienable
property of all human beings' (GA l/4: 22; FNR: 185).
Given the way in which this form of property is derived from the
conditions of human agency in general, it provides a more determinate
expression of that which Fichte calls property 'in the broadest sense of the
word', which is 'a person's rights to free action in the sensible world in
general' (GA 1/4: 8; FNR: 168) . Since Fichte is speaking of free but finite
ratio nal beings, this right ought not to be guaranteed in simply any possible
way; rather, it should be guaranteed in such a way that it depends on an
individual's own activity.12 Fichte accordingly asserts that a principle of any
rational state constitution is that 'everyone ought to be able to live from
his labor' (GA 1/4: 22; FNR: 185). He here incorporates into his theory of
property the strong condition to which Rousseau subjects the right of the
first o ccupant: the condition that one should occupy only as much land
as one needs to subsist. Fichte expresses this requirement in more general
terms, however, by linking it to the right to be able to live from one's
labour, rather than to the specific right to land upon which one may labo ur
to gain the means of subsistence.
The right to be able to live from one's labour is clearly a right whose
protection Ro usseau co uld regard as a genuine demand of the general will,
for the guarantee of being able to live from one's labour represents one
way of preventing individuals from becoming dependent on the arbitrary
wills of other individuals or groups. It would, for example, prevent people
from having to depend on the charity of others. It would also make them
independent of changing government policy regarding welfare provision,
provided that the right to work was supplemented by other economic rights,
such as the right to earn a decent wage and the right to protection from
exploitative labo ur practices. Since it is the state that guarantees this right,
1 1 Fichte admittedly speaks of having to 'subsidize' (beisteuem) the person who is unable to live from
his or her labour (GA 1/4: 23; FNR: r86). Although this particular claim suggests that he has in
mind some form of welfare provision, given what I have said above concerning his commitment
to freedom as self-activity, welfare provision dearly represents a less desirable option than work, an
option that is appropriate only when people are unable to work through no fault of their own.
Fichte on property
115
individuals are nevertheless made heavily dependent on an impersonal

entity. Rousseau, however, thinks that this form of dependence is acceptable
and even necessary, as is shown by the way in which he views the idea of
equal subjection to law within the state as the key to removing one-sided
forms of dependence, thereby making every citizen 'perfectly independent
of all the others, and excessively dependent on the City' (OC m : 394; PW2:
So) . As problematic as this approach may otherwise be, it does not signal
a significant disagreement between Rousseau and Fichte concerning the
issue as to how human freedom can be best secured.
The right to be able to live from one's labour turns out, then, to be
anchored in the principle of freedom, since it represents an essential con
dition of free agency, and in the principle of equality, since it recognizes
that people are essentially equal as far as their fundamental interests are
concerned. These interests include the interest in not finding themselves
subject to the arbitrary will of another person and the interest in possessing
both the capacity and the power to act effectively in the material world
and in human society. Moreover, Fichte sees the principle of equality in
its relation to the conditions of free agency as demanding more than the
simple guarantee of being able to gain the means of subsistence:
Everyone wants to live as agreeably as possible; and since each person
demands this as a human being, and no one is more or less of a human being
than others, all are equally justified in making this demand . According to
this equality with respect to their rights, the division must be made in such
a way that each and every person can live as agreeably as possible when as
many human beings as there are of them are supposed to exist alongside
each other in the available sphere of action; and, therefore, in such a way
that everyone can live more or less equally agreeably. (GA 1/7: 55)
The property contract would therefore be invalid in the case of someone

who turned out, through no fault of his or her own, to be unable to
live from his or her labo ur, and to live as agreeably as possible given
the conditions of the society in which he or she lives.'3 The individual
'l
This appeal to an equal right to enjoy as agreeable a life as possible within the state in which one
l ives m ight be thought to represent a significant departure from Rousseau's views on equality, given
his condemnation ofluxury as a sign of moral corruption and political decay. See, for example, OC
m : 19ff.; PWx: x8ff., OC m : 206; PWx: 201f., OC m : 516ff.; PF: 45f. It is not clear, however, that
this is really the case. In The Cloud Commercial State, Fichte states that the production of luxury
goods may begin only when the means of satisfying the essential needs of life have been universally
secured, and he also expresses unreservedly the view that it is unjust for someone to be in the
position to buy luxury goods when his or her fellow citizens lack more essential goods (GA I/7: 61).
Luxury is, therefore, subject to strict limits, and it is condemned in so far as it is associated with
a significant degree of material inequality. :'vforeover, Fichte assumes that such material inequality
n6
Imposing order
in question would then no longer be obliged to respect the property of

others, and he or she would, we may assume, be free to do all that he or
she considers to be necessary when it comes to securing the means to live.
In other words, an individual in this situation regains the natural freedom
which was renounced on entering into the civil contract. Consequently,
the government that is instituted by all parties to the civil contract must
ensure that each and every person who is in the position to do so is able
to live from his or her labour, so as to enjoy a dignified human existence
which manifests the principles of equality and freedom. In this way, Fichte's
theory of right turns out to be primarily concerned with the distribution
of activities rather than with the distribution of goods and other resources.
It is these activities that need to be divided into 'equal' parts in the sense
of guaranteeing everyone the right to live from his or her own labour.
Any actual distribution of goods and resources will depend on the kind
of activity that an individual performs so as to be able to live from his
or her labo ur. This may result in some material inequality, because the
successful performance of one activity may require more resources than
those required for the successful performance of another activity. However,
since the right to such an activity is universally guaranteed, this material
inequality will not, it is assumed, generate unequal relations of dependence
that would allow one person or group within society to dominate another
person or group.
Fichte's theory of property clearly accords with Rousseau's view of equal
ity and freedom as the fundamental political values and with his concern
to prevent the existence of unequal relations of dependence on others as
mediated by dependence on things. Also, once property is understood in
the terms set out by Fichte, it can be considered to be fo undational in the
sense that it constitutes an essential means of realizing these fundamental
political values. Property itself is not, therefore, fundamental in the sense
that it is more important than equality and freedom. Rather, property
remains the means while equality and freedom constitute the ends. Yet in
so far as it effectively serves as the means of realizing these ends, property
must be thought to play a foundational role in any rightfully constituted
legal and political order. This raises the question as to how exactly property
would simply not be generated in any rightfully constituted state, for 'In this state, every person
is servant of the whole, and for this receives his legitimate share of the goods of the whole. No
one can become especially rich, but nor can someone become poor' (GA 1/7: 68). This suggests
that Fichte thinks that the demand for luxury goods as well as their availability will be subject to
certain inherent limits in any rightfully constituted state, and that his lack of concern regarding the
corrosive effects of luxury is, therefore, to be seen as a result of the assumption on his part that this
will in fact be the case.
Fichte on property
117
rights must be structured so as to realize the principles of equality and

freedom.
Fichte does not restrict himself to arguing that property righ ts must be
founded on the right to be able to live from one's labour. He also attempts
to spell out the possible implications of th is right when he claims that
'Each person possesses property in objects o nly insofar as he needs such
property to pursue his occupation' (GA 1/4: 23 ; FNR: 187). The state must,
in short, distribute resources in such a way that each person who is capable
of doing so is able to l ive from his or her labour, and only then is the state
to protect property in the sense of ensuring that others do not appropriate
the resou rces that others need in order to be able to l ive from their labour.
This understanding of the state's role in relation to property righ ts implies
that individuals do not have an exclusive right to dispose of land and
goods as they please. Rather, they only have use rights, which are granted
by the state in accordance with its task of ensuring that each and every
person is able to live from his or her labour. 1 4 Thus the right to obj ects is
conditional in the sense that a person has a right to the property that he or
she possesses as a citizen (Burgereigenthum) only in so far as all the other
citizens are able to l ive from their property (GA 1/4: 22f. ; FNR: 186) . The
way in which Fichte limits property rights in accordance with the social
function of guaranteeing people the right to be able to live from their own
labour clearly makes his concept of property incompatible with the classical
liberal one that treats property as something which the individual has an
unlimited right to dispose of as he or she pleases, even when the exercise
of this right could be considered to be h ighly irrational. As Proudhon puts
it: 'The proprietor has the power to let his crops rot underfoot, sow his
field with salt, milk his cows on the sand, turn his vineyard into a desert,
and use his vegetable garden as a park.'1 5 Clearly, the exercise of such a
right would be unacceptable to Fichte because of the threat that it poses
to the effective employment of resources aimed at enabling individuals to
live from their labour.
Fichte does, however, speak of an 'absolute' form of propercy. This form of propercy consists in the
money left over when an i ndividual has di scharged his or her com m i tments to the state (e.g. by
selling what he or she has produced or manufactu red and by paying taXes so that everyone's right
to be able to l ive can be guaran teed by the state), toget her with the personal belongi ngs that can
be bough t with this money (GA
GNR: 209) . Yet Fichte i m poses strict l i m i tations on this
l/4: 43 ;
absolute form of proper!)' in accordance w i th his concern t hat everyone ought to be able to live. A
person m ust be in a position to usc the proper!)' that he or she h as bought and must actually use
it, and a person may not freely dispose of his or her property i f doing so deprives him or her of the
means to l ive, thus making him or her i nto a burden on the state (GA
Proud hon, What is Propmy!,
35
1/4: 5 6;
FNR: 223).
n8
Imposing order
Fichte's views on the state's role in relation to property rights is

compatible with the following statement in which Rousseau imposes some
limits on state authority: 'It is agreed that each man alienates by the social
pact only that portion of his power, his goods, his freedom, which it is
important fo r the community to be able to use, but it should also be agreed
to that the Sovereign is alone judge of that importance' (OC m: 373;
PW2: 61). For should the sovereign people decide that property must be
distributed in such a way that each and every citizen is able to live by means
of his or her labour - a decision which, I have argued, Ro usseau must
surely think they ought to reach - it follows that the government to which
the people entrusts the task of executing this demand must be allowed to
pursue the specific measures that it considers to be necessary when it comes
to meeting this demand. Thus for Rousseau, as well as for Fichte, property
rights cannot be conceived as unlimited rights to exclude others from the
use or benefit of certain objects and to dispose of these objects as one pleases:
they are instead rights to a certain activity and only secondarily rights to
material objects, that is, to the objects needed to perform this activity. ' 6 It
is for this reason that Fichte describes the right of property as 'the exclusive
right to actions, by no means to things' (GA l/7: 54f.) . It is hard, I think, to
imagine an example that better illustrates Rousseau's claim that individual
property rights are subordinate to the right that the community has over
everyone. As we shall see in the next section, Fichte's reduction of property
rights to use rights requires a high degree of state supervision, amo unting
almost to the complete regulation of economic life, and that this high
degree of state supervision is something that Rousseau also advocates in
places.
Given the various ways in which Fichte's theory of property captures the
spirit of Rousseau's authentic social pact, by providing an account of how
the principles that determine the terms of this pact (that is, equality and
freedom) can be institutionally embodied, it is surprising to see Rousseau
claim that no 'laws can ever have a retroactive effect and one cannot
confiscate any land acquired legitimately however large it might be in
virtue of a posterio r law that forbids having to o much' (OC III: 936; CC:
153) . Co uld Rousseau really regard such a limitation on the state's right
'6
In The Closed Commercial State, Fichte makes clear that although we may call the object of a free
activity the property of the person who is entitled to engage in this activity, it is only figuratively
or in a derivative sense that we may do so, for strictly speaking only the person's exclusive right
to engage in the activity in question in relation to this object is the individual's property (GA I/7:
85f.). Moreover, Fichte later refers to tools and objects as contingent property (zufollige Eigenthum),
because they could simply be lent to the worker (GA l/7: 88).
Imposing order
119
to requisition land as an absolute and legitimate constraint on any plan

drawn up and implemented by the institutor of a political community,
who bases this plan on the two fundamental political principles of equality
and freedom? Much depends here on the notion of legitimate acquisition.
I have argued that the aims and values guiding Ro usseau's account of an
authentic social pact imply the existence of similar normative constraints
on the acquisition and distribution of property to those that we find in
Fichte's theory of pro perty. As we have seen, these constraints render the
already questionable right of the first o ccupant even more problematic,
or, to be more precise, irrelevant, since they imply that it is legitimate to
redistribute property irrespective of how it was originally acquired, so long
as this is done with the aim of guaranteeing the principles of equality and
freedom.
The fact that Rousseau himself ultimately felt the need for a theo ry
of property along the lines developed by Fichte is suggested by some of
the specific measures concerning the regulation of the economic life of a
republic that he outlines in his writings on future constitutions for Corsica
and Poland. In the next section, I show how some of these measures
evoke the image of a political architect who must impose order on a
potentially recalcitrant material so as to realize the principles of equality
and freedom. This image implies hostility to the lack of order exhibited by
the unruly forces that threaten these principles, as exemplified by the largely
blind, spontaneous dependence-generating process, which has inequality
as one of its unintended consequences, described by Ro usseau in the Second
Discourse. Any attempt to impose order on these forces places the emphasis
firmly on the will's capacity to intervene in human affairs and to act
effectively in the face of the practical constraints generated by spontaneous
economic and social forces. At the same time, this attempt on the part of
the will to impose order poses a threat to the autonomy of those individuals
whose moral freedom can be preserved only in the sense that they sho uld
have recognized both the validity of the principles of equality and freedom
and the way in which certain laws and institutions embody these same
principles, even if they do not in fact do so and must, therefore, be forced
to be free.
Imposing order
Rousseau's hostility to a money-based economy provides one example of the

need to impose order on the spontaneously generated forces that threaten
equality and freedom. This hostility to a money-based economy is evident
120
Imposing order
from what Rousseau has to say about such an economy in the writings
occasioned by the invitations that he received to draft constitutions for
Corsica and Poland. In these writings, Rousseau can be seen to play the
role of a political architect who must take into consideration the conditions
and the nature of the people which forms the object of his plans. In both
cases he appears to view these conditions and the nature of the people as
largely favourable ones.
Ro usseau claims that the 'advantageous situation of the island of Corsica
and the fortunate natural disposition of its inhabitants seem to offer them
a reasonable hope of being able to become a flo urishing people' (OC III:
902; CC: 124) . Then there is his claim in the Social Contract that Corsica
is the 'one country left in Europe capable of receiving legislation', and a
nation that by the courage it has shown in recovering and defending its
freedom 'would amply deserve that some wise man teach it to preserve it'
(OC III: 391; PW2: 78). While with respect to Poland, Rousseau believes
himself to be speaking to a people that is not altogether free of vices,
but which nevertheless has 'some resilience and virtues' (OC III: 1022;
PW2: 242) . We may assume, then, that in these constitutional writings
Rousseau is in large part seeking to show how laws and institutions that
are 'good in themselves' (that is, laws and institutions that embody the
principles of equality and freedom) can be borne by a people fit to bear
them.
When discussing the kind of economic system that Poland should have,
Rousseau maintains that settling this issue will depend on the end which the
Poles have in mind in correcting their existing constitution. If they wish
Poland to become 'noisy, brilliant, fearsome, and to influence the other
peoples of Europe', they should, above all else, develop 'a good financial
system which makes money circulate well, which thereby multiplies it,
which provides you with a lot of it', and strive to make money 'very
necessary, in order to keep the people in great dependence' (OC m: 1003 ;
PW2: 224) . Money is here identified as an instrument of subjugation
because it fosters relations of dependence.'7 Ro usseau's hostility to a money
based economy turns out, then, to be connected with his fear of the great
human evil of dependence. This hostility goes deeper, therefore, than the
mere dislike of the effects that money has on a person's moral character
signalled by such passages as the following one: 'Financial systems make
venal souls, and as soon as all one wants is to profit, one invariably profits
'7
See also the following claim made in the Social Contract: 'The word finance is a slave's word; it is
unknown in the C ity. In a truly free State the citizens do everything with their hands and nothing
with money' (OC 111: 429; PW2: 113).
Imposing order
121
more by being a knave than by being an honest man' (OC III: 1005; PW2:
226) . Rather, moral corruption is an effect of the dependence generated by
a money-based economy, or, to be more precise, it is an effect of the way in
which this kind of economy serves to undermine the legal and institutional
structures that are needed to prevent one-sided forms of dependence and
the relations of domination that they make possible from arising, or to
remove such relations of dependence and domination if they already exist.
The precise nature of the threat that a money-based economy poses to
equality and freedom can be bro ught out with reference to some of the
things that Ro usseau has to say about the elusiveness of money, as opposed
to the tangibility of material goods and the human body.
In his draft constitution for Poland, Ro usseau implies that money has
an elusive character when he recommends that taxes be paid in the form
of services performed for the benefit of the state rather than in the form
of money, because 'money disappears in leaving the hands that pay it, but
everyone sees what men do' (OC III: 1009; PW2: 229). The same tho ught
is expressed in his reflections on a constitution for Corsica: 'Not being able
to hide itself, the use of men's arms always reaches the public destination,
it is not the same for the use of money; it slips away and melts into private
destinations; one heaps it up for one purpose, one gives it o ut for another'
(OC III: 904; CC: 125) . Here physical labo ur and other palpable services
that citizens can perform for the state are compared with the elusiveness of
money, which may easily be turned by those individuals who get their hands
on it into a purely private reso urce, even when it is originally destined for
public use. '8 To be sure, money itself takes the form of a material object. Yet
as the merely abstract sign of something other than itself (that is, the value
of the goods or services that can be purchased by means of it) , money enjoys
a shadowy existence. In the following passage, Rousseau states the extent
to which he thinks mo ney lends itself to being hidden away, siphoned off
and put to use for all kinds of nefarious purposes, because it changes hands
'8
The increased potential fo r inj ustice brought about by the establ ishment of a money-based economy
on account of money's el usive nature was already a theme in Monresquieu's The Spirit ofthe Laws:
Bur among a people who have established the use of money. one is subject to the injustices
char come from trickery, and these injustices can be exercised in a thousand ways. Therefore,
one is forced to have good civil laws there; these arise along with the new means and the
various ways of being wicked.
In countries where there is no money, rhe plunderer carries away only things, and things
are never alike. In countries where there is money, rhe plunderer carries away signs, and
signs are always alike. In the former countries nothing can be hidden, because the plunderer
always carries with him proofs for his conviction; it is nor the same in the latter countries.
(293)
122
Imposing order
so easily without the transactions in which it has been employed leaving

behind any obvious traces:
Money is used in misleading and secretive ways; it is intended for one thing
and used for another. Those who handle it soon learn to divert it . . . If all
riches were public and visible, if transfers of gold left a discernible mark
and could not hide, there would be no instrument better suited for buying
services, courage, loyalty, virtues; but in view of its secret circulation, it is
even better suited for making plunderers and traitors, and putting the public
good and freedom on the auction block. (OC m: 1005; PW2: 226}
Thus money is viewed as having the power to corrupt the political

body in which unequal relations of dependence between its members
are supposed to be prevented or removed, by turning the public good
into something that can be traded by those individuals who are devious
and unscrupulous enough to divert public funds into their own po ckets,
thereby putting themselves in the position to buy others and, in this way,
to attain or maintain a disproportionate amo unt of economic, social and
political power. Money consequently poses a danger both to freedom,
which requires that individuals are not made dependent on the arbitrary
wills of others who are more powerful than they are, and to equality, which
requires that the conditions to which individuals are subject are the same
for all. Rousseau accordingly prefers payment in kind, since this method
of payment consists in the exchange of tangible, clearly perceptible goods,
whose value depends on their usefulness and is absolute in the sense that
it is not represented by something other than itself, whereas money is not
wealth but merely a sign of it (OC III: roo8; PW2: 228) . This form of
exchange is, so to speak, easier to oversee and to control on acco unt of the
greater tangibility of that which is exchanged; and by subjecting acts of
exchange to oversight and control, it becomes possible to direct the final
cumulative outcomes of such acts.
To facilitate the exchange of go ods without the use of money, Rousseau
proposes in his draft constitution for Corsica the establishment of a double
entry public register in each parish or county. On one side of this register
individuals wo uld enter the sort and the quality of the produce that they
have in excess, while on the other side they wo uld enter what they lack.
With the aid of such registers, the state could regulate prices and volumes
of trade, while any necessary acts of exchange could, Ro usseau maintains,
be conducted without the use of real money (OC III: 923; CC: 141f.).
Rousseau here begins to sketch a plan involving the kind of close regulation
of the economic life of a state that receives much fuller treatment in
Imposing order
123
Fichte's The Closed Commercial State, in which we have not only the
public administration of goods but also that of people with respect to
their occupations. Fichte clearly wants to impose order on society.'9 This is
because, unlike Kant, he does not trust at all in the idea of a spontaneous
process which generates its own order and alleged harmony of interests.
This distrust is evident from the following passage which concerns the
consequences of a free market in goods:
There arises an endless war of all against all among the trading public, in the
shape of war between buyers and sellers; and this war becomes more violent,
more unjust, and more dangerous in its consequences, the more populated
the world becomes, the larger the commercial state becomes through the
acquisitions it makes, the more production and the arts increase, and the
amount of goods that thereby come into circulation and with them the needs
of everyone m ultiply, and become ever more particularized. What went on
without much inj ustice [ Ungerechtigkeit] and oppression when the nations'
way of life was simple, transforms itself in accordance with increased needs
into the most glaring wrong [ Unrecht] , and into a source of the greatest
misery. (GA I/7 : 98)
The Closed Commercial State represents the clearest example of an

attempt on Fichte's part to impose order on the spontaneously generated
economic forces that would o therwise govern society. 20 In this work, Fichte
develops an account of a state in which each perso n is able to live from his
or her labour. In so do ing, he makes more explicit the theme of human
interdependence than is the case in the Foundations of Natural Right, in
which the emphasis is placed on the conditions of peaceful coexistence.
Fichte divides society into various estates. The members of each estate
perform a particular, essential function within society, and they have the
exclusive right to engage in the activities associated with this function.
There is an estate of producers with the exclusive right to grow, catch, raise
or cultivate natural pro ducts, and an estate whose members Fichte terms
artists (Kiinstler) , who have the exclusive right to wo rk upon these natural
pro ducts in accordance with some end. Fichte also introduces an estate
of merchants so as to explain how the exchange of natural pro ducts and
the finished articles made from them can be conducted with maximum
'9 Fichte states that 'The sole source of every evil in o u r makeshift states i s disorder [ Unordung] and
the impossibility of bringing about order [Ordnung] in them' (GA 1/4: 92; FNR: 262) .
1 For a fuller discussion of this neglected work which attempts to locate it within a pan-European
debate concerning the moral and pol itical implications of the rise of modern commerce and finance
consisting of various responses to Rousseau's theory of popular sovereignty and constitutional
government, and to Rousseau's and Kant's views on the problem of how to establish international
peace, see Nakhimovsky, The Closed Commercial State.
124
Imposing order
efficiency and with the minimum waste of time. The state oversees the
whole process of production and exchange with the aim of ensuring that
the various estates honour the agreements that they have made with each
other and that there are enough natural products and finished articles avail
able to satisfy the needs of all the citizens of the state, including soldiers,
teachers and those individuals who perform administrative and political
functions within the state. The measures undertaken by the state to guar
antee the right of property, understood as the right to engage in an activity
which enables one to live from one's labo ur, include fixing prices and
making sure that the amount of money in circulation and its value are
determined strictly in accordance with the amount of goods in circulation
and their value. This value is measured in terms of the amount of time
within which a certain amo unt of grain can nourish a person while he or
she works. Thus although a money-based economy exists, it is tied to a
palpable object. These details by themselves show that Fichte is opposed
to allowing the economic sphere to become autonomous and to develop
its own spontaneous order in the hope that everything will turn out well.
To the latter approach he offers the following objection: 'To say that it will
all work out of its own accord [von selbst] , that everyone will always find
work, and bread, and simply leaving it to depend on this good fortune,
is not appropriate with regard to a completely rightful constitution'
(GA I/7: 90) .
Given Fichte's wish to introduce and to preserve order with the aim
of guaranteeing equality and freedom, it is not surprising that the term
'equilibrium' (Gleichgewicht) appears rather frequently in The Closed Com
mercial State, as when Fichte states that 'equilibrium must be continually
maintained' (GA 1/7: 61) . This equilibrium is exemplified by the trading
relations established between the three estates of producers, artists and
merchants. These relations are organized in such a way that each and every
person within the state is able to live from his or her labour, and that
enough goods are in circulation to satisfy every person's reasonable expec
tations concerning his or her material needs. Since any unforeseen factors
would threaten to destroy this equilibrium, the state must be able to predict
what will in fact happen. Fichte claims that it m ust, therefore, close itself
off economically from other states, whose citizens are not subject to the
same controls and restrictions as its own citizens, because the commercial
activities of the latter co uld not be effectively supervised and controlled
were they to engage in acts of economic exchange with foreigners.
Fichte's attempt to explain how the basic conditions of free agency can
be universally guaranteed results in such a high degree of state control and
Imposing order
125
supervision that it arguably restricts to an unacceptable degree the extent of

the sphere in which a person can exercise free choice, whereas his theory of
right sets o ut to explain the possibiliry of such a sphere. Another problem
concerns the limitations that Fichte thereby imposes on moral freedom.
Even in the case of right this moral freedom can be discerned in the idea
that the act of limiting one's freedom in relation to others must in some
sense be an act of self-limitation. This requirement and the problem that it
poses for Fichte's theory of the state can be illustrated with reference to the
way in which he identifies the act whereby a person consents to the terms
of the property contract, which gro unds the relation of right between each
individual and all other individuals by guaranteeing the right to be able to
live from one's labour, with an individual's public declaration of entry into
a particular occupation (GA I/4: 9 ; FNR: 170) .
In The Closed Commercial State, Fichte argues that the number of persons
belonging to each estate must be closely regulated for the sake of guaran
teeing every person the right to be able to live from his or her labour.
Since the most basic human needs must first be satisfied, the number of
people who can enter an occupation or profession other than the ones that
Fichte associates with the estate of producers must be calculated on the
basis of the number of producers needed to provide the basic means of
human subsistence, the fertiliry of the soil and the present state of agricul
tural technology (GA I/7: 6o) . In order to ensure that a sufficient number
of people belong to each estate, a person who wishes to enter a particular
o ccupation, and thereby a particular estate, is required to make his or her
intention known to the government, which has the right to grant or to
refuse this request according to the calculations that it has made. Fichte
here elaborates on the claim he had already made in the Foundatiom of
Natural Right that there 'can be no occupation in a state witho ut the state's
permission' (GA I/4: 23; FNR: 187) . An individual's choice of occupation
is, therefore, subject to some clear constraints that are not the result of
spontaneously generated relations of supply and demand. The constraints
in question are instead the result of an attempt to gain conscio us collective
control over the economic life of the state in accordance with a theory of
pro perty which aims to secure the general conditions of free agency.
This limitation is enough to make one wonder whether there can
really be any talk of free choice when it comes to the occupations into
which individuals enter within the state, whereas the act of choosing the
estate to which one belongs is meant to represent the moment of consent
which explains how an individual's renunciation of his or her natural free
dom constitutes an act of self-limitation. The possibiliry of free choice is
126
Imposing order
admittedly not completely excluded, for an individual's request to enter

the occupation of his or her choice may in fact be granted, and even if it
is not granted, he or she may then choose to enter another occupation.
A person's choice of occupation will, nevertheless, be limited by factors
beyond his or her control, as Fichte himself concedes when he states that
the number of people who may enter an o ccupation other than the ones
that he associates with the cultivation of the basic means of human sub
sistence is conditioned by the number of people needed to provide these
means, by the fertility of the soil and by the current state of agricultural
technology. In other words, free choice is ultimately constrained by natural
necessity, by nature more generally and by the stage of development which
a particular nation has reached. Natural necessity dictates, moreover, that
individuals enter some occupation so as to be able to live from their labour,
even if it is not an occupation that they themselves wo uld have otherwise
chosen to enter. Thus the empirical act whereby an individual limits his
or her activity in relation to others, and in so doing implicitly consents
to the terms of the property contract which forms the basis of Fichte's
theory of the state, turns out to be more a matter of practical necessity
than a matter of free choice.21 To this extent, the moment of consent is
reduced to the passive act of recognizing that an existing state which has
been transformed in accordance with the principles of the rational state is
one that a finite rational being can recognize to be an essential condition of
the realization of its own fundamental interests, rightly understood. The
consent in questio n is, in short, reduced to a matter of insight alone.
Fichte's attempt to impose order on society has considerable bearing
when it comes to the 'antinomy of political right' that has been said to
arise in his account of the relation between freedom and constraint in the
Foundations of Natural Right. This antinomy is alleged to arise because
the individual is understood both as free in relation to the state, at least
in so far as he or she does not transgress the rights of others, and as not
free in relation to the state, since he or she must alienate unreservedly the
right to make judgements concerning his or her rights within the legal and
political community of which he or she is a member. The thesis of this
antinomy is associated with liberalism, while the antithesis is associated
with authoritarianism. It is then argued that Fichte attempts to resolve this
antinomy by means of a 'republican synthesis' based on the Rousseauian
idea that the all-powerful sovereign is the law, which is held to be the
11
We shall see in Chapter 5 that Fichte came to recognize this problem and that he modified his
theory of property in the light of it.
Imposing order
127
expression of the sovereignty of the general will, in which there exists a

perfect union of all individual wills. 22
Fichte certainly does appeal to the idea of law (or right) as the expression
of the general (or common) will in his theory of right. Nevertheless, one
significant problem with this account of how he attempts to reconcile
the liberal and authoritarian aspects of this theory is that it rests on a
characterization of the thesis of the antinomy which appeals to a theo ry
of property that Fichte clearly does not hold, namely, one based on the
principle that incorporating one's labour into a material object grounds a
pro perty right to the same object. 23 This principle depends on the no tion
of temporal priority. Yet as we have seen, Fichte does not base the right
of property on any such principle. Rather, property rights are determined
by each and every person's right to be able to live from his or her labour,
provided that he or she has entered into the civil contract. It is not the
case, therefore, that any single act of appropriation, even when it involves
forming a previously ownerless object by means of one's labour, can fully
ground the right to an object.
I have shown, moreover, that Rousseau could have developed a theory of
pro perty along the same lines as Fichte do es, despite his seeming endorse
ment of a right of the first occupant grounded on labour. Both Ro usseau
and Fichte recognize that this kind of theory of property demands impos
ing order on the blind, spontaneously generated forces governing society,
by means of close state regulation of the economy. In this respect such
a theory of property appears to require an authoritarian solution to the
problem of guaranteeing the principles of equality and freedom. Thus
even if Fichte does appeal to the Rousseauian idea that the all-powerful
sovereign is law (or right) , and that law (or right) is itself the expression
of the sovereignty of the general will, this move by itself arguably fails to
provide a genuine resolution of the antimony of political right by means
of a republican synthesis, when this antinomy is characterized in terms
of an opposition between certain liberal and authoritarian elements. The
authoritarian implications of Fichte's theory of property have some bear
ing on the issue of the democratic freedom that for Rousseau consists in
being a co-legislating member of the popular assembly which constitutes
the sovereign body in the state, once it is seen that Ro usseau himself co uld
have endorsed this theory of property.
A tension has been noted between Ro usseau's insistence on personal
participation in the legislative pro cess, which he considers to be at the heart
" Cf. Renaut, Le systeme du droit.
ll C Renaut, Le systeme du droit, 302.
I28
Imposing order
of any legitimate political order, and his opposition to such forms of popular
initiative as the right to propose laws and to nominate candidates for public
office. These functions are instead entrusted to the government, to which
the sovereign people delegate the responsibility fo r the execution of the laws,
and which is therefore meant to be only the instrument of the people's will.
This tension is said to result from Rousseau's ambivalent attitude towards
the political capacities of ordinary citizens, with, in particular, his suspicion
of their capacity to determine on their own initiative the content of the
general will leading him to qualify his enthusiasm for direct, active citizen
participation. 24 Even if Rousseau does allow more room for active citizen
participation in determining the content of the general will than is claimed
here, 25 the way in which Fichte's theory of property consistently develops
the implications of Ro usseau's commitment to the principles of equality
and freedom provides one good reason that Rousseau has for worrying
about ordinary citizens' capacity to determine the content of the general
will by means of direct, active participation in the legislative process. For
as Rousseau himself recognizes, such participation in the legislative process
may fail to generate decisions that conform to the general will because the
laws agreed upon do not reflect a genuine commitment to the principles
of equality and freedom.
This type of failure is all the more likely when the following factors apply:
(I) individuals cast their votes against the backgro und of an ongoing blind,
spontaneous dependence-generating process which has material inequality
as one of its unintended consequences; (2) some (perhaps the majority) of
these individuals have an interest in maintaining and perpetuating existing
conditions, which are the product of such a process, because they them
selves benefit from these conditions; (3) something like Fichte's theory of
property represents an adequate institutional embodiment of the principles
of equality and freedom as conceived by Rousseau; and (4) guaranteeing
property rights as determined by such a theory of property wo uld require
a radical redistribution of resources that overrides many existing claims
concerning property rights, together with a high degree of state regulation
and supervision. Conditions (I) and (2) are compatible with Rousseau's
1 4 Cf. Fralin, Rousseau and Representation.
>5 For an attempt to defend Rousseau against the accusation that he limits genuine democratic activity,
see Cohen, Rousseau, 166ff. While Cohen makes a strong case for thinking that Rousseau does not
allow the executive to dominate the legislative body by appealing to particular aspects of his
constitutional thinking, this still leaves us with the broader question as to whether the normative
aspects of Rousseau's political thought might not be in tension with his commitment to popular
sovereignty and democratic rule, with this tension manifesting itself in some of Rousseau's own
statements concerning the process by means of which the content of the general will is determined.
Imposing order
129
description of the fraudulent social pact in the Second Discourse, while

I have argued in this chapter that (3) and (4) follow from one plausi
ble account of what it would mean to treat property as an institutional
embodiment of the principles of equality and freedom.
The possibility that even a majority of citizens may refuse to agree to
certain laws governing property rights because these laws run counter to
their own particular interests, and to the way in which existing conditions
favo ur these interests at the expense of o ther people's interests, suggests
the following dilemma. The lawgiver or government will either have to
betray the principles that ought to determine the legal and institutional
structures of a political community which accords with the general will or
have to impart by means of force a different principle of motion (to use
Adam Smith's phrase) to the citizens who oppose the measures demanded
by these principles than the one that is provided by their own interests
and prejudices. The need for coercio n, as a response to the failure of
democratic procedures, implied by the second scenario poses a twin threat
to moral freedom. First of all, obeying the laws to which one is subject
becomes a matter of necessity rather than freedom.1 6 Secondly, partici
pating in the deliberative process by means of which the laws to which
one becomes subject are decided upon for Rousseau represents an impor
tant means of exercising moral freedom. Yet in the face of the normative
constraints to which the outcomes of any such deliberative process must
conform if they are to count as genuine expressions of the general will,
this process itself appears to lack any real, unimpeachable authority.27 In
this respect the exercise of moral freedom threatens to become essentially
illusory. In short, there appears to be a serious conflict between Rousseau's
commitment to the principles of equality and freedom, especially in so
far as these principles demand legal and institutional embodiment, and
1 6 Fichte himself appears to recognire the existence of this problem in his discussion of how the
state official has the duty to act in accordance with rhe existing constitution, even though the state
official's own conscience informs him that it does not measure up to the purely rational constitution
of which he has knowledge. The main reason that Fichte gives for making this claim is significant.
It is that society itself and the end towards which it serves as the means, which is progress towards
a better condition, can exist only if there is a constitution that has been established on the basis of
universal consent (GA l/5: 310 ; SE: 337) . This particular reason suggests that imposing a rational
constitution on people would amount to an act of tyranny, because the constitution in question
would not be one that people had imposed upon themselves through the act of consenting to it.
17 Rousseau's argument for the necessity of a lawgiver who provides a basic set of laws that set out
the conditions of the civil association appears to be based on such a lack of faith in many people's
ability to determ ine without error the content of the general will. For he claims that although the
people will the good, they do not always see it, and that individuals must be obl iged to conform
their particular wills to the demands of reason and the public must be taught to know what it wills
(OC m: 380; PWz: 68) .
130
Imposing order
his commitment to the ideal of popular sovereignty and democratic self

rule, in so far as these ideals may fail in practice to generate the right
outcomes.
I shall explore this twin threat to moral freedom by showing how Fichte's
account of the pro cess whereby the content of the general (or common)
will is determined betrays an undemocratic tendency which can already
be detected in some of Rousseau's writings. 2 8 Fichte appears to want to
remove the uncertainty that pertains to democratic politics with respect
to its particular outcomes by developing an account of political authority
that relies ever more heavily on the idea of the necessity of political rule
by the most virtuous and wisest individuals. This view of the matter
implies that politics is an activity in which only a select few, whose superior
wisdom and moral probity is generally acknowledged, should engage. This
undemocratic tendency is already to be found in Fichte's theory of the
constitution of the state as set out in the first part of the Foundations of
Natural Right. Yet this tendency is partially offset by a democratic element
that promises to introduce a high degree of uncertainty, if only for a limited
period of time and in certain exceptional circumstances. Fichte's theory of
the constitution of the state here intersects in a number of ways with
Rousseau's views on popular sovereignty and on the problem of what it
means to know and to act in accordance with the general will. Yet in his
Rechtslehre from 1812, Fichte appears to close down altogether the space for
any kind of genuine demo cratic process.
As we have seen, Fichte deduces a civil contract, law and state authority as
conditions of right in the Foundations ofNatural Right. He then discusses
18
This tendency can be related to a feature of Rousseau's writings described as an 'anti-political

commun itarianism' that focuses on the social solidarity which must be fostered so as to un ite the
members of a society of equals who will and give priority to the common good. Cf. Cohen, Rousseau,
5 Such social solidarity can be viewed as aiming to guarantee that certain particular outcomes will
result from any process of del iberation and even to make deliberation unnecessary. This feature
of Rousseau's political thought is also said to form part of a political sociology and not part of a
philosophical conception of political legitimacy. Once again I would dispute the extent to which
these elements of Rousseau's thought can be separated from each other. This time, though, my
objection would be that the 'anti-political' aspects of his thought are intimately bound up with the
issue as to what is to happen when people fail to recognize how the constitutive principles of a just
social and political order, namely equality and freedom, find institutional embodiment in property
rights of a certain kind, and what are the grounds of such a failure. In this respect a distinction
can be drawn between the normative character of such principles (that is, their being constitutive
elements of the general will) and the process by means of which these principles are applied in
practice, which involves discovering what their legal or institutional embodiment would be.
131
the form of government in the third chapter of the doctrine of right, which
is entitled 'On Political Right, or Right within a Commonwealth' ( Vom
Staatsrechte, oder dem Rechte in einem gemeinen Wesen) . In the do ctrine of
right, Fichte speaks of 'the common will' (der gemeinsame Wille) . The idea
of such a will invites co mparisons with Rousseau's idea of the general will,
and I shall now highlight a feature of Fichte's acco unt of how the common
will is to be interpreted that recalls some things that Rousseau has to
say concerning how the content of the general will is to be determined.
At the same time, I identify an important difference between Rousseau's
and Fichte's thoughts on this issue. This difference becomes evident in
connection with Fichte's views on the question as to who should exercise
political authority and why they sho uld do so. To understand both the
differences and the similarities between the positions that Ro usseau and
Fichte adopt on the issue of how the content of the general (or common)
will is to be discovered, we first need to turn to Fichte's account of the
constitution of the state.
Fichte rejects the idea of a true democratic constitution which wo uld
involve the populace as a whole administering executive power. In this
respect he agrees with Rousseau, who insists that executive power must
be delegated by the sovereign people to the government. The reason that
Rousseau gives for the need to delegate executive power rests on the distinc
tion which he draws between the universality of law, which is the province
of the sovereign people as legislator, and particular acts that consist in
the application of the laws, which ought to be the province of the exec
utive power (OC III: 39 5f. ; PW2: 82) . When discussing a direct fo rm of
democracy in which the people executes the laws that it makes, Ro usseau
concedes that who ever makes the laws knows better than anyone else how
these laws should be interpreted and executed. He nevertheless argues that
this constitutes a bad arrangement, because attention, in being focused
on particular objects, is turned away from the general considerations that
ought to form the object of the people's deliberations.
Rousseau's real fear, however, is revealed by his statement that such an
arrangement is dangerous because it allows private interests to influence
public affairs (OC III: 404; PW2: 90f.) . In o ther words, when citizens have
a role in interpreting and executing the laws, they may come to employ the
laws as a means of pursuing their own private interests. This would happen
at the executive level when, for example, individuals or groups interpret
and seek to execute the laws that they have themselves made as members
of the sovereign legislative body in such a way as to eliminate or discredit
others, such as any political rivals that they may have. At the legislative
132
Imposing order
level, knowing that they are in the position to execute the laws that they
themselves help formulate could encourage some individuals to seek to
introduce laws that apply disproportionately to other individuals whom
they wish to harm in some way, so that their attention focuses on how
they might get others to accept the need for such laws. Essentially what is
needed is the independent exercise of executive power in accordance with
the laws. 29 For Rousseau, the alternative would be that 'disorder replaces
rule, force and will no longer act in concert, and the dissolved State thus
falls into despotism or anarchy' (OC III: 397; PW2: 83) . Although Fichte
does not advocate a strict separation of the legislative and executive powers,
he advocates the existence of a power that is independent of the sovereign
people and is charged by them with executing the laws fo r a similar reason.
This power is, however, also charged with the task of determining the
content of law, which means, in effect, that it, rather than the sovereign
people, interprets the general (or common) will.
As regards the independence of the executive power, Fichte rests his
case on the problems raised by the absence of any other power capable
of forcing the populace as a whole to administer the laws properly. In
a direct democracy, this problem manifests itself in the way in which the
populace becomes judge in its own cause. Fichte argues that such a situation
would have highly undesirable consequences in the shape of a condition
of insecurity and terror (das Schrecken), 'since one would have to fear not
only the violent acts of all the others just as he would outside the state, but
also , from time to time, the blind fury of an enraged mob that acts unjustly
in the name of the law' (GA 1!3: 439; FNR: 140) . Like Ro usseau, then, his
main fear appears to be that people will pursue their own private interests
while claiming that they are executing laws which express the general will.
By identifying these problems, Fichte believes that he has succeeded in
demonstrating the necessity of representation within a commonwealth.
He goes even further than Ro usseau, however, by depriving the sovereign
people of the task of legislation, which is delegated to the government,
whereas Rousseau insists on the inalienability of the sovereignty that resides
in determining the laws to which one is subject. Fichte accordingly claims
that the executive power 'includes the entire public power [die gesammte
19 Rousseau describes the problem that he has in mind when the sovereign legislative power also
exercises executive power in more general terms as the confusion brought about by failing to
separate right from fact, so that it is no longer clear what is law and what is not law (OC 111: 432;
PW2: n6). Perhaps, though, it is better to speak of a failure to maintain a firm enough distinction
between judgements concerning right, that is, judgements concerning which laws embody the
general will, and judgements concerning the application of these laws to particular cases.
133
ii./fentliche Gewalt] in all its branches' (GA l/3: 441; FNR: 142f.). In other
words, it comprises the legislative, executive and judicial powers.
Fichte views the legislative process as a matter of interpreting the com
mon will which is generated by the civil contract so as to arrive at a particular
set of laws. These laws are, therefore, 'not really new laws, but only more
determinate applications of the one fundamental law, which states: these
particular human beings are to live alongside one another in accordance
with right' (GA 1!3: 441; FNR: 142). Consequently, in so far as their duties
as legislators are concerned, the individuals vested with political authority
by the sovereign people must, above all else, act as reliable interpreters
of the common will embodied in this one fundamental law. This implies
that they must be capable of gaining insight into the true nature of this
fundamental law and the particular laws that can be derived from it. Given
the possibility that individuals may lack the reasoning powers or probity
needed to discover such a fundamental law and to derive a determinate set
of laws from it, the individuals whom the sovereign people invests with
political authority should be carefully chosen. Fichte himself states that the
'wisest among the people ought to be elected as magistrates' (GA l/3 : 451;
FNR: 154) . Thus Fichte's account of political authority is oriented towards
the idea that rational insight into the very nature of things, together with
the capacity to apply the particular laws that have been identified by means
of such insight to existing conditions, are the most important qualities
that individuals directly involved in political affairs will need to possess.
Fichte's account of the magistrate's function as interpreter of the common
will, and thus as legislator of particular laws, is nevertheless not so far
removed from Rousseau's position as it at first appears to be on account of
Rousseau's insistence on the primacy of popular sovereignty and the fact
that the executive power is merely an instrument of the sovereign people.
It can, in fact, be related to some things that Rousseau himself has to say
about how the content of the general will is to be determined.
In his Discourse on Political Economy, Ro usseau uses the term 'public
reaso n' when speaking of the magistrate's duty to 'follow no other rule
than the public reason [la raison publique], which is the law' (OC III: 243;
PW2: 5) . Since public reason is here identified with the law itself, it might
be interpreted as a principle, akin to natural law, which, altho ugh it needs
to be discovered by the magistrate, is valid independently of the process
by means of which it is discovered, including any deliberative democratic
pro cess. In this respect, Rousseau's use of the term 'public reason' do es
not entail the idea of public deliberation. Admittedly, the idea of public
deliberation can be detected in his claim that the magistrate sho uld be
134
Imposing order
wary even of his own reaso n (OC m : 243 ; PW2: 5), for this claim suggests
that the magistrate would to do well to pay attention to the opinions of
others. Yet Rousseau also speaks of the law as a 'celestial voice that dictates
the precepts of public reason to every citizen ', which invites an altogether
different interpretation when it is taken together with the emphasis that he
later places on the notion of duty as something that speaks to men's hearts
and depends on the morals of the citizens (OC m: 248ff. ; PW2: 10ff.) .
This interpretation wo uld be that individual judgement is sacrosanct,
and that what is required to determine the content of the general will
is simply an act of introspection by means of which a person seeks to
interpret the general will by heeding his or her own innate sense of justice.
This act will invariably yield the right result, Ro usseau suggests, if the
citizens' mores are wholesome enough. This interpretation is supported by
his claim in the Social Contract that the result must always be the general
will 'when an adequately informed people deliberates [delibere]' and the
citizens 'had no communication among themselves' (OC I I I : 371f. ; PW2:
6o). For these claims imply that ideally there should not be any need
for the citizens to deliberate among themselves and that deliberation here
means something like the act of reaching a final judgement on a matter
which allows for a definitive answer because the general will provides a
standard that is ultimately independent of human opinion and will; hence
Rousseau's claim that it cannot be destroyed or corrupted but remains
'constant, unalterable, and pure' (OC m: 438; PW2: 122) . Deliberation in
this sense does not require engaging in debate with others whose views
may differ from one's own and which one must take into consideration, so
that in this respect the attempt to assimilate Ro usseau's views on how the
content of the general will is to be determined to modern-day conceptions
of 'public reason' is misleading.30 Indeed, in the Social Contract Rousseau
appears to treat the existence of debate as a sign of decline in the morals
of a people and in the health of the body politic, when he makes the
following statement: 'The more concord reigns in assemblies, that is to
say the closer opinions co me to unanimity, the more the general will also
predominates; whereas long debates, dissensions, disturbances, signal the
ascendency of particular interests and the decline of the State' (OC I I I : 439 ;
PW2: 123).
3o
John Rawls claims that the idea o f 'deliberative reason' which h e attributes t o Rousseau anticipates
what he himself calls 'public reason'. Cf. Rawls, Lectures on the History ofPolitical Philosophy, 231. See
also Neuhauser, Rousseau s Theodicy ofSe/fLove, 195ff. For some doubts concern ing the validity of
this approach on grounds other than the ones given here, see James, 'Rousseau on Needs, Language
and Pity: The Limits of "Public Reason"'.
135
The deliberation that Rousseau has in mind therefore appears to be sim

ilar in kind to the deliberation in which Fichte's magistrate must engage
so as to discover the particular laws that give concrete expression to the
common will . The final results of such deliberation are products of inter
pretation and insight on the part of the individual who inwardly reflects
on the matter at hand, rather than carefully considered and well-fo unded
j udgements that are reached thro ugh a process of public deliberation.3'
This absence of genuine public deliberation removes both the potential for
conflict and the uncertainty that can be regarded as essential features of any
genuine democratic process. The difference between Rousseau's position
and Fichte's position is that Rousseau allows that every citizen may engage
successfully in the act of interpreting the general will, whereas Fichte assigns
the task of interpreting the common will to individuals who have already
been invested with political power. Thus, already in the Foundations of
Natural Right, Fichte exhibits a tendency to link insight and knowledge
with existing political power. The following passage provides a go od exam
ple of this tendency:
The administrator of the executive power is the natural interpreter of the
common will concerning the relationship of individuals to one another within
the state; he is the interpreter, not exactly of the will that the individuals
actually have, but rather of the will that they must have if they are to exist
alongside one another; and this is so, even if not a single person should, in
fact, have such a will (as one might well assume to be the case from time to
time) . (GA I/3 : 328; FNR: 16; emphasis added)
To speak of a 'natural' interpreter of the common will implies that some

people just happen to be better at performing the task of interpreting the
common will than others are, thus threatening to turn the performance of
this task into the preserve of a select gro up of individuals, who are held to
be eminently capable of gaining insight into what is best for the citizens of
" In Fichte's case, the absence of any need for public deliberation, despite the way in which he invokes
the idea of consent as the basis of any legitimate legal and political order, is evident from the
following statement concerning the law that determines the limits of the rights and of the freedom
of the members of a commun ity of free beings: 'Now they need not articulate the will of this
law explicitly, nor do they have to collect votes concerning it (which would result only in a very
impure expression of that will). Anyone who knows their number, their involvements, their entire
situation, can tell them what they all agree on. Their law is given to them by the rule of right and
by their particular physical situation, just as a mathematical product is given by the two factors
being multiplied; any intelligent being can attempt to find this law' (GA 1/3: 401; FNR: 99). This
statement concerning the task of determining the content of right is arguably compatible with some
form of technocratic authoritarianism.
Imposing order
a state and for the state as a whole.31 In the Foundations ofNatural Right,
this tendency is partially offset, however, by the introduction of what looks
like a radically democratic element.
Fichte's rejection of the idea of a separation of the powers results in a form
of government that, as he himself concedes, threatens to become despotic,
because all public power is concentrated in the hands of a single gro up
of people. The persons entrusted with executive power must, therefore,
somehow remain accountable to the populace. Although Fichte's position
on this issue differs from Rousseau's position in that it denies the separation
of the legislative body and the executive body, the particular problem that
he has in mind is similar to the kind of problem that Rousseau thinks
explains the inevitability of the decline of the political bo dy, namely, the
government's tendency to seek to oppress the sovereign:
Just as the particular will incessantly acts against the general will, so the
Government makes a constant effort against Sovereignty. The greater this
effort grows, the more adulterated does the constitution get, and si nce there
is here no other corporate will to resist the will of the Prince and so to
balance it, it must sooner or later come to pass that the Prince ends up
oppressing the Sovereign and breaking the Social treaty. (OC III: 421 ; PW2:
106)
Fichte's solution to this problem is to introduce an institutio n whose

task is to oversee the executive power and to judge whether or not the
public power is being administered properly by the particular persons to
whom it has been entrusted. Fichte calls this institution the ephorate (das
Ephorat) , and he describes its function in the third chapter of his doctrine
of right.
The members of this institution must be appointed by the populace so as
to ensure their independence of the executive. The ephorate itself lacks any
executive power, however, since its task is simply to examine and to decide
whether the government is acting as a reliable interpreter and guarantor of
the common will which is generated by means of the civil contract. The
ephors cannot, therefore, overrule any j udgements made by the government
A similar tendency can be discerned in Rousseau's writings. For example, when discussing an
aristocratic form of government, he states that 'the best and the most natural order is to have the
wisest govern the multitude, so long as it is certain that they will govern it for its advantage and not
for their own' (OC 111: 407; PW1: 93). Rousseau, however, is talking about the executive function,
not the legislative function which he assigns to the sovereign people. Fichte, by contrast, seems to
be saying something like the following: the best and most natural order is for the wisest members
of society to provide particular laws for the multitude, so long as it is certain that they will legislate
laws that serve the latter's interests and not their own private interests.
137
or hand down a verdict in any particular case. They nevertheless can, and
should, suspend all exercise of executive power by means of a state interdict
(Staatsinterdikt) and summon the populace to constitute itself as a whole,
that is, as the people (das Volk) , once they become convinced that this
power is not being administered properly.33 A people's tribunal, in which
the assembled people consider the evidence presented to them both by the
ephors and by the members of the government regarding the claim that the
executive power is not being administered properly, must then take place.
Finally, the people must decide which party is in the right, with the losing
party being judged to be guilty of high treason.34
Whatever one makes of its general plausibility, Fichte's account of the
constitutional role of the ephorate implies an act of genuine popular
sovereignty at the same time as it introduces an explicitly democratic
element into his theory of the constitution of the state. Indeed, although
Fichte argues for the need for representation on the grounds of the dangers
posed by a direct form of democracy, he ends up introducing what looks
very much like a direct form of democracy, albeit only in certain exceptional
circumstances that end once the members of the government, whether it
be the exonerated members of the current government or the members of
a new one, are seen to fulfil properly the functions of interpreting the com
mon will, executing what it demands and passing judgement in particular
cases whenever the laws have been violated. For during the period when all
exercise of public power is suspended and the assembled people consider
the claims made by the members of the ephorate, on the one hand, and
JJ
l4
The idea that all public power is suspended during this assembly of the people finds an echo in
Rousseau's statement that 'The instant the People is legitimately assembled as a Sovereign body, all
jurisdiction of the Government ceases, the executive power is suspended, and the person of the last
Citizen is as sacred and inviolable as that of the lim Magistrate' (OC 1 1 1 : 427f. ; PW2: 112).
The process by means of which the people constitutes itself as a whole, and makes its decision
known after having heard the evidence presented to it by both sides, remains obscure. Fichte
restricts himself to stating that although in small states, particularly republican ones, constitutional
law could prescribe that the people assemble on a regular basis and at specified times so that the
magistrates can give them an account of how the state is being administered, in a large state this
arrangement might not be feasible, and the populace should, therefore, be convened only when
it is absolutely necessary (GA 1/3: 447f.; FNR: 150) . The idea of regular popular assemblies is
also proposed by Rousseau: 'In addition to extraordinary assemblies which may be required by
unforeseen circumstances, there must be fixed and periodic assembl ies which nothing can abol ish
or prorogue, so that on the appointed day the people is legitimately summoned by law, without
need of any further formal convocation' (OC 111: 426; PW2: 111). Fichte also suggests that instead
of the whole populace gathering together in a single place, an investigation and discussion of the
issues raised in connection with the ephors' state interdict could be conducted and voted upon in
every ciry and village, though he goes on to claim that arranging matters in such a way that the
final result truly reflects the common will is ultimately not a question for the doctrine of right but
is instead a matter for politics (GA I/3: 450; FNR: 152).
Imposing order
those made by the members of the government, on the other, and must
decide between these rival claims, space exists for a democratic process
which introduces an element of considerable uncertainty into the political
life of the state. This is because various standpoints concerning the issues
at stake could develop amo ng the people, leading to the formation of dif
ferent groups arguing for potentially incompatible positions, with the final
outcome of such a process being unpred ictable. Yet this space for direct
democracy, and th us for uncertainty, is firmly closed down in Fichte's later
presentation ofhis theory of right, mainly because of his doubts concerning
the effectiveness of the institution of the ephorate and his declining faith
in the judgement of the people.
Political authority in Fichte's later Rechtslehre
In the section on the constitution (Komtitution) in his Rechtslehre from

1812, 35 Fichte no longer views the dangers of transferring power from the
people to a single person or group of persons i n terms of the problem
of despotism . The main problem has instead become that the person or
persons invested with political authority could be mistaken about that
which absolute j ustice demands or they may fail to subord inate their own
private wills to that which they themselves know is demanded by the idea
of j ustice. In other words , Fichte views the problem of poli tical authority in
terms of the worry that the rulers may fail to be reliable interpreters of the
common will and the worry that even if they are reliable interpreters of the
common will, they may nevertheless lack the moral probity needed to act
in accordance with its demands in the face of their own private interests.
These worries clearly relate back to Fichte's conception of the magistrate's
main functions in the Foundatiom of Natural Right. His position in the
Rechtslehre from 1812 is not, therefore, a completely new one.
Fichte identifies two general solutions to these problems. The first of
which is that sovereignty ( Oberhemchaft, Souverainitiit) should be granted
to the person whose own private will happens to be identical with, or most
closely approximates to, a truly j ust one. Fichte expresses this solution
in terms of the demand that the best person ought to rule (der beste sol/
hemchen) . Good government is here associated with the personal qualities
of the ruler. Given the way in wh ich Fichte formulates the problem of
political authority in his Rechtslehre from 1812, the best person must be
understood to mean the person who is most able to achieve insight into
Political authority in Fichte 's later Rechtslehre
1 39
what j ustice demands, and who is most morally j ust as well, so that this
insight will not be ignored or distorted for the sake of private interest. The
second quality can even be viewed as a condition of the fi rst one, although
Fichte does not expl icitly make this point, in the sense that the ability to
interpret the common will correctly may be held to depend on a person's
moral character. As we have seen , this is a view that Rousseau sometimes
appears to hold. The second solution is that the private will of the person
who happens to rule becomes truly j ust or as close as possible thereto. Fichte
expresses this solution in terms of the demand that the ruler ought to be
the best (Der Herrscher soli der Beste seyn) .
Fichte mentions various problems in relation to both of these solutions.
To begin with, there is the infinite regress which results from the idea that
the will of the ruler, like the will of every private person , must be subj ect
to a law of coercion (ein Zwangrgesez) so as to ensure that it itself wills in
accordance with the demands of j ustice. This requirement presupposes the
existence of another will capable of applying the law of coercion. Yet is there
any guarantee that it will always act in accordance with the demands of
j ustice, apart from the existence of another will capable of applying the law
of coercion and so on ad infinitum? This leads Fichte to argue that we must
simply accept the existence of a sovereign will that coerces others but is not
itself coerced; an assumption that appears to confirm the need for a ruler of
exceptional mo ral probity who possesses gen uine insight into the essential
nature of the common will. Fichte also considers placing the sovereign
person or persons in such a position that there exists no temptation for
them to be unjust, while they may have an incentive to be just in the form
of such motives as a sense of honour, the desire for fame or love of their
subjects . He points out, however, that these considerations fail to show how
insight i nto that which is j ust can be guaranteed . While in response to the
suggestion that the ruler could be given an excellent education (Erziehung) ,
Fichte asks who would educate the educator himself along with those
individuals who are to choose an educato r for the future ruler. Once again,
an infinite regress arises . Then, after reasserting his rej ection of the idea
of a separation of powers, Fichte exercises some explicit self-criticism by
expressing some doubts concerning the feasibility of his theory of the
ephorate.
First of all, Fichte points to the lack of any power capable of ensu ring
that the ephorate will begin a revolution, by which he presumably means
the act of suspending all exercise of executive power and summoning the
people, only when a violation of right has occurred. Secondly, there is the
problem that the govern ment, since it has all coercive power at its disposal,
Imposing order
could simply use this power to suppress the ephorate from the very begin
ning. In the Foundations ofNatural Right, Fichte suggests that the solution
to this problem consists in meeting the following requirement: 'the power
of the people must exceed beyond all measure the power that the executive
officials possess' (GA l/3: 453 ; FNR: 156) . In other words, the government
ought not to have the monopoly of the legitimate use of force. Rather, the
people must have more coercive means at its disposal than the government
has. Yet as we shall soon see, Fichte's Rechtslehre from 1812 betrays a suspi
cion of the people, which we may assume includes their capacity to employ
force legitimately. Thirdly, there is the question as to how can it be known
that the content of the people's verdict regarding whether the claims of the
ephorate or those of the executive power are valid is itself just when there
is no higher judge with the authority to determine this fact. In contrast
to his earlier faith in the people's ability to judge this matter correctly, as
expressed in such bold statements as the one that ' [n]o peo ple have ever
risen up in unison like a single man - nor ever will - unless the injustice [die
Ungerechtigkeit] has reached an extreme' (GA 1!3: 457; FNR: 160) , Fichte
now claims that a select gro up of the wisest people in society can always be
more trusted than any majority which has somehow arisen. This statement
indicates that he regards the existence of such a majority as an essentially
contingent matter, which is the result of blind, spontaneous forces, and that
the judgement of a majority that has arisen in this way is simply not to be
trusted.
Fichte also considers the institution of the ephorate to be impracticable
because human beings are, on the whole, simply too bad in a moral sense.
Shortly thereafter he identifies one consequence of this lack of morality
as the way in which it will not be the advice of those who are the wisest
and most morally go od in society, but the advice of the ignorant that will
be accepted by the majority of people. Although Fichte allows that this
state of affairs could be remedied by people becoming more cultivated and
more moral, the uncertain nature of such a transformation leads him to
assert that the 'true solution' is for the person whose will is the most just
to rule (GA I III3: 285). Yet even here Fichte identifies certain problems:
the existing rulers, even if they recognize the superiority of such a perso n,
would not give up their power to this person; the masses wo uld not elect
such a person, because only the good are able to recognize others of their
kind; and it may happen that even among an assembly of the best people,
each would want to be ruler, trusting himself more than others. In the face
of such problems, Fichte concludes that
Political authority in Fichte 's later Rechtslehre

the task of constructing right, which has now been led back to the task of
making the most j ust person of his age and nation into the ruler of the same
[den gerechtesten seiner Zeit u. Nation zum Herrscher derselben zu machen],

cannot be solved by means of human freedom. It is therefore a task for
the divine governance of the world . Justice [die Gerechtigkeit] in the state
depends, however, on the resolution of this task; this is therefore also a task
for the divine governance of the world. (GA IIII3: 285)
The matter is, in short, to be decided by a providential process. Given

Fichte's earlier approach of seeking to impose order on society in accordance
with the concept of a rational state together with his suspicion of any
spontaneously generated order, this faith in divine governance looks very
much like a counsel of despair. The passage quoted above nevertheless
appeals in its own way to a sense of order, although this time it is some
kind of cosmic order which does not depend on the human will for its
existence.
Thus if the state represents an essential stage in the process whereby
human beings gradually become more perfect, Fichte's account of the
conditions of the introduction of a just legal and political order implies
that there are considerable, perhaps insurmountable, obstacles to human
perfectibility, turning the latter into a matter of practical faith alone. It
appears, moreover, that by the time we get to his Rechtslehre from 1812,
Fichte has effectively closed down the space for any kind of demo cratic
pro cess, leaving us instead with the authoritarian, but benevolent, rule of
an individual who happens to be the wisest and most just person in a given
society. As I have shown, this position is the result of one possible response
to the problem as to whether democratic processes can really be trusted
to generate outcomes that truly manifest the principles of equality and
freedom, especially when, as in Fichte's theory of property, these principles
require a specific institutio nal embodiment which generates its own set
of co nstraints. Yet the idea of imposing order on the blind, spontaneous
forces that determine society, even if this is done in accordance with the
principles of equality and freedom, threatens to replace the quasi-natural
necessity exhibited by these forces with another form of necessity in the
shape of the co ercion that must be exercised on those individuals who
either resist the constraints that such an order imposes on them or who
accept these constraints only as a matter of necessity.
Hegel, like Kant, views the kind of blind, spontaneous process upon
which Rousseau and Fichte wish to impose order in a more positive light,
and such a process accordingly has an impo rtant part to play in his account
Imposing order
of human perfectibility. Although Hegel associates this perfectibility with
the capacity for freedom, he also makes explicit the ro le played by necessity
in perfecting humankind. At the same time, Hegel's commitment to the
idea of freedom means that he must explain how freedom is preserved in
the face of this necessity, especially when he himself rejects the notions
of popular sovereignty and democratic self-rule in such statements as that
to 'know what one wills, and even more, to know what the will which
has being in and for itself - i.e. reason - wills, is the fruit of profo und
cognition and insight [Eimicht] , and this is not the business of the people
[die Sache des Volkes]' (PR 3orA; translation modified) . This type of
statement recalls Fichte's conclusion that political authority ought to be
granted to individuals who are capable of achieving insight into the true
nature of a just social and political order, as opposed to this order being
determined from below, as it were, by the views and the decisions of the
people. Given his rejection of popular sovereignty and democratic self-rule,
it is not clear that Hegel can avoid altogether the idea of imposing order on
a potentially recalcitrant material in his attempt to explain the possibility of
a genuine general will. As we shall see, his position begins, in fact, to look
like an unstable synthesis of the position represented by Kant's philosophy
of history, on the one hand, and the position represented by Fichte's theory
of right, on the other. Thus in its own way Hegel's Philosophy of Right
reflects the tensions between the idea of will and the idea of necessity
already identified by Rousseau.
CHAPTER FOUR
Will and necessity in Hegel 's Philosophy of Right
Hegel's re-conceptualization of the general will
Hegel praises Rousseau for making the will into the principle of the state,
a principle that has thought not only as its 'form' but also as its 'content'.
Yet immediately afterwards he claims that
Rousseau considered the will only in the determinate form of the individual
will (as Fichte subsequently also did) and regarded the universal will [den
allgemeinen Willen] not as the will's rationality in and for itself, but only
as the common element arising out of this individual will as a conscious will.
The union of individuals within the state thus becomes a contract, which
is accordingly based on their arbitrary will [ Willkur] and opinions, and on
their express consent given at their own discretion. (PR 258A)
Hegel's criticisms of Ro usseau's conception of the general will are essen

tially criticisms of contract theories of the state more generally. This is why
Fichte is also mentioned. In Hegel's view, such theories make the mistake
of beginning with the arbitrary will of the individual, by asking on what
grounds individuals could have consented to form a single legal and polit
ical community. The notion of consent implies that the act of entering
into the contract by means of which such a community is instituted is a
matter of 'conscious will' in the sense that individuals reflect on whether or
not this act represents the most effective means of securing their interests.
Since the act in question is based on what these individuals consider to
be in their best interests, and on what they think are the most effective
means of securing these interests, the basis of the state is made into an
essentially contingent one; for if these interests or the views regarding the
best means of securing them happened to change, it could be that the
individuals concerned would no longer regard their membership of a par
ticular legal and political community as necessary. This contingency with
respect to the fo undations of the state and the collective will generated
by the social contract leads Hegel to speak of this contract as being based
143
144
on the arbitrary will, that is, on a will which co uld have chosen differently
from what it in fact chose.
Hegel surely exaggerates the degree to which contract theories of the
state are based on contingency and are a matter of arbitrariness. After all,
we have seen how both Fichte's and Rousseau's versions of this type of the
ory are shaped by a concern to secure certain fundamental interests that all
individuals are assumed to share, most notably an interest in securing their
equal status and their freedom in relation to others. Moreover, Hegel's the
ory of the modern form of ethical life (Sittlichkeit) can itself be interpreted
in such a way as to make it appear much closer to social contract theory
and to Rousseau's version of it in particular - than his own comments con
cerning this type of theory suggest. This is done by showing how Hegel's
theory of the modern fo rm of ethical life involves a co nception of the good
of individuals in the shape of their fundamental interests taken together
as a whole that determines what laws and institutions are to be viewed as
rational_ In what follows, I offer an acco unt of how Hegel's theo ry of civil
society in some important respects supports this kind of interpretation,
because of the way in which this sphere of the modern form of ethical life
is held to accommodate and to help realize that which Hegel himself calls
'subjective freedom'.
In praising Rousseau for making the will into the principle of the state,
Hegel already signals that his Philosophy ofRight in some sense represents
a continuation of the approach adopted by such social contract theorists
as Rousseau and Fichte. As we shall see, by making the will into the prin
ciple of the state, Hegel is led to incorporate the type of individualistic
standpoint which he associates with contract theories of the state into
his account of the modern form of ethical life. He sho uld not, there
fore, be seen as claiming that this type of theory is completely wrong.
In Hegel's view, the individualistic standpoint which he associates with
contract theories of the state nevertheless cannot explain the nature of a
genuine general will. In order to understand why Hegel thinks this, and
how he himself reformulates the idea of the general will, we first need to
look at what he means by 'the will's rationality in and fo r itself', for it is in
terms of this conception of the will that he thinks Rousseau should have
regarded the universal (or general) will, instead of treating it as a 'common
element'.
In the same section of the Philosophy ofRight in which Hegel both praises
and criticizes Rousseau, we encounter the following statement:
1 C Neuhouser, Foundations ofHegel's Social Theory, 175fT.
Hegel's re-conceptualization ofthe general will
145
Considered in the abstract, rationality consists in general in the unity and

interpenetration of universality and individuality. Here, in a concrete sense
and in terms of i ts content, it consists in the unity of objective freedom
(i.e. of the universal substantial will) and subjective freedom (as the free
dom of individual knowledge and of the will in its pursuit of particular
ends) . And in terms of its form , it therefore consists in self-determining
action in accordance with laws and principles based on thought and hence
universal. (PR 258A)
Here again we encounter the form-content distinction already found in

Hegel's statement that the will, as the principle of the state, has thought
both as its form and as its content. In the passage cited above, the content is
identified with the unity of the concepts of objective freedom and subjective
freedom, while the form is associated with agency which is free and rational
because it is determined by laws and principles that are the products of
tho ught and are universal in kind. This type of agency recalls the idea of
moral freedom, and it is integral to the concept of the will which Hegel
sets out in the introduction to the Philosophy of Right. In what follows, I
restrict myself to noting the features of Hegel's theory of the will that are
essential to explaining his conception of right and his re-conceptualization
of the idea of the general will, both of which concern his claim that the
unity of the concepts of objective freedom and subjective freedom is the
content of this will.
The idea that the will is free forms the basic assumption of Hegel's theo ry
of right (Recht) (PR 4) . For Hegel, willing and thinking are essentially
interrelated, as opposed to being diverse, independent faculties. This is
because human beings do not, unlike other animals, simply act in acco r
dance with external stimuli, with their response (or lack of response) to
these stimuli being determined by how they are physically constituted.
Rather, the spontaneity which consists in being able to act according
to representations that one has oneself formed, and which are based on
tho ught because they involve the use of concepts, is at work in each act of
willing (PR 4Z, 5A) . For example, the notion of happiness, as the repre
sentation of 'a sum total of satisfactio n' is already characterized by a certain
level of generality, even though the actual content of this representation
may vary from person to person and in this sense is merely particular. This
is because, irrespective of its particular content, the no tion of happiness
combines within itself various determinations (for example, the preferences
whose satisfaction one believes will make one happy and the opinions that
one has concerning the best means of satisfying these preferences) (PR 20,
including Z) . Thus the willing of one's own happiness already involves the
146
use of a concept which is of an essentially general nature, as opposed to its

being simply an instinctive drive or response determined by blind, sensuous
impulses.
At the practical level, moreover, the representation of happiness requires
treating the satisfaction of some desires, drives and inclinations as more
important than that of others, because not all of the agent's given desires,
drives and inclinations are necessarily compatible. This act of ordering
presupposes a reflective distance between the self and its given desires,
drives and inclinations that enables the self to cho ose to satisfy some
desires, drives or inclinations in preference to others. In this respect, 'this
content is only a possible one for the reflection of the " !" into itself; it
may or may not be mine; and "I" is the possibility of determining myself
to this or to so mething else, of choosing between these determinations
which the "I" must in this respect regard as external' (PR 14) . Having
deprived itself of all immediate, determinate content by means of reflec
tion, the self can even conceive of itself as an abstract universal, that is,
as a self which is free in relation to all given determinations and can
therefore regard itself as essentially independent of, and undetermined by,
them.
Hegel identifies the first moment of the will with this 'pure indeter
minacy' (PR 5) . He calls this kind of freedom 'negative' freedom. This
freedom is not negative in the sense that it consists in the absence of
external interference; rather, it is negative in the sense that it involves an
act of abstraction in relation to that which is immediately given. This given
content can have either the internal form of desires, drives and inclinations,
or the external form that Hegel identifies with the 'objective' will, which
'lacks the infinite form of self-conscio usness' and 'is the will immersed in
its object or condition, whatever the content of the latter may be - it is
the will of the child, the ethical will, or the will of the slave, the supersti
tious will, etc. ' (PR 26). The examples that Hegel gives of this objective
will make clear that it is subject to practical constraints that issue from
an external authority (for example, a parent, social norms based on tradi
tion, a master, a priest or ecclesiastical body) which is merely given and is
accepted as such, in the sense that the agent who is subject to the prac
tical constraints that this authority generates has no insight into them,
and this is why 'the infinite form of self-consciousness' is lacking. This
view of the objective will as something that is essentially deficient in this
regard already implies a commitment to the idea of moral freedom broadly
construed.
147
Hegel does not consider the type of negative freedom described above
on its own to constitute true freedom, even if it represents the possibility
of the act of free choice on which all acts of freedom depend. It is instead
only 'the will's abstract certainty of its freedom', because the will 'do es
not yet have itself as its content and end, so that the subjective side is
still something other than the objective' (PR 15A) . Thus although this
negative freedom is a condition of all other forms of freedom, the problem
remains that the self is confronted with a given content (for example,
its immediate desires, drives and inclinations or some external authority)
which it cannot, as it stands, recognize as a product of its own free will. It
can only begin to recognize this content as truly its own by resolving on
one determinate end in opposition to other possible ends. This represents
the second moment of the will, which Hegel describes as 'the absolute
moment of the finitude or particularization of the "I'" (PR 6) . Since the
first and second moments of the will are equally essential with respect to
what it means to will freely, Hegel identifies the concept of the will with
the unity of these two moments. In this unity the will remains with itself
(bei sich) in the particular content that it wills in the sense of remaining
essentially independent of this particular content, because it retains the
capacity to conceive of itself in abstraction from any such content and to
adopt one particular end rather than another one (PR 7).
The ends that form the determinate content of the will can be either
subjective in kind, in the shape of the representation of an end which the
agent makes its own, or objective in kind, in the shape of an end which has
also been realized in the external wo rld (PR 9). In so far as the content
of the will (that is, its end) remains a representation, it is merely formal
and, as such, is confronted with an external world which is itself something
merely given (PR 8). Thus there are various levels at which the form
content distinction operates. This distinction first presents itself as the
opposition between the will in its abstraction from any given content and
the particular content of the will. Next it presents itself as the opposition
between the content of the will as something merely formal, in the sense
of being purely subjective, and this content as actualized in the external
world, enabling the subjective will to experience the objectification of its
own free agency. As we shall see, the notion that the will objectifies itself is
integral to Hegel's theory of right.
We are now in a better position to understand one of the main ways in
which Hegel attempts to reformulate Rousseau's notion of the general will.
He does this by conceiving of the general will as the concept of the will
148
instantiated in each and every individual will, and by making the concept of
the will into the principle of his Philosophy ofRight. 2 In a student transcript
of Hegel's lectures on his Encyclopaedia ofthe Philosophical Sciences, Hegel
is recorded as explicitly acknowledging this move by claiming that the
universal (or general) will (der allgemeine Wille) is the concept of the will
(der Begriffdes Willens) (EL 163Z1). Significantly, this claim is made in
connection with Ro usseau's alleged failure to observe the distinction that
he himself draws between the will of all (Ia volonte de tous) and the general
will (Ia volonte genera/e) . For Rousseau, the general will pays attention only
to the common interest, while the will of all is no more than a sum total
of particular wills whose union is based on self-interest (OC m: 371; PW2:
6o). Thus the will of all amounts only to 'the common element arising
out of this individual will as a conscious will' that Hegel mentions when
criticizing contract theories of the state. Hegel is suggesting, then, that
Rousseau confuses the general will with the type of collective will which
is generated on the basis of certain interests that all particular individuals
are held to share and that in this respect represent a 'common element'.
These individuals may then reach an agreement concerning the best means
of securing these shared interests. This turns the basis of the state into a
contingent one in the sense that some individuals may come to renounce
the interests that they have in common with others or they may develop
different views concerning the best means of securing these interests.
Hegel's reformulation of Rousseau's idea of the general will turns on
identifying the general will with the essential conceptual structure of the
will, that is, with the will conceived in terms of those features which each
and every individual will must be thought to possess when it is considered
in abstraction from the particular, contingent content that distinguishes
the will of one person from that of another person . The general will in
this sense does not need to be produced by means of a contract or any
other aggregative act. This type of act can in any case generate only a
sum total of particular wills that have certain interests in common and
thus possess some basis for agreement, while securing these shared interests
will almost certainly require the subordination or renunciation of some
of the particular interests that these individuals happen to have. Such an
understanding of the general will provides one possible interpretation of
Rousseau's vague claim that the general will is what is left as the sum of
differences when 'one takes away the pluses and the minuses which cancel
>
Cf. Riedel, Between Tradition and Revolution, 67.
149
each other' from the particular wills that, when viewed in aggregative terms,
consti tute the will of all (OC m : 3 7 1 ; PW2 : 6o) . For Hegel, this type of
universali ty is essentially different from the higher form of universality
at wh ich his speculative philosophy aims to arrive. Hegel himself alludes
to th is essential difference when he claims that a condition of general
well-being (allgemeine Wohl) would not yet constitute the state, because
we would have only a collection of individuals (ein KoUektivum) but not
universality (die Allgemeinheit) (VRP2: IV: 338) .
By re-conceptualizing the idea of the general will in the way that he
does, Hegel implies that, as in social contract theory, there is a conception
of the good of individuals that places constraints on how rational laws and
institutions may be organized. Since the will is held to be general in the
sense of being the basic conceptual structure which receives its instantiation
in each and every individual will, all free and rational agents must be
assumed to possess a will with the relevant structu re. The actualization of
the general will must, therefore, aim at the common interest understood
as the fundamental interest in securing the conditions of thei r free and
effective agency in the world which all individ uals can be thought to share.
This is one of the main ways in which Hegel can be said to adopt a position
very close to the one adopted by Rousseau, for whom rational laws and
institutions secure the necessary conditions of the freedom of individual
social members.3
The demand to overcome the merely formal character of the concept
of the will raises the question as to how this concept can be adequately
objectified while retaining the general character that it possesses in virtue
of the way in which it expresses the structure common to each and every
individual will. In other words, it is not simply a matter of explaining the
nature or essence of the general will; rather, an account of the existence of
such a will must also be provided. This issue bri ngs us back to the content
of the will. As it stands, the will is, for Hegel , 'free only in itselfor for us, or
it is in general the will in its concept' , whereas only 'when the will has itself
as its obj ect is it for itselfwhat it is in itself' (PR 10) . The concept of the
will must, in short, be obj ectified in some way, and th is objectification of
the concept of the will must realize the fundamental interest in securing
the conditions of their own free and effective agency in the world that all
individuals must be thought to share.
J Cf. Neuhauser, Foundations
Neuhauser's boo k .
of Htgtl's Social Thtory.
This claim is made a1 various poims in
150
For Hegel, the content of the will can be merely particular, as in the
case of immediate desires, drives and inclinations, or it can be more or less
universal. The idea of happiness represents a combination of particularity
and universality. On the one hand, it is a general representation which
requires the subordination of some desires, drives and inclinations to others,
thereby giving rise to a certain degree of systematic unity. On the other
hand, the idea of happiness differs from person to person with respect to its
determinate content, so that the universality in question is a merely formal
one, whose content may vary and in this respect remains indeterminate.
Hegel goes on to speak, however, of the will that 'has universality, or itself as
infinite form, as its content, object, and end, it is free not only in itselfb ut
also for itself' (PR 21) . From what has been said above, this can be taken
to mean that the concept of the will, which is wholly universal (or general)
in kind, becomes 'for itself' by being objectified in the sense that the
conditions of its own realization are present in the external world. In other
words, this will is general not only in terms of its form but also in terms
of its content, which here means the objectification of the will, because
this content aims at the general good of all by securing the conditions of
free agency in the world. The status of right as the objectification of the
concept of the will leads Hegel to describe it as 'any existence in general
which is the existence of the free will' (PR 29) .
Thus despite the way i n which Hegel re-conceptualizes the idea o f the
general will, his theory of right involves some typically Rousseauian themes,
especially a concern with equality and freedom. The notion of equality is
implied by the idea that the will which achieves existence in the form
of right is general in the sense of being instantiated in each and every
individual will . In order to constitute the genuine existence of the free will,
right itself must be sufficiently general in the sense of not favouring the
interests of particular individuals or groups of individuals at the expense
of the interests of other individuals or groups within society; altho ugh,
as we shall see, this concern does not prevent Hegel from allowing the
conditions of free agency in the world to generate material inequality. The
notion of equality with which he operates is in this respect much thinner
than the one with which Rousseau operates. As regards freedom, Hegel's
conception of right as the objectification of the general will, understood
as the concept of the will instantiated in each and every individual will,
implies the 'positive' model of freedom which is taken to involve some
form of self-determination thro ugh which an individual realizes him- or
herself, as opposed to the 'negative' freedom which consists in freedom
from external interference, especially of a coercive, intentional kind.
151
Typically, while it is recognized that positive freedom requires the exis

tence of negative freedom, it is held to differ from the latter in the sense
that it does not consist in being determined by one's beliefs, impulses and
desires whatever they happen to be. Rather, freedom consists in obeying
certain objectively valid norms, or by acting in accordance with the legal
or institutional embodiments of these norms, with which one can never
theless identify oneself as a free and rational agent. There can, therefore, be
forms of state interference that do not endanger human freedom. Rather,
the practical constraints that rational laws and institutions generate are
held to be conditions of freedom, so that in freely subjecting o urselves to
these constraints, we are securing the conditions of our own agency. In
other words, subjection to such constraints is not incompatible with the
agent's moral freedom, provided that these laws and institutions genuinely
do secure the conditions of free agency. In what follows, I shall bring out
the role that this positive model of freedom plays in Hegel's Philosophy of
Right by concentrating on the form of freedom which he terms 'subjective
freedom'.
In one of the passages from the Philosophy ofRight which I quoted ear
lier, Hegel describes the content of the will as the unity of the concept
of objective freedom and the concept of subjective freedom. While objec
tive freedom may be identified with right as the existence of freedom in
the shape of a set of laws and institutions that secure the conditions of
free agency, Hegel describes subjective freedom in the same passage as 'the
freedom of individual knowledge and of the will in its pursuit of particular
ends'. In the next section, I show how Hegel's theory of right incorporates
this knowledge and pursuit of particular ends in such a way as to assimilate
subjective freedom to the positive mo del of freedom. Despite his use of
the term 'subjective', Hegel does not, therefore, have in mind a form of
freedom which is by its very nature something merely subjective in kind,
that is to say, a sense of freedom that lacks any real justification because
it has no basis in objective conditions. This subjective freedom is instead
held to stand in an essential relation to the institutions of the modern form
of ethical life that Hegel presents in the Philosophy of Right as enabling
conditio ns of human freedom, in the sense that it itself depends on the
existence of these same institutions, whose justification in large part rests
on their being genuine conditions of this subjective freedom. It is, in fact,
by seeking to demonstrate the possibility of the unity of subjective freedom
and objective freedom that Hegel attempts to show how this unity itself
may become the content of the will. It becomes the content of the will
in the form of an existing world in which this unity becomes the object
152
of human conscio usness and willing in the sense that individuals have an
interest in establishing or maintaining it thro ugh their actions. At the same
time, this world confronts individuals as something given and it must,
therefore, be regarded as the product of a historical pro cess.
Given the way in which the laws and institutions of the modern form
of ethical life represent conditions of free agency, individuals are able to
identify themselves with these objective conditions of their own freedom
in such a way that the practical constraints that these laws and institutions
generate need not be experienced as purely external, arbitrary constraints.
In this respect, practical necessity is held to be compatible with the self
determining nature of the will, even tho ugh the notion of constraint appears
to conflict with the idea of freedom when the latter is understood in purely
negative terms. Hegel himself describes this compatibility in connection
with the ethical obligations to which the institutions of the modern form
of ethical life give rise as follows:
A binding duty can appear as a limitation only in relation to indeterminate
subjectivity or abstract freedom, and to the drives of the natural will or
of the moral will which arbitrarily [aus seiner Wz'llkur] determines its own
indeterminate good. The individual, however, finds his liberation [Btfreiung]
in duty. (PR 149)
Since these constraints need not be viewed as external, arbitrary ones

in so far as they represent conditions of free agency, Hegel invokes the
idea of absence of dependence by claiming that 'in this freedom . . . the
will is completely with itself[bei sich] , because it has reference to nothing
but itself, so that every relationship of dependence on something other than
itself is thereby eliminated' (PR 23). This claim suggests that Hegel is, like
Rousseau, attempting to provide a solution to the threats posed to freedom
by a co nditio n of human interdependence that appeals to the idea of
moral freedom understood as a form of self-sufficiency. Hegel nevertheless
identifies the notion of right as simply a limitation on the freedom of the
arbitrary will with the view
especially prevalent since Rousseau, according to which the substantial basis
and primary factor is supposed to be not the will as rational will which has
being in and for itself or the spirit as true spirit, but will and spirit as the
particular i ndividual, as the will of the single person in his distinctive arbi
trariness [in seiner eigentumlichen Willkur] . Once this principle is accepted,
the rational can of course appear only as a limitation on the freedom in
question, and not as an immanent rationality, but only as an external and
formal universal. (PR 29A)
153
Here it is suggested that the individualistic standpoint adopted by social

contract theory, including Rousseau's version of such a theory, cannot
comprehend right as anything more than an external constraint on free
dom, albeit a necessary one if the freedom of one person is to co exist with
that of others. This conception of right appears to be at odds with the
positive notion of freedom which treats the constraints to which one is
subject as non-external ones in the sense that the agent that is subject to
them is at the same time the so urce of these constraints. It also relates
to another criticism that Hegel makes of social contract theory, namely,
that the individualistic assumptions on which it is ultimately based result
in confusing the state with civil society, by equating the state with the
functions of securing and protecting property and personal freedom, so
that 'the interest ofindividuals as such becomes the ultimate end for which
they are united [vereinigt] ', rather than their union ( Vereinigung) as such
forming 'the true content and end' of the will (P R 258A) . Hegel here
wants to contrast his theory of the modern form of ethical life with social
contract theory by claiming that the latter fails to explain how the gen
eral will itself becomes the direct object of each individual will, rather
than being conceived as merely the necessary means of securing certain
fundamental interests in a condition of human interdependence. A direct,
conscious identification of oneself with the social or political whole of
which one is a member would help to explain how the sense of con
straint that is experienced in relation to laws and institutions when they
are co nceived only as necessary limitations on natural freedom might be
removed.
Once again, however, attention has been drawn to the compatibility
of Hegel's and Ro usseau's positions. This time it is done by claiming
that individual social members must possess general wills, in the sense
of conscio usly identifying themselves with the universal will embodied in
rational laws and institutions, if they are to remain free instead of being
determined by an external other, because the failure to will the common
good for its own sake would represent for both Rousseau and Hegel a
form of alienation when compared to what happens when individuals
consciously identify themselves with the general will and accord it an
intrinsic, rather than merely instrumental, value.4 There are some issues
4 Cf. Neuhauser, Foundatiom of Hegel's Social Theory, 193f. For a similar type interpretation of
Rousseau, see Cohen, Rousseau, 84ff. Here it is argued that individuals must identifY themselves
with the common good if they are to act on principles that they can recognize as their own, as
opposed to being subject to externally imposed constraints, and that they can, therefore, express
their nature (that is, as autonomous beings) only by having a general will, so that it is in having such
154
that I would like to highlight with respect to this type of claim since they
will figure later in this chapter.
To begin with, in seeking to assimilate subjective freedom, which relates
to the interests of individuals as such, to the positive model of freedom
in his account of civil society, Hegel treats the latter as the sphere of the
modern form of ethical life in which moral freedom is to some extent
realized at the same time as the interests of individuals as such remain the
ultimate end for which they are united. In this respect, he seems to want
to incorporate an integral feature of social contract theory into his acco unt
of a distinctively modern form of ethical life, while also seeking to explain
how the practical constraints encountered by individuals in civil society
need not be experienced as purely external constraints on their arbitrary
wills. At the same time, Hegel views civil society as a sphere of mutual
dependence and influence in which human beings are educated towards
a more universalistic standpoint by means of the practical constraints to
which they are subject, tho ugh without their necessarily being conscious
of this fact. To this extent, he shares with Kant the view that the pursuit
of self-interest in society is ultimately beneficial as long as it is subject to
certain legal and institutional constraints, because it helps to generate a
more universal form of consciousness and will.
In his theory of civil society, Hegel draws particular attention to the
economic and social forms of necessity that determine human thought and
actio n even in the case of the modern subject, with its heightened con
sciousness of itself as free. Necessity is here taken to perform an educative
function which consists in the develo pment of a universal consciousness
and will. The fo rmative process which individuals undergo in civil society
represents one example of why one might be tempted to claim that Hegel
offers a defence of civil society as against Rousseau's 'anti-commercial'
critique of it, by showing how in helping to educate the individual to uni
versality, civil society is not merely a place of selfish individualism opposed
to the universality of the state.5 Rather, civil society has an essential role
a will that autonomy consists. As I suggested in the last chapter, there may indeed be a problem with
respect to the idea of moral freedom when individuals are subjected to constraints with which they
themselves do not identify, and that this may even be the case when the constraints in question can
be justified from a normative standpoint. This raises the question of how individuals may come to
have a general will when they cannot simply be assumed to have such a will. As we shall see, Hegel
seeks to address this issue by means of an institutional account of how a more universal form of
consciousness and will can be generated in a condition in which individuals are in itially motivated
by self-interest and how, more generally, individuals need not experience the constraints to which
they are subject as purely external ones.
5 Cf. Franco, Hegel's Philosophy ofFreedom, 254
155
to play in an acco unt of human perfectibility, whose final goal is a fully

ethical existence.
Hegel's identification of such a formative process shows that he does not
think it is enough simply to complete the formal task of showing what
is the nature or essence of the general will. An account of the existence
of such a will must also be provided, and this task ultimately requires
demonstrating how the general will can be fully present in the conscio us
ness of the individual members of the modern form of ethical life which
he sets o ut in the Philosophy of Right, in the sense that these individu
als consciously identify themselves with such a will and make it into the
direct object of their activity. I shall argue that Hegel nevertheless fails
to offer a convincing explanation of the transition from the universality
of the type of consciousness and will which he thinks characterizes civil
society to the universality of the type of consciousness and will demanded
by the political state. I show that the reason for this failure is already
identified by Rousseau, and that the gap which remains between partic
ularity and universality in Hegel's acco unt of the mo dern form of ethical
life invites the idea of imposing order on the forces and particular interests
governing society, despite Hegel's appeal to a process by means of which
a genuinely universal consciousness and will is in large part spontaneously
generated.
Hegel's failure to explain the transition described above is not the only
potential source of alienation in his Philosophy of Right. His attempt to
deprive necessity of its status of a purely external constraint, by showing
how certain practical constraints can be viewed as conditio ns of human
freedom, is also not without problems. Hegel's account of economic neces
sity implies that there are people who are likely to become fully aware of
the practical constraints on their agency without being able to recognize
these constraints as conditions of their own freedom. These people will,
therefore, in all likelihood experience the constraints that the modern state
imposes on them as alien, external ones. The counterpart to this group of
people is represented by certain individuals who are arguably not as free
as they conceive themselves to be. Rather, they fail to recognize the extent
to which the practical constraints generated by the nexus of economic and
social relations within which they think and act determine their thoughts
and actions. Hegel implies, in short, that the modern experience of free
dom may in certain circumstances be merely subjective in kind because
it does not adequately reflect objective conditions. At the same time, full
acceptance of, and identification with, the constraints generated by the
laws and institutions of the modern form of ethical life presented in the
156
Philosophy of Right presuppose the development of the kind of universal

consciousness and will that both of the groups of people mentioned above
must be thought to lack. Thus human perfectibility turns o ut to be subject
to certain inherent limits in so far as the modern state is taken to represent
one of its main conditions.
Subjective freedom
Hegel stresses the historical nature of subjective freedom, that is, its emer
gence within a distinct form of ethical life. Broadly speaking, ethical life
is the totality of cultural, legal, social, political and religious relations that
define a particular shared form of life. Hegel lists 'love, the romantic,
the eternal salvation of the individual as an end . . . morality [Moralitat]
and co nscience' as specific shapes that the right of subjective freedom has
assumed in the course of history (PR 124A). As these examples show,
subjective freedom is both the product and a defining feature of the form
of ethical life that emerged in Western Europe on fo undations provided by
the Christian religion. Hegel identifies the principle of subjective freedom
with the 'principle of the self-sufficient and inherently infinite personality of
the individual', and he claims that this principle arose in an 'inward' form
in the Christian religion and in an 'external' form in the Roman world (PR
18 5A) .
The principle of subjective freedom arose in an external form in the
Roman Empire because the personality of the individual achieved recog
nition in the equal legal status accorded to each person to whom the status
of Roman citizen was granted. This recognition came at the price of the
atomization and privatization of so ciety, because the universal (that is, state
power as embodied in the person of the emperor) became detached from
the society of property-owning Roman citizens with their equal legal sta
tus and formal rights (PR 357). Here we encounter the emergence of a
universal that appears in the shape of an external, if necessary, constraint
on human agency. The principle of subjective freedom arose in an inward
form in the Christian religion in the sense that the sanctity of the indi
vidual's own inner world achieved recognition. The external and internal
forms that the principle of subjective freedom has assumed invite the ques
tion as to whether the universal which has achieved an objective form can
be united with the inwardness characteristic of the Christian religion, so
as to remove the alien, merely external appearance that legal and institu
tional constraints on human agency have come to assume. In other words,
how can moral freedom, broadly construed, be made compatible with the
Subjective .freedom
157
existence of laws and institutions that possess an objective status in relation

to the wills of the individuals who are subject to the constraints that they
generate? In Hegel's Philosophy ofRight, the external, objective form which
the principle of subjective freedom assumes can be associated with the first
part entitled 'abstract right', which concerns property rights, contracts and
the wrong ( Unrecht) that consists in violating the laws governing contrac
tual and property relations, whereas its inward form can be associated with
the second part on morality.
The subject of abstract right is what Hegel terms the 'person'. The person
is an agent capable of conceiving him- or herself in abstraction from the
various given determinations that distinguish him or her from others in
a purely immediate way. These determinations can be of a physical or
of a psychological kind, and they can also stem from membership of a
particular society with its own norms and traditions. This explains the
following claim that Hegel makes: 'Personality begins only at that point
where the subject has not merely a conscio usness of itself in general as
concrete and in some way determined, but a consciousness of itself as a
completely abstract "I" in which all concrete limitation and validity are
negated and invalidated' (PR 35A) . This capacity to conceive of oneself
in abstraction from the determinations that make one into the particular
person that one happens to be introduces a reflective distance between the
subject and its given determinations, allowing the subject to stand in a
free relation to them . This capacity corresponds to the first moment of the
concept of the will. In accordance with the second moment of the will, the
subject may then re-identify itself with these determinations, by choosing
to accept them, as when one resolves to act according to a given desire, or
it may refuse to identify itself with them, as when they are not recognized
as forming features of one's own 'true' self.
The capacity for abstraction and free choice brings with it radical indi
viduation, for the individual's consciousness of being that which chooses,
and that which acts on the basis of the choices thus made, is height
ened, raising the question as to what principles 'ought' to determine one's
actions. This leads to the moral standpoint, which is a more reflective stage
than that of abstract right in the sense that it makes the 'personality' of
the self-determining subject of abstract right into its object (PR 104) . In
other words, the moral standpoint represents the moment of subjectivity
in Hegel's theory of right. This subjectivity must be situated within a set of
objectively valid ethical relations if it is to lose its merely formal character.
These ethical relations are the relations in which an individual stands to
the various institutions that make up Hegel's account of the modern form
158
of ethical life as presented in the third part of the Philosophy of Right.

These institutions, together with the constraints that they generate, must
not appear alien to the modern subject if the moment of subjectivity is to
be incorporated into the modern form of ethical life, thereby preserving
moral freedom. This form of ethical life must, therefore, accommodate
the various demands that Hegel associates with the principle of subjec
tive freedom, which is, as regards its genesis, a product of history. Hegel
is recorded as having characterized the task in question in relation to its
historical origins as follows: 'It was primarily in the Christian religion
that the right of subjectivity arose, along with the infinity of being-for
itself; and in this situation, the totality must also be endowed with suffi
cient strength to bring particularity into harmony with the ethical unity'
(PR 185Z) .
In accordance with the link that he establishes between subjectivity and
the moral standpoint, Hegel introduces the demands of subjective freedom
in the section on morality, which concerns 'my inner determination, the
subjective will' (VRP1: 91). In his discussion of the moral standpoint, Hegel
provides an account of responsibility, in which he stresses the importance
of the final end or intention that constitutes the interest which an agent
has in performing an action. This interest is a condition of being able to
recognize oneself in an action and thereby to identify oneself with it. It
is here that Hegel begins to speak of subjective freedom, by claiming that
the way in which the particularity of the agent is contained and realized
in the action by means of such an interest 'constitutes subjective fteedom
in its more concrete determination, i.e. the right of the subject to find its
satisfaction in the action' (PR 121) . The reference to subjective freedom
'in its more concrete determination' implies that this right of the subject
to find satisfaction in an action is a particular expression of the more
general principle of subjective freedom. The right of subjective freedom
itself is accordingly described as the 'right of the subject's particularity to
find satisfaction' (PR 12) . This right is clearly broader than the right
of the subject to find satisfaction in an action. It can, for example, be
thought to cover the demand that one's particularity in the shape of one's
determinate needs, and the opinions that one has concerning how these
needs can be best satisfied, is taken into consideration. In other words,
subjective freedom also concerns the idea of individual welfare.
Hegel accordingly intro duces the concept of welfare in the section on
morality. The concept of welfare can be used to show that Hegel's use
of the term 'subjective' to describe a particular form of freedom does
not mean that he thinks of this form of freedo m as being something
Subjective .freedom
159
merely subjective. Rather, one of the main aims of his Philosophy ofRight
is to bring subjective freedom into an appropriate relation to that which
possesses objective ethical validity. This is evident from Hegel's following
descriptio n of that which the rational insight provided by philosophy is
able to achieve:
[T] his rational insight [Einsicht] is the reconciliation with actuality which
philosophy grants to those who have received the inner call to comprehend,
to preserve their subjective freedom in the realm of the substantial, and at
the same time to stand with their subjective freedom not in a particular and
contingent situation, but in what has being in and for itself. (PR Preface,
27[22])
The way in which individual welfare is realized within the modern

form of ethical life provides an example of the kind of comprehension
and reconciliation with actuality mentioned above. It does so, moreover,
in such a way that rational insight turns out not to be the preserve of
pro fessional philosophers, despite Hegel's association of an inner call to
comprehend with philosophy in particular.
In his account of the type of ethical attitude which individuals may
have towards the laws and institutions of the state, Hegel mentions an
'insight grounded on reasons' (eine Einsicht durch Griinde) (PR 147A) .
Before introducing this form of insight, Hegel mentions two other types
of ethical attitude in the same paragraph: the 'relationless identity - in
which the ethical is the actual living principle of self-consciousness' and
'a relationship of faith and convictio n'. The latter attitude implies the
emergence of reflection because it presupposes that certain distinctions
have been made, specifically the separation of the subject from the object
of its faith or conviction, with the subject in question consciously iden
tifying itself with this object in the sense of believing it to be good or
true in some way. This relation, which is already a reflective one, can be
'mediated by further reflection' to become the insight grounded on reasons
mentioned above, while full knowledge of the identity of the individ
ual and the ethical 'belongs to conceptual tho ught', which is presumably
the type of knowledge that Hegel aims to provide in his Philosophy of
Right.
An insight grounded on reasons implies the existence of a reflective
relation on the part of the individual towards the state. This is something
that we might have expected given Hegel's views on subjectivity and the
modern world as shaped by it; a world in which, he claims, human beings
must enter the 'co urt' of the reflective understanding and search for reasons

(nach Grunden forschen) (VRP2: m: 487) . 6 Among the reasons that Hegel
has in mind are particular ends, interests and considerations, as well as hope
or fear (PR 147A) . These examples point to such reasons as the belief that
one is best able to realize one's own particular ends and interests within
the state, because its laws and institutions, as long as they have assumed
a certain form, provide the means of pursuing these ends and interests
effectively. In more general terms, it can be said that individuals recognize
that membership of a state with the right laws and institutions provides
them with the best chances of achieving well-being, which can itself be
considered to be a basic condition of effective agency, and of maximizing
their happiness as they conceive it. The type of reasoning at work here is of
a self-interested kind, which fo r Hegel is not the highest form of rational
insight, since although it recognizes the existence of something that is
objectively valid in the form of right, that which is objectively valid (or
the universal, as Hegel himself sometimes calls it) is reduced to the status
of a means to an end. Thus an essential (that is, non-co ntingent) relation
between this embo died universal (or general) will and the particular will of
the individual is missing, for in renouncing the end one may also renounce
the means to it, however unlikely renouncing the end of securing one's
own welfare must be thought to be. In contrast, Hegel describes the ethical
relation as the identity of the particular will and the universal will (VRP1:
124), while the 'abstract' concept of ethical life is accordingly identified
with 'the unity of the subjective and the objective will, the universality of
the will as identical with the subjectivity of the will' (VRP2: IV: 3 9 5).
Although, as we shall see, the principle of subjective freedom is largely
realized in civil society, the type of ethical identity described above is not
160
6 The central role played b y an 'insight grounded on reasons' i n Hegel's Philosophy of Right that I
highlight supports the claim that Hegel is describing a hierarchy of increasingly reflective stages. Cf.
Siep, 'The "Aufhebung" of Morality in Ethical Life'. See also Neuhauser, Foundations ofHegel's Social
Theory, 112f. and Wood, Hegel's Ethical Thought, 217f. This type of interpretation has been criticized
on the grounds that it exaggerates the role of subjective reflection in ethical life and underestimates the
degree to which 'Hegel identifies the ethical with an unreflective attitude'. Franco, Hegel's Philosophy
ofFreedom, 226f. Yet the idea of an insight grounded on reasons fully accords with Hegel's account
of subjective freedom and with his views on the reflective nature of the modern subject, together
with the greater demands to which this notion of the subject gives rise in relation to the question of
what counts as an adequate justification of a law, practice or institution. This does not mean that
all individuals do, let alone must, adopt a reflective attitude towards the laws and institutions of
the modern form of ethical life. Indeed, one of the virtues of Hegel's position is that it recognizes
the possibility of various ethical attitudes. Hegel nevertheless appears committed to the idea that
it is better, in the sense of more commensurate with their free and rational nature, if individuals
possess some form of rational insight into the modern form of ethical life. After all, he is recorded
as claiming that in the modern world whatever achieves recogn ition 'no longer achieves it by force,
and only to a small extent through habit and custom, but mainly through insight and reasons [durch
Einsicht und G..Unde]' (PR 316Z; translation modified) .
Subjective .freedom
fully achieved in this sphere of the modern form of ethical life. This is
because at the level of civil society the universal as such does not form the
direct object of the subjective will, as is demanded by the higher ethical
standpoint represented by the idea of the 'true' conscience, which is 'the
disposition [ Gesinnung] to will what is go od in and for itself' (PR 137) .
Rather, the state is conceived a s a n 'external' one in the sense that the
relation of the subjective will to the universal will embodied in the state
appears merely as the means by which an individual is able to satisfy his
or her needs (VRP2: IV: 416) . The universal will threatens, moreover, to
assume the appearance of an external, if necessary, constraint on human
agency, as Hegel thinks it ultimately does in social contract theory. The
type of rational insight described above nevertheless enables individuals
to identify themselves with these constraints to the extent that they can
be considered to be conditions of these individuals' own agency, so that
even at the level of civil society the externality of these constraints is
in large part already overcome. The form of reasoning associated with
this external conceptio n of the state co unts as a form of insight into
the rationality of modern ethical life because rather than resting on an
unthinking acceptance of one's social world, it presupposes that individuals
have reached the stage of having developed a clear understanding of certain
demands that need to be met if their social world is to co unt as a good one,
including the demands associated with the principle of subjective freedom.
By comprehending how the modern state meets these demands in their own
particular cases, individuals become able to identify themselves with the
laws, social practices and institutions of modern ethical life, by regarding
them as conditions of their own freedom, leading to a strengthening of the
state itself. I take this to be the main idea behind the following claim that
Hegel makes:
The principle of modern states has enormous strength and depth because it
allows the principle of subjectivity to attain fulfilment in the self-sufficient
extreme of personal particularity, while at the same time bringing it back to
substantial unity and so preserving this unity in the principle of subjectivity
itself. (PR 26o)
Hegel's acco unt of subjective freedom can in this way be assimilated

to the 'positive' model of freedom that is often attrib uted to him. G ain
ing insight into the way in which certain elements of the modern state
constitute conditions of the successful exercise of their own free agency,
in so far as it depends on their material well-being, allows individuals to
think of themselves as being subject to constraints that reflect their own

essentially free and rational nature. Thus individuals who believe that the
welfare of its citizens, including their own welfare, is a concern of the
modern state can be viewed as free in the positive sense fo r the following
reasons:
(1) They recognize that the modern form of ethical life satisfies certain
conditions of their being able to achieve self-realization as free and
rational beings.
(2) In so far as this is the case, individuals can think of themselves as
subject to constraints, in the shape of the measures that the state
employs to guarantee individual welfare (for example, taxation) , that
are reasonable in the light of some of their own most fundamental
ends and interests.
To this extent, subjective freedom is not something merely subjective,
even though it concerns the agent's particularity and in this respect has a
limited end. Rather, this subjective freedom has its objective counterpart
in some of the main institutions of the mo dern form of ethical life, leading
the state to lose its appearance of a purely external, if necessary, constraint
on human freedom.7
We have seen that the principle of subjective freedom results in the
demand to be able to identify oneself with something so that it is not
experienced as alien to oneself. Thus Hegel appears to have in mind a form
of freedom that consists in the sense of absence of constraint which comes
from being able to identify oneself with something other than oneself.
This idea of freedom is arguably what he has in mind when describing
the disposition which he considers to be characteristic of the modern form
of patriotism. This form of patriotism is in large part based on the way
in which an individual's 'particular interest', which falls under the more
general concept of welfare, forms part of the interest of the state as a whole,
with an individual's belief that this is indeed the case resulting in a feeling
of trust towards the state:
Note here that this way of working the positive model of freedom into his theory of right does not
imply a wish on Hegel's part to accord the state the role of imposing a particular vision of the good
on people. Rather, by means of its laws and institutions, the state provides the conditions that allow
individuals to pursue their own conceptions of the good, as long as they do not thereby violate the
right of other individuals to do the same. I n this respect, it is misleading of Isaiah Berlin to claim
that all political theories of self-realization equate what x would choose if he were something he is
not, or least is not yet, with what x actually seeks and chooses. Cf. Berlin, Two Concepts ofLiberty,
18. Unless, that is, we deny that individuals seek and choose to pursue their own conceptions of the
good and that they would, therefore, also seek and choose the conditions of being able to pursue
these conceptions of the good.
The 'state ofnecessity '

This disposition is in general one of trust (which may pass over into more or
less educated insight) , or the consciousness that my substantial and particular
interest is preserved and contained in the interest and end of an other (in
this case, the state) and in the latter's relation to me as an individual. As
a result, this other immediately ceases to be an other for me, and in my
consciousness of this, I am free. (PR 268)
In the next section, I draw attention to the essential role played by

civil society in Hegel's acco unt of how the principle of subjective freedom
achieves recognition in the modern state. I also introduce the no tion of
necessity which in many respects characterizes his theory of civil society. As
we shall see, certain practical forms of necessity limit the optio ns available
both to the 'person' of abstract right with its capacity for free choice
and to the moral subject with its capacity to develop, and to seek to act
in accordance with, its own understanding of 'the good'. This does not
mean that for Hegel freedom cannot be anything more than something
merely subjective. We have already seen that he attempts to explain the
possibility of a form of freedom that consists in being able to identify oneself
with certain objective practical constraints, because these constraints are
conditions of one's own agency, so that the idea of necessity and the idea
of freedom are made to appear compatible.
In his theory of civil society, Hegel identifies what might be described
as a social form of necessity. Here certain practical constraints are not
experienced as purely alien, external ones largely because individuals are
not conscio us of them. At the same time, these co nstraints are generated
within a system of mutual dependence, in which the abstract idea of wel
fare is realized. Individuals who are concerned with their own welfare and
their effective exercise of free agency, which can be tho ught to depend
on achieving a certain level of material well-being, could, therefore, in
principle identify themselves with these constraints. Hegel regards these
constraints, mo reover, as performing an educative function, because they
force individuals to adopt a more universalistic standpoint. In the case of
what might be described as an economic form of necessity, there are never
theless some dear indications that Hegel recognized that one's experience of
being free, or, conversely, of being subject to necessity alone, will be largely
determined by how certain relations of power are configured in society.
The 'state of necessity'
Hegel's theory of the modern form of ethical life has a tripartite structure,
beginning with a section on the family, followed by a section on civil
164
society and, finally, a section on the political state. The section on civil
society itself has a tripartite structure. It begins with the sphere of modern
ethical life which Hegel terms the 'system of needs'. This system concerns
the economic life of society, and it represents a co ndition of interdepen
dence characterized by a division of labour that 'makes the dependence and
reciprocity of human beings in the satisfaction of their . . . needs complete
and entirely necessary' (PR 198) . Given this division of labour, no indi
vidual can be entirely self-sufficient when it comes to the satisfaction of his
or her needs. Each individual's welfare therefore becomes bound up with
the welfare of others, with one individual helping to provide the means of
satisfying one particular need within society, while another person helps to
provide the means of satisfying a different need. Individual welfare becomes
so inextricably linked with the welfare of all that Hegel describes the system
of needs as a condition in which no one can promote his or her own welfare
witho ut at the same time promoting the welfare of others, with the result
that in
this dependence and reciprocity of work and the satisfaction of needs,
subjective selfishness turns into a contribution towards the satisfaction of the

needs of everyone else. By a dialectical movement, the particular is mediated
by the universal so that each individual, in earning, producing, and enjoying
on his own account, thereby earns and produces for the enjoyment of others.
(PR 199)
This passage indicates that the system of needs is the sphere of the
modern form of ethical life in which the ideas of individual welfare and the
welfare of all, which at the level of morality remain mere abstractions, begin
to find their realization, making civil society integral to Hegel's acco unt
of subjective freedom in so far as it demands being able to experience the
satisfaction of one's particularity in the form of welfare. The demand for
rational insight is also met in civil society to the extent that the satisfaction
of one's particularity in the form of welfare provides the contented member
of civil society or, to use Hegel's terminology, the bourgeois, 8 with some good
reasons for accepting his place within society and for acting in conformity
with its norms.
Despite the importance of civil society for his account of subjective
freedom, Hegel appeals on several occasions to the idea of necessity, as when
he refers to the system of needs itself and to civil society more generally as
8
Hegel associates the citizen (Burger) as bourgeois with civil society in particular (PR 190A) . He
describes the bourgeois as a private person (VRPI: 150), that is, someone who is concerned with the
satisfaction of his needs and, unlike the citoyen, lacks a political relation to the state (VRP2: IV: 472) .

'the state of necessity' (Notstaat) (PR 183) . This is significant because the
notion of necessity appears to be opposed to that of freedom, implying as
it does that individuals are subj ect to forces over which they have no real
control , and wh ich constrain their actions even against their own wills. An
example of the kind of necessity that Hegel has in m ind is already provided
by the idea of a condition of interdependence in wh ich individuals seek to
satisfY their needs , for his recognition of such interdependence implies that
it is not possible in modern society to satisfY one's needs without entering
into the system of needs . Thus this system is held to pre-exist the particular
individuals who enter into it, and it continually perpetuates itself, whereas
individual h uman beings all eventually perish. Moreover, this system arises
spontaneously, as opposed to being the product of conscious human action,
as would be the case if people had at some point in time collectively decided
to undertake a division of labour on the basis of their recognition of their
dependence on each other and their consequent need to cooperate. Hegel
alludes to this element of spontaneity when he claims that the individual
enters civil society as someone who makes his or her own particular will
into the end of his or her activity, so that in civil society the principle of
self-interest is pos ited (VRPI: 147) . This claim implies that the common
interest which manifests itself in civil society does so spontaneously as
the unintended consequence of individuals acting to promote their own
welfare and that of their families.
Hegel seeks to reconcile the idea of necessity with that of freedom.
His wish to reconcile freedom and necessity is evident from the following
passage, which concerns the essentially social nature of need-generation
and need-satisfaction:
This soc i al moment accordi ngly con tai n s the aspect of liberation [Be.freiung) ,
because the s trict n atural necessi ty of need is concealed and man's relation is
to his own opinion, which is universal, and to a necessi ty i m posed by himself
alo ne, instead of simply to an external necess i ty, to inner co nti ngency, and
to arbitrariness [ WillkUr] . (PR 1 94)
The moment of liberation contained in the social moment of need

generation and need-satisfaction is here associated with opinion. Yet why
does Hegel speak of the latter as 'universal ' rather than merely particular?
Shortly before in the same section, Hegel describes 'spiritual' needs
(that is, needs that are not immediate natural ones) as 'universal' . We can
assume, therefore , that he has in mind opinions concerning such needs. In
a number of places, Hegel refers to the way in which human beings can
increase their needs and the means of satisfYing them, whereas the needs
166
of non-human animals are limited and fixed in scope, as are the means of
satisfying them, because they are a matter of instinct alone. Human beings
are, moreover, able to particularize their needs through a process of what
Hegel himself calls 'refinement' (die Verfeinerung) (PR 191). For example,
human beings may share a basic need for clothing. This basic need can
then be particularized in the sense that a person believes that he or she
needs a particular set of clothes for working in, a particular set of clothes
to wear on his or her day off, and a particular set of clothes in which
to attend dinner parties. This particularization of need based on opinion
may itself be explained in social terms, since the set of beliefs on which
it rests are determined both by general opinions concerning what is the
appropriate thing to do in certain particular circumstances and by fear of
failing to act in ways that accord with these opinions. Hegel himself uses
fashion as an example no t only of such social pressures but also of how even
attempts to distinguish oneself from others may have social conformity as
their unintended o utcome: 'One imitates others, and this is the origin of
fashion. One wants to have what others have, but once one has achieved
this, one is then not satisfied; one wants to have something special. Then
others copy this and thus it goes on endlessly' (VRP2: IV: 491) .
Despite this social form of necessity, Hegel thinks that the way in
which the generation and the particularization of needs, together with
the means of satisfying them, depend on opinion represents a type ofliber
ation because human beings are thereby able to transcend the natural form
of dependence that they have in common with other animals and thus
demonstrate their 'universality' (PR 190, including Z) . This universality
consists in being able to conceive of oneself in abstraction from any purely
natural, merely given features, that is, as a person. The liberation mentioned
in the passage quoted earlier is, therefore, to be understood as liberation
from the immediacy of nature and from the instinctive behaviour which
characterizes it. It is liberation from a necessity that is 'external' because
such purely instinctive behavio ur does not, for Hegel, conform to the
human being's essentially free and rational nature. Yet this is not the only
way in which opinion takes on a universal aspect in civil society.
The other universal aspect concerns the social recognition on which
opinions regarding one's needs and the means of satisfying them ultimately
depend. Particular needs and the means of satisfying them take on a social
dimension also because an individual, through being dependent on others
for the satisfaction of his or her needs, must take into consideration both
the needs and the opinions of others (PR 192Z) . An example of this
phenomenon would be when an individual is constrained to produce
go ods for which there is sufficient demand, while this demand itself will

be largely determined by what others consider to be the most suitable
means of satisfying the needs that they have. Moreover, in such a condition
someone who was of the opinion that a certain need could only be satisfied
by an object which was not, for whatever reason, commonly produced
in society, would probably have to pay a higher price for this object or
forgo the satisfaction of this need. Yet it wo uld not be possible to forgo
the satisfaction of an essential need, and the individual concerned wo uld
be constrained to pay the higher price or to revise his or her opinion about
what would satisfy this need. Here the contingency and arbitrariness that
otherwise characterize opinion are to some extent removed. This example
of the constraints that come from having to take into consideration the
needs and opinions of other people implies that the liberation from the
bonds of natural necessity mentioned by Hegel is not to be viewed as a total
one. Rather, opinions regarding needs and their satisfaction will continue
in many cases to have their basis in natural necessity, despite the way in
which human needs and the means of satisfying them become ever more
particularized and assume the appearance of artificial needs. Hence the
statement in the passage quoted earlier that 'the strict natural necessity of
need is concealed'.
The practical constraints that arise in connection with the satisfaction of
needs are viewed by Hegel as conditions of human freedom in the sense that
they get people used to restraining their immediate desires and inclinations,
enabling them to gain some control over these desires and inclinations. In
other words, in accordance with Hegel's views on the abstract freedom of
the first moment of the will, individuals develop the capacity to achieve a
reflective distance in relation to their immediate desires, drives and inclina
tions, while by conceiving themselves as independent of these immediate
desires, drives and inclinations, they are able to adopt a more universalistic
standpoint, both in relation to themselves and to others.9 This standpoint
is itself a condition of being able to recognize the validity of laws and
institutions that reflect such a standpoint by aiming to secure and pro
tect the fundamental interests of all members of society. In this respect,
civil so ciety already exhibits in a spontaneous, unconscious fashion the
'cultivation [Hervortreiben] of universality of tho ught' which Hegel takes
to represent 'the absolute value of education [Bildung]' (PR 20) . Thus in
civil so ciety 'subjectivity is educated in its particularity' (PR 187) , and this
educative function explains Hegel's claim that although particularity is the
9 Hegel expresses this idea as follows: 'It is part of education [Bila'ung], of thinking as consciousness
of the individual in the form of universality, that I am apprehended as a universal person, in which
[respect] all are identical. A human being counts as such because he is a human being, not because he
is a Jew, Catholic, Protestant, German, Italian etc.' (PR 209A).
!68
first principle of civil society, universality is its second one (PR 182) /0
Civil society must in this respect be held to play an essential part in Hegel's
account of human perfectibility.
Hegel's recognition of this educative function within a condition of
interdependence amounts to a rejection of Rousseau's apparent preference
for the natural freedom enjoyed by primitive man in the earliest stages of
the state of nature when compared to the unequal relations of dependence
and the potential for domination that exist in a spontaneo usly generated
social order. Hegel even rejects the idea that natural independence itself
constitutes a form of freedom, on the grounds that it lacks the moment of
reflection essential to willing:
The notion that, in relation to his needs, man lived in freedom in a so-called
state of nature in which he had only so-called natural needs of a simple kind
and in which, to satis fy these, he employed only those means with which a
contingent nature immediately provided him - this notion . . . is mistaken.
For a condition in which natural needs as such were immediately satisfied
would merely be one in which spirituality was immersed in nature, and
hence a condition of savagery and unfreedom; whereas freedom consists
solely in the reflection of the spiritual into itself, i ts distinction from the
natural, and its reflection upon the latter. (PR 19 4A.) 11
10
11
The institution of the family also plays an important educative role in Hegel's theory of eth ical life.
C Neuhouser, Foundations ofHegel's Social Theory, 149ff.
This passage ties in with Hegel's rejection of the kind of natural goodness characteristic of primitive
man in the first stages of the state of nature. With respect to the issue of whether or not human
beings are by nature evil or by nature good, Hegel associates the latter statement with the claim
that 'the determinations of the immediate will' (that is, drives, desires, inclinations etc.) are good
as they stand, while the former statement is associated with the claim that, as merely natural, these
determinations are opposed to the idea of freedom and must, therefore, be eradicated (PR r8) .
Although Hegel views both of these statements as arbitrary ones when stated in this form, he
agrees with the idea that the human being's status as an essentially free being requires overcoming
the immediacy of nature. In this idea, he claims, lies the superiority of the Christian doctrine
that the human being is by nature evil when it is interpreted ph ilosophically (PR r8Z). Hence
Hegel's rejection of the idea associated with Rousseau that a condition in which human beings have
simple needs and can satisfY these needs easily by means of that which nature immediately provides
constitutes a condition of freedom. Rather, freedom demands leaving such a natural condition to
enter into a society that allows for the development of more complex, non-natural needs and the
means of satisfYing them, for it is only by means of the practical constraints which dependence on
others generates that individuals learn to restrain their immediate desires, drives and inclinations.
This process of learning to restrain one's immediate desires, drives and inclinations gives rise to a
reflective relation between the self and these desires, drives and inclinations and, or so Hegel claims,
evil presupposes such a relation because it involves conscious choice, specifically the conscious
choice to subordinate the universal to the 'arbitrariness' ( Willkiir) of one's own 'particularity' and to
seek to realize the latter through one's actions in opposition to the universal (PR 139). Rousseau's
primitive man in the earliest stages of the state of nature is, therefore, not good in any positive sense,
for he simply lacks the capacity to recognize the good and thus to act in conscious opposition to it.

Another part of the education that individuals undergo in civil society
concerns the various ways in which the condition of interdependence that
characterizes the system of needs gives rise to shared patterns of behaviour
and certain social practices. Hegel himself mentions the conventions that
have arisen in connection with mealtimes and how one dresses (PR 192Z) .
I have already discussed the second example. As regards the first example,
the genesis of this type of social convention can be explained in terms of
the effective functioning of the system of needs. Imagine, for example, how
difficult it would be to get anything done in a modern society when people
took their lunch break any time between eleven o 'clock in the morning and
four o 'clock in the afternoon. Such conventions can nevertheless be thought
to have arisen spontaneously, and they subject individuals to practical
constraints that they appear to be powerless to change. The existence of such
social forms of necessity may, however, be co ncealed from people as a result
of habit, and there is no reason for thinking that individuals consciously
identify themselves with the constraints to which they are subject. Rather,
they may act in conformity with these constraints simply because they
could not otherwise realize their particular interests and purposes. Here
we can see why Hegel makes the following statement concerning the kind
of unity of the principle of particularity and the principle of universality
attained in civil society, as compared to the unity which they are ultimately
meant to attain in ethical life:
This unity is not that of ethical identity, because at this level of division . . .
the two principles are self-sufficient; and for the same reason, it is present
not as .freedom, but as the necessity [Notwendigkeit] whereby the particular
must rise to the form of universality and seek and find its subsistence in this
form. (PR 186)
Given the practical constraints that are spontaneo usly generated in civil
society, it might be asked whether an individual could experience an essen
tially illusory sense of absence of constraint, because the social form of
necessity to which he or she is subject simply remains concealed from him
or her? After all, Hegel's acco unt of the educative function which civil
society performs largely rests on the idea that individuals are not conscious
of the constraints to which they are objectively subject. If it is possible to
conceive of such a case, we would have a subjective freedom that is merely
subjective in kind.
Hegel alludes to a freedom that is subjective in this sense when he
speaks of individuals who think of themselves as living in a state only as
a matter of necessity (als Sache der Noth) , so that the universal appears as
170
an external power which they represent to themselves as a 'sad necessity'

(traurige Nothwendigkeit) (VRP2: rv: 474f.). Here there is clear recognition
of being subject to certain practical constraints on the part of the individuals
concerned. This recognition of necessity can be understood in terms of the
way in which these individuals recognize that their welfare, together with
the protection of their persons and their property, depend on the existence
of the state. This recognitio n of necessity is compatible with the type
of insight gro unded on reasons that allows Hegel's acco unt of subjective
freedom and the satisfaction of its demands within the modern state to
be assimilated to the positive model of freedom, which demands that
individuals are able to identify themselves with the constraints to which
they are subject, in the sense that these constraints can be understo od to
derive from certain objective features of the modern form of ethical life
that secure the conditions of their own freedom.
Hegel nevertheless appears to think that individuals may entertain the
thought that it might be possible not to live in a state after all, at the same
time as they generally recognize the necessity of doing so, when he speaks of
individuals who choose to act in an orderly and law-abiding manner only
because they recognize that they could not otherwise achieve their ends,
so that the constraints to which they are subject appear as an 'external
necessity' (aussere Nothwendigkeit) (VRP2: rv: 481) . Here it begins to make
sense to speak of a freedom which is merely subjective in kind, for this
claim implies that the individuals in question believe that it would not be
necessary to live in a state ifthey could discover an alternative means of
securing their lives and property and of guaranteeing their own welfare. In
other words, they think that living in a state is an ultimately contingent
matter, which is precisely what Hegel accuses social contract theory of
doing. Much depends, of course, on how serio usly this 'if' is taken to
be. Anarchists and advocates of small government might be tho ught to
take this 'if' very seriously indeed. Hegel, by contrast, would surely regard
such an 'if' as essentially illusory, since he views the development and the
satisfaction of human needs as generating a condition of interdependence
which not only pre-exists individuals but also requires the rule of law and
state institutions for its effective functioning.
When Hegel speaks of individuals who think of themselves as living
in a state only as a matter of necessity, he must, therefore, be thought
to have in mind an attitude which is of an essentially illusory kind in so
far as it co nsists in the sense, however vague, of having a choice in the
matter. This attitude is characterized by a partial, if not absolute, sense
of absence of constraint. Altho ugh subjective freedom in general can be
171
characterized by such a sense of absence of constraint, the extent to which

it does so may vary according to particular circumstances. In the case out
lined above, a relatively high degree of subjective freedom can be explained
in terms of the fact that an individual is, as a result of habit and the con
stant experience of having his or her needs satisfied within society, only
partially conscious of the necessity of living in a state and of accepting
the constraints that this necessity generates. Hegel appears to be making
a similar point in the following statement: 'It does not occur to someone
who walks the streets in safety at night that this might be otherwise, for this
habit of [living in] safety has become second nature, and we scarcely stop
to think that it is solely the effect of particular institutions' (PR 268Z) .
Paradoxically, then, a partially illusory sense of absence of constraint may
be the result of the effective functioning of the state. Conversely, some
one who lives in a condition of scarcity, disorder and violence caused
by the lack, or the poor functioning, of state institutions, is likely to be
convinced of the absolute, rather than conditio nal, necessity of living in
a state.
The possibility of a sense of absence of constraint which does not ade
quately reflect objective conditions points to one particular reason that
Hegel has for using the term 'subjective freedom' in addition to the idea
that this form of freedom is concerned with the individual's particularity
more generally. The reason is that this form of freedom is of a psychological
nature inasmuch as it depends on how an individual perceives his or her
situation and on how much or how little he or she experiences a sense of
constraint in relation to it. Admittedly, in the case of individual welfare it is
unlikely that a person would experience the sense of absence of constraint
that comes from being able to satisfy one's needs with relative ease and on a
regular basis when the state in which he or she lived did not, in fact, allow
him or her to achieve a certain level of material well-being, unless, that is,
some form of indoctrination had been employed. I shall nevertheless argue
in connection with the idea of an economic form of necessity that Hegel
himself suggests that an individual's perso nal sense of absence of constraint
may fail to reflect with complete accuracy his or her objective situation.
In his account of this economic form of necessity, Hegel implies, more
over, that an individual's subjective freedom will largely be a function of
his or her position in society, especially with respect to the amount of
economic power which he or she enjoys. In some cases, this will mean
that moral freedom is lacking because individuals are unable to endorse
the constraints to which they are subject, and they are therefore unable to
treat these constraints as self-imposed ones, at the same time as they are
172
acutely conscious of the existence of these constraints. In other cases an

individual's position in society may lead him or her to fail to recognize the
existence of the constraints to which he or she is in reality subject, making
this individual's freedom into a merely subjective one. The idea of eco
nomic necessity will also be shown to have some important implications in
relation to the educative function which civil society is meant to perform
within Hegel's theory of the modern form of ethical life.
Eco nomic necessity
In a remark added to the first section of his acco unt of civil so ciety,
the section concerning the system of needs, Hegel credits the recently
developed science of political economy (Staatsokonomie) with explaining
the relations that govern civil society in so far as the latter constitutes 'the
sphere of needs'.12 Once again the notion of necessity presents itself, for
what Hegel admires in the theories developed by this science are their ability
'to explain mass relationships and mass movements in their qualitative and
quantitative determinacy and complexity', by extracting principles from
the endless multitude of details with which the observer of the economic
life of society is initially confronted (PR 189A) . In other words, political
economy discovers the general laws to which all economic activity is subject,
thereby comprehending this activity itself as something more than a mass of
contingent details. The necessity in question involves certain phenomena,
which here means relations of productio n and exchange, being determined
by fixed laws, and it generates a practical necessity in so far as these laws
constrain human agency. However, to avoid practical necessity collapsing
into causal necessity, as Hegel surely needs to do if his theory of right is
genuinely to be based on the assumption that the will is free, these laws
cannot completely determine this agency. In short, Hegel needs to explain
the compatibility of freedom and necessity.
As we have already seen, the practical forms of necessity described in
Hegel's account of civil society are held to be compatible with the idea of
freedom because they derive from certain objective conditions of freedom
itself. Independently of this claim, these practical forms of necessity can
be regarded as being, in principle, compatible with the idea of freedom
because we can, at the very least, imagine individuals choosing to engage
11
For an account of the importance of Hegel's reading of political economy for his development, see
Charnley, Economie politique et philosophic chez Steuert et Hegel, Charnley, 'Les origins de Ia pensee
econornique de Hegel', Riedel, Between Tradition and Revolution, 107ff., and Waszek, The Scottish
Enlightenment and Hegel's Account of'Civil Society :
Economic necessity
173
in acts of resistance to the so urces of these practical forms of necessity,

however futile these acts of resistance may ultimately be. For example,
they may refuse to act in conformity with society's norms, they may seek
to reduce their dependence on o thers by mo derating their needs, or they
may resist being dominated by the economic forces governing society by
refusing to engage in acts of conspicuo us consumption determined by the
opinions of others. Moreover, the laws that govern economic activity are
themselves the products of the concurrence of many contingent factors,
including various acts of exchange that may ultimately be regarded as a
matter of free choice. In this respect, these laws could conceivably be other
than they are, that is to say, if the acts on which they are based involved
different choices or if free choice was restricted in some way with the aim
of producing a different set of outcomes. These points, however, are not
ones that Hegel himself makes.
The fact that Hegel sees economic laws as operating with a kind of
necessity is evident from the following passage, which begins with the
arbitrariness and confusion that characterize civil society as the sphere of
the modern form of ethical life in which particularity has free play, but
then speaks of the general laws that can be discovered as underlying this
apparent arbitrariness and confusion:
B u t this proliferation of arbitrariness [dieses Wimmeln von Willkur] generates
universal determinations from within itself, and this apparently scattered and
thoughtless activity is subject to a necessity which arises of its own accord
[von selbst] . To discover the necessity at work here is the object of political
economy, a science which does credit to thought because it finds the laws
underlying a mass of contingent occurrences. (PR r 8 9 Z; see also VRP2: IV:
4 8 7)
One example of the necessity that finds expression in economic laws

concerns the laws governing supply and demand. Hegel alludes to this
example of necessity when he briefly mentions the problem of overproduc
tion, which occurs when the volume of goods produced exceeds demand,
leading to a reduction in production levels and, as a consequence, to people
losing their jobs and falling into a co ndition of poverty (PR 245). Here
it is the normal, unimpeded workings of the market economy that spon
taneously generate these outcomes, rather than any extraordinary event.
Hegel himself says as much when he claims that poverty is a necessary
consequence of civil society (VRP1: 193) . Moreover, he speaks of civil soci
ety as being driven beyond itself (iiber sich hinausgetrieben) by its own
dialectic when considering colonization as a solution to the problem of
174
overproduction, because the establishment of colonies would provide both

a new market for the goods that cannot be sold on the domestic market
and a new sphere of activity based on the simpler principle of fam ily life
for those individuals who wish to settle in the colonized lands (PR 246,
248). The idea that civil society is driven beyond itself by its own internal
contradictions implies an economic form of necessity which generates cer
tain practical constraints. Human activity (for example, the state's attempts
to manage a systematic, as opposed to merely haphazard , form of coloniza
tion) is here forced to adap t itsel f to existing economic and social realities
brought about by the normal operation of the laws of the market. In this
way, civil society turns out to be the sphere of the modern form of ethical
life in which the question of the relation of the human will to necessity
comes to the fore.
There is an issue here concerning the precise status of economic laws
within Hegel 's Philosophy of Right. Are these laws themselves determina
tions of righ t? Since economic laws have an obj ective status in virtue of
being independent of any individual's will and the market economy is a
constitu tive feature of the modern form of ethical life, these laws do indeed
appear to constitute determinations of right. Yet how can the idea of such
laws be reconciled wi th Hegel's description of right as the 'existence of the
free will', given the quasi-natural necessity with which these laws operate,
both for the political economists who infl uenced Hegel and for Hegel
himself?
Hegel 's description of right as the existence of the free will places him
in the modern natural law tradition in so far as this tradition employs a
distinction between laws of nature and laws of righ t (or freedom) . Laws of
nature simply exist and thei r brute existence constitutes their validity, in
the sense that all natural obj ects must conform to them and only our view
of these laws can be false but not the laws themselves. Laws of righ t (or
freedom) are normative laws that may, like natural laws , exist as something
merely given in the form of positive laws. They are, however, products of
human consciousness and will, and their simple existence does not by itself
make them val id. Rather, their justification depends on their being known
and willed as rational . 1 3 Yet in what sense are economic laws dependent on
human consciousness and will, when Hegel's praise of pol itical economy
sh ows that he th inks these laws, l ike natu ral laws, can be recognized as
underlying and determining the manifold phenomena that are subject
to them ? Does Hegel think that these laws are, nevertheless, ultimately
'l cr. Riedel, &trllW/
Traditiol/ al/d RtvoluliOII,
57f.
Economic necessity
175
pro ducts of human consciousness and will, as his conception of right in

general seems to demand ?
Although Hegel does not explicitly make such a claim, economic laws
might be seen as products of human consciousness and will in the sense
that they represent regularities that arise on the basis of various acts of
pro duction and exchange that are freely undertaken. These laws wo uld
not, therefore, have existed in the absence of these same acts, so that
despite the quasi-natural necessity with which they appear to operate,
economic laws are conventional in the sense that they would not exist in
the absence of human consciousness and will. This is not to say that these
laws are consciously intended. Indeed, Hegel is keen to emphasize the
unconscious, spontaneo us nature of the economic realm, as when, in the
passage quoted above, he speaks of the way in which 'arbitrariness generates
universal determinations from within itself', and of how 'this apparently
scattered and thoughtless activity is subject to a necessity which arises of its
own accord'. This spontaneously generated system of economic laws then
reacts on individuals, in the sense that it comes to determine their activity,
confronting them as something given which they are seemingly not in a
position to change.
In order to preserve the idea of human freedom in the face of the
necessity exhibited by economic laws and by the practical constraints that
they generate, it might be said that these laws can be made subject to human
control, just as natural laws can be harnessed in the service of human need,
by means of regulation of the economic sphere. It is tempting to attribute
to Hegel the position that economic forces must be brought under effective
human control on the basis of such passages as the following one, in which
he discusses the issue of freedom of trade and commerce, and claims that
the particular interest
invokes the freedom of trade and commerce against regulation from above;
but the more blindly it immerses itself in its selfish ends, the more it requires
such regulation to bring it back to the universal, and to moderate and shorten
the duration of those dangerous convulsions to which its collisions give
rise, and which should return to equilibrium by a process of unconscious
necessity. (PR 236A)
Note, however, that Hegel states that a process of 'unconscious necessity'

should restore harmony, despite the reference to 'regulation from above'.
This statement suggests that in ideal conditions the self-regulating mech
anism of the market will suffice, and that state intervention is therefore
required only in exceptional circumstances.
176
Hegel has good reason for being wary of state intervention, for the way
in which civil society allows particularity free play constitutes an important
part of its function as the sphere of the modern form of ethical life that
accommodates the principle of subjective freedom understood as the right
to experience the satisfaction of one's particularity. Moreover, Hegel wants
to leave room for 'subjective particularity' to develo p in such a way as to
fulfil its creative po tential and to bring about certain other benefits, such as
'the development of intellectual activity, merit, and honour', which it can
only do, he claims, 'if it is supported by the objective order, conforming to
the latter and at the same time retaining its rights' (PR 206A) . In other
words, civil society's role of accommodating the principle of subjective
freedom represents one particular way in which the modern state consti
tutes a conditio n of human perfectibility. In the absence of state regulation,
which implies conscious human control over the economic forces at play
in society, all that appears to be left is the idea that economic laws can
be comprehended as exhibiting a 'rational' necessity, not only in virtue
of having the form of laws but also because experience shows that their
normal operation is beneficial because it tends to result in the welfare of the
majority of people and in human progress more generally. Although Hegel
appears to accept this view of the beneficial effects of a market economy, it
ultimately rests on what is little more than an assumption on his part.
Hegel's views on how freedom can be maintained in the face of economic
necessity, and is even promoted by this form of necessity, can be discerned
in his account of the corporation. The corporation is an institution made
up of people who perform the same trade or pursue the same occupation.
This is why Hegel describes it as characteristic of the estate of trade and
industry (PR 250) . It is also why he makes membership of a corporation
depend on the possession of a particular skill (PR 251) . It is, in fact,
the corporation which sets the standards that determine whether or not
an individual is skilled or able enough to practise a trade or occupation
in the first place, as well as providing the educational resources aimed at
producing new members (PR 252, 254). The corporation in this way
constitutes a source of official recognition, which is in turn an important
source of self-identity and self-respect, or honour, as Hegel himself calls it
(PR 253) . The corporation also seeks to pro tect its individual members'
particular and universal interests. Their universal interests are protected by
the way in which the corporation elects representatives to form part of the
legislature of the political state, in which these representatives seek to further
the common interest of the corporation (PR 3o8-3n). Their particular
interests are protected by the way in which the corporation guarantees its
177
Economic necessity
members' l ivelihood in the face of such contingencies as not being able

to work as a result of illness (PR 252-253) . Among these contingencies
we may also i ncl ude fluctuations in the demand for goods which at times
result in a situation in wh ich individuals do not have enough work or
trade to support themselves and thei r families. By supporting individuals
during periods of economic inactivity, the corporation ensures that 'the
help which poverty receives loses its contingent and unj ustly humiliati ng
character' (PR 25}A) . In other words, the members of the corporation
are not made dependent on the arbitrary wills of others but are instead
guaranteed the means to live as a result of their earlier self-activity.
From these functions that the corporation performs we can see how this
institution represents an associational form of life in which the idea of the
welfare of all, and with it the principle of subj ective freedom, are realized
within the modern form of ethical life. Hegel's account of the corporation
also represents an attempt to explain how firm and lasting social bonds may
be generated on the basis of the practical necessity which consists in having
to cooperate with others whose interests are similar to one's own . The role
of necessity in the formation of such social bonds finds clear expression in
the following passage from Adam Smith's The Theory ofMoral Sentiments:
Among well-disposed people, the necessi ty or conven iency of m utual accom
modati o n , very frequently produces a friendship n o t u n l i ke that which takes
place among those who are born to live in the same fam i ly. Co lleagues
in office, partn ers in trade, call one another brothers; and frequently feel
towards one ano ther as if they really were so. Thei r good agreemen t is an
advan tage to all ; and, i f they are tolerably reasonable people, they are n at
urally dis posed to agree . . . The Romans expressed this sort of attachmen t
by the wo rd necessitudo, which, from the etymology, seems to denote that i t
was imposed by t h e necessi ty o f t h e situation .'4
On the basis of this passage, it is possible to think of individuals as

coming to pursue more consciously the common good embodied in the
corporation, even though this institution itself and the type of ethical
disposition associated with it can be viewed as an unintended outcome of
the self-interest wh ich animates civil society. This is because a corporation
may come into existence through certain individuals seeking to fu rther
their own ends and interests once these same individuals recognize that the
truly effective pursuit of these ends and interests demands that they j oin
forces with others who share similar ends and have similar interests, and
that they accept the constraints that cooperation places on their actions.
14
Smith, 7k
Thory ofMoral Smtimmts,
2.2. 3 f.
178
The common interest of the corporation must, however, be conscio usly

willed if this institution is to fulfil its original purpose. Its members will,
for example, have to exhibit such qualities as a sense of commitment
and a willingness to sacrifice their own purely particular interests for the
sake of the interests of the corporation as a who le. In this respect, the
corporation represents a form of association whose individual members
consciously identify themselves with the general will that is embodied in
this form of asso ciation, by regarding this association itself as one of their
own fundamental ends. In this sense they can be thought to possess general
wills rather than merely particular ones.
The social bonds thus generated can be conceived as even stronger than
this, as is suggested by the passage quoted above. For the idea of friendship
implies the notion of a human good which cannot be had independently
of the form of associatio n that first makes it possible, in the sense that
appreciating the value of friendship depends on being able to experience
the particular benefits that it brings. It is not the case, therefore, that
individuals have a pre-existing, fully developed need for friendship prior
to their association with others, a need that they then seek to satisfy by
associating with others. Rather, this need itself is first generated thro ugh the
act of association itself. The situation that Smith describes in this respect
suggests that the discovery of the true value of friendship may turn out
to be the unintended outcome of the pursuit of private interests. Thus
although the corporation provides the example of a fo rm of association
which has its basis in necessity and in the interests of individuals as such,
once it has come into being this institution has the potential to produce
social bonds that are much stronger than the ones that are generated
by the need to cooperate with others in order to realize one's own ends
and interests. Rather, to use Hegel's phrase, union as such becomes the
true content and end of the will. The idea of such a form of association
raises the question as to whether this model can be successfully applied
to the individual's relation to the state as a who le. I return to this issue
shortly.
Hegel nowhere suggests that the form of association which he identifies
with the corporation does anything more than adapt itself to existing
economic and social realities, so that the ethical and organizational aspects
of the corporation, as much as they may depend on human conscio usness
and will, are largely determined by forces that operate according to their
own independent laws. His attempt to reconcile will and necessity by
institutional means in this way raises at least two significant problems. The
first of these problems concerns the possibility of either being subjected to
The limits ofsubjective freedom
179
a form of necessity that does not at the same time allow for the sense of
absence of constraint which Hegel asso ciates with subjective freedom or
experiencing an unjustified sense of absence of constraint, which represents
a merely subjective form of freedom. The second problem concerns the
change of consciousness that is meant to characterize the transitio n from
civil so ciety to the political state. This change of consciousness consists
in the transformation of a universal co nsciousness that remains tied to
particularity into a universal conscio usness that has freed itself from any
particular interests, and is thereby able to make matters of general concern
and import into the direct object of its will. In each case Hegel fails to offer
a sufficient explanation of the compatibility of necessity and freedom. I
deal with the first problem in the next section and with the second problem
in the last section of this chapter.
The limits of subjective freedom
Since the social bonds that unite the members of a corporation depend
on these members' shared interests and the common identity that these
interests generate, Hegel is led to exclude some members of civil society
from this institution, namely, the poor and the very rich . The fate of
unskilled workers is very uncertain indeed in the face of the economic laws
that determine the workings of the market economy, since Hegel assigns
to the corporation the function of supporting individuals when they are
unable to work, while making membership of a corporation depend on the
possession of a skill or the pursuit of a trade. The group of people that fall
under the heading of 'the poor' can, therefore, be taken to include both the
unemployed and unskilled workers. The example of increased unemploy
ment caused by the problem of overproduction is especially relevant to the
relation of freedom to necessity in civil society because Hegel cites the right
to choose the occupation or profession into which one enters as an impor
tant example of how the principle of subjective freedom makes its presence
felt in the modern world. Choice of occupation is in fact presented as one
of the main ways in which freedom is reco nciled with necessity in civil
society. This time necessity assumes the form of the practical constraints
generated by such natural factors as the talents with which one happens
to have been born and the given circumstances into which one happens to
have been born.
The impression of having chosen one's occupation is important because
it means that what happens 'through inner necessity is at the same time
mediated by the arbitrary will, and for the subjective consciousness, it has
180
the shape of being the product of its own will' (PR 206). In other words,
the sense of having chosen one's occupation serves to offset the various
factors that, in reality, constrain one's freedom of choice in such matters.
In times of economic crisis caused by overproduction, many people's choice
of occupation will be especially limited. '5 We may assume, then, that in the
face of the constraints imposed on them by their situation, such people will
have only a weak sense of being subjectively free understoo d as experiencing
a sense of absence of constraint. These people will instead experience a
strong sense of being subject to necessity, a necessity which has its basis
in objective conditions. Yet even in better economic times, Hegel suggests
that necessity will be at work when he acknowledges how both natural and
non-natural conditions determine the limits of freedom of choice.
In another example of his preference for a spontaneously generated
order as opposed to an order that has been externally imposed on the
forces governing society, Hegel acknowledges that the possibility of shar
ing in the general resources of society depends on such factors as skill
and on the natural differences that characterize mental and physical apti
tudes. He even views the possession of a skill as being conditioned by
the basic assets in the form of capital that one has at one's disposal (PR
2oo). One possible explanation of what Hegel means by this claim is pro
vided by the example of how access to certain educational reso urces may
depend on the ability to pay. This type of situation allows us to conceive
of a situation in which there are two individuals who are roughly equal
with respect to their naturally given mental and physical aptitudes. Yet
one of these individuals happens to have parents who are wealthy enough
to pay for a certain type of education while the other individual's par
ents simply lack the financial reso urces needed to pay for the same type
of education. Here unequal outcomes can be thought to be determined
by conventional (that is, non-natural) factors. In the present case, the
'5
One important aspect of Hegel's account of the freedom that individuals enjoy as members of the
modern form of ethical life is said to be that they realize their own identities through the social roles
that they perform, in the sense that occupying these social roles is a substantial source of their own
sense of self as based on the recognition accorded to them by others when they perform these roles
well. These individuals' social roles are, in short, constitutive of what they conceive themselves to
be, while this sense of self is not something that individuals could have independently of their social
participation. Cf. Neuhouser. Foundations ofHegel's Social Theory, 1o8ff. Given the importance of
social roles that are connected with work in Hegel's Philosophy ofRight and the fact that these social
roles may not be freely chosen but are instead adopted as a matter of necessity, it may be asked how
individuals remain subjectively free when these social roles are, so to speak, forced upon them? In
such cases, it seems possible to think of individuals as having some good reasons for not allowing
their sense of self to be constituted through social roles with which they cannot truly identifY
themselves.

conventional factors could be thought to include the decision, whether
actual or implicit, taken at governmental level to allow poorly funded and
under-resourced state-run schools to coexist with well-funded and well
resourced private schools. It is the role played by such conventional factors
that leads Hegel to speak not only of an 'inequality posited by nature' but
also of an inequality that is produced 'out of spirit itself'. This second form
of inequality is an inequality with respect to skills, resources and education
which Hegel accepts o n the gro unds that it represents 'spirit's objective
right ofparticularity' (PR 20oA) .
This defence of inequality indicates that Hegel is reluctant to view
the state as charged with the task of imposing order on the particular
interests at work in society in the name of the principle of equality. As
already mentioned, this reluctance can be explained in terms of his wish
to accommodate the principle of subjective freedom, together with the
benefits that it allegedly brings, within his theory of the modern form
of ethical life. This means of accommodating the principle of subjective
freedom comes at the price of compromising another of the main ways in
which Hegel seeks to accommodate this same principle by treating choice
of occupation, much as Fichte do es, as the means whereby a person limits
him- or herself 'exclusively to one of the particular spheres of need' in
'a process of self-determination' (PR 207) . For Hegel's acceptance of an
inequality based on human convention implies that many people's choice
of occupation will be largely determined by the extent to which they have
(or have not) already been disadvantaged by such inequality, while in times
of economic crisis for some people there may not even be any occupations
into which they can enter.
If those individuals who have been disadvantaged by existing inequal
ities become conscio us of the extent to which their freedom of choice is
determined by factors beyond their personal control, the necessity that
otherwise remains co ncealed in civil society may mercilessly manifest itself
to them. The same could be said of individuals who do have work if this
work is of a purely mechanical kind and is badly paid, with the means
of production being in the hands of others. Hegel himself says as much,
while linking this phenomenon to the blind, spontaneo us process that he
associates with the generation of highly particularized needs and the means
of satisfying them, in the following passage:
The tendency of the social condition towards an indeterminate multipli
cation and specification of needs, means, and pleasures - i.e. luxury - a
tendency which, like the distinction between natural and educated needs,
182

has no limits, involves an equally infinite increase in dependence and want.
These are confronted with a material which offers infinite resistance, i.e.
with external means whose particular character is that they are the property
of the free will [of others] and are therefore absolutely unyielding. (PR 195)
In another section, Hegel associates the 'dependence and want' in ques

tion with a particular class of people, namely, the class of people 'tied' to the
mechanical, repetitive forms of labour that result from a division of labo ur
and industrialization (PR 243) . The way in which dependence and want
are said to be tied to a particular type of work again implies the existence
of a practical form of necessity, whose subjective counterpart would be
a strong sense of constraint. In the light of such statements, civil society
begins to look as if it is largely determined by the blind, spontaneous
dependence-generating process, which has material inequality as one of
its unintended outcomes, described by Rousseau in the Second Discourse.
Hegel's reference to the property of others implies, moreover, that what we
have here is ultimately a dependence on other human beings as mediated
by dependence on things.
This scenario invites the question as to what kind of attitude individuals
who are acutely conscious of the necessity to which they are subject ought
to adopt in the face of this necessity, and whether there is any meaningful
sense in which they can be said to be free. Here I think it is important not to
confuse causal or logical necessity with the type of practical necessity that
Hegel associates with civil society. In the case of causal or logical necessity,
resignation may be the only reasonable response, because the laws to which
one's thinking or actions are subject are not ones that human beings are
in the position to change. This is not the case, however, with respect
to the practical necessity found in civil society. After all, Hegel himself
assumes that economic activity can be subjected to conscious, collective
human control, even if he is reluctant to advocate such control. Moreover,
although its particular outcomes may not have been consciously intended,
as already noted this type of activity may be viewed as shaped at some
level by human conscio usness and will. In this respect, the position of the
poor is not the same as when a person's house is severely damaged by a
flood (or some other force of nature) which no one was in a position to
prevent or to control. Rather, their position resembles a case in which the
damage done to one's ho use could have been prevented through human
intervention (for example, if the authorities had supplied enough sandbags)
or if some people had acted otherwise than they did (for example, if some
people had not chosen to take more sandbags than they really needed) . In

these circumstances, resignation does not appear to be the only reasonable
response to one's situation.1 6
In an addition based on student lecture notes to the section of Hegel's
Encyclopaedia ofthe Philosophical Sciences in which he claims that the truth
of necessity is freedom, Hegel is recorded as identifying two ways in which
the idea of necessity can be regarded as compatible with that of freedom.
The first of these ways concerns being subject to an objectively valid ethical
content, which the ethical human being does not experience as a violation
of his or her freedom. Rather, it is through the consciousness of this con
tent that his or her freedom becomes something actual by being given a
determinate content, unlike the abstract and merely possible freedom of
the arbitrary will. Hegel here suggests that even a criminal who is pun
ished remains free in the sense that he or she can view the necessity, in the
form of coercion, to which he or she is subjected as rationally justifiable in
relation to his or her own criminal act, so that, as a rational agent, he or
she need not experience this necessity as a p urely alien, external constraint.
Hegel also speaks of the independence that comes from being conscious
that one is 'totally determined by the absolute Idea', and from adopting the
appropriate attitude in the light of this consciousness, which consists in the
type of contemplative attitude which Spinoza refers to as amor intellectualis
Dei (EL 158Z) . These examples have in common the idea of being subject
to some kind of rational necessity, whether it is taken to be of a logi
cal, metaphysical or practical kind. Freedom and necessity are held to be
compatible because one can, as a rational subject or agent, recognize this
rational necessity as something that is not completely other than oneself.
Yet insight into the rationality of the economic and social forms of necessity
to which individuals are subject in the modern state does not appear to be
available to people whose own subjective freedom is not accommodated
' 6 Resignation might even be considered to be an inappropriate response given the way in which
Hegel speaks of right as a matter of self-actualization, as when he claims that the 'absolute vocation
[Bestimmung] or, if one prefers, the absolute drive, of the free spirit is to make irs freedom into irs
object - to make it objective both in the sense that it becomes the rational system of the spirit itself,
and in the sense that this system becomes immediate actual ity' (PR 2.7; translation modified) .
The notion of self-actualization implies the idea of activity and the need to change the world in
accordance with one's ends, which can be taken to include the fundamental end of securing the
conditions of one's own free and rational agency; whereas the kind of recogn ition suggested by the
idea of gaining insight into the rationality of the modern form of ethical life implies a contemplative,
and thus more passive, attitude. In this respect, there appears to be some tension in Hegel's notion
of right as the existence of the free will in so far as this notion relates to the ideas of self-actualization
and self-realization. For these ideas suggest that the demand to be able to recogni2.e the rationality
of the modern form of ethical life can only be properly met if right does in fact make possible such
self-actualization and self-realization, and that, if necessary, one's social world must be transformed
so as to make them possible.
184
within this state, even though it is precisely the availability of such insight
that defines Hegel's attempt to demonstrate the compatibility of freedom
and necessity in his theory of civil society.
While the case of the members of the class of people described above
implies an absence of subjective freedom, I now turn to a less clear-cut
case in which subjective freedom is certainly present but in such a way
that it might be considered to be excessive. This is because the economic
necessity which underlies civil so ciety has become concealed as a result of
the powerful position that an individual enjoys, leading the individual in
question to experience a disproportionate sense of absence of constraint in
the face of such necessity. This case is to be fo und at the opposite end of the
spectrum to that of the class of people described above. It is that of the rich
man, the capitalist, who, according to Hegel, comes to regard everything
as something that can be bought, because he 'knows himself as the power
of the particularity of self-consciousness' (VRP1: 196). Hegel is referring to
the way in which the rich man, in virtue of his wealth and the power that it
brings him, comes to think of himself as free of the constraints imposed on
others by the condition of interdependence that characterizes civil so ciety.
Instead his wealth appears to allow him to do anything that he wants to
do and to dominate others, who are compelled to act in accordance with
his ends and interests. Given the independence that he enjoys in virtue
of his wealth and his power over others, the rich individual also does not
need to become the member of a corporatio n. He is, therefore, free of the
constraints that membership of this form of association would impose on
his actions. When these claims are viewed in conj unction with what Hegel
says about the class that suffers dependence and want, he appears to be
implying that the extent to which one experiences an absence of constraint
in modern so ciety will largely depend on the amount of economic power
that one enjoys.
Yet is the rich capitalist really as free of the practical constraints generated
by the condition of interdependence that characterizes civil society as
he senses himself to be, when the wealth and power that he enjoys are
themselves the results of the workings of the economic laws governing
the market relations that develop on the basis of such a condition of
interdependence? On the one hand, the power enjoyed by the capitalist
is certainly something real and it may, therefore, adequately explain his
sense of absence of constraint. On the other hand, it is possible to think
of him as someone from whom the necessity that underlies civil society
nevertheless remains concealed. After all, altho ugh he is the beneficiary
of the economic system that operates in civil society, he can only act in
accordance with this system's laws or, at most, seek to make sure that they

operate in his favour. He does not make these laws himself, nor can he
fully determine their particular outcomes, which are, after all, determined
by countless arbitrary choices made by other people, over whose actions
he has no absolute control. The rich capitalist may attempt to make sure,
in association with others of his kind, that the dice are firmly lo aded in his
favo ur. Yet his actions may still be thought to remain subject to necessity,
even if not to the same extent as the actions of people who possess less
economic power than he do es, given Hegel's recognition of the complexity
of the economic system which formed the object of the theories of political
economy that influenced his own conception of civil society.
Hegel claims that individuals, by which he has in mind both producers
and consumers, are not in a position to gain an overview of this system's
workings, as they would need to do if they were to stand any real chance of
predicting particular outcomes with a high degree of certainty. Regulation
of the economy is therefore necessary because 'large branches of industry
are dependent on external circumstances and remote combinations whose
full implications cannot be grasped by . . . individuals' (PR 236) . Given
the far greater complexity that this system has assumed in today's globalized
economy, even the modern state's ability to achieve such overview and to
regulate the economy has become a matter of debate. In the face of the
possibility that the choices made by self-interested agents in one part of
the economy, and even in ano ther part of the world, may unexpectedly
render invalid ano ther agent's calculations or eventually result in a general
economic crisis, the capitalist's sense of freedom as described by Hegel
might, on closer reflection, be tho ught to represent a partially merely sub
jective form of freedom. This is because the pronounced sense of absence
of constraint that characterizes the capitalist's sense of freedom does not
adequately reflect the economic necessity on which his own fate depends.
The rich capitalist's fate is, in fact, subject to contingent factors that lie
beyond his personal control, so that, like any other individual, social group
or family, his existence is subject to, as Hegel puts it, 'dependence on civil
society and to contingency' (PR 238). The interplay of the contingent
factors and events that determine economic success or failure allows us to
think of particular outcomes as being determined by the causal relations
that come to exist between these contingent factors and events.'7 Thus
another kind of necessity must be thought to be at work in addition to
'7
Although the concept of contingency, which involves the idea of that which could be otherwise
than it is, represents the opposite of the concept of necessity, these concepts are essentially related in
Hegel's dialectical thought. For a discussion of their relation to each other in Hegel's speculative logic,
see Taylor, Hegel, 262ff. and 282fT. The relation of necessity to contingency in Hegel's philosophy
more generally is discussed in Henrich, 'Hegels Theorie iiber den Zufall'.
186
the practical forms of necessity already described above. Presumably, if

the objective conditions that constrain the rich man's agency turn out to
be highly unfavo urable to him, he would, like the poor person, be made
acutely conscious of the necessity which underlies civil society.
The experience of being subject to necessity alone suggested by the situ
ation of the poor, and the existence of a merely subjective form of freedom
suggested by the case of the rich capitalist, when taken together invite
the suspicion that Hegel does not fully succeed in integrating subjective
freedom into his theory of the modern form of ethical life in such a way
as to assimilate this form of freedom to the positive model of freedom
that he adopts. Rather, some people may experience a sense of absence of
constraint that does not adequately reflect the objective conditions of the
modern form of ethical life, while others may experience a strong sense
of constraint precisely because these objective conditions determine their
wills in a purely external manner. Since both cases concern the extremes
of material inequality, the question of how conscious, collective human
control can be gained over the economic life of the state appears to be
central to the issue of whether or not human freedom in the positive sense
is possible in mo dern conditions. Yet as we have seen, Hegel's commitment
to the task of accommodating the principle of subjective freedom within
his theory of the modern form of ethical life makes him reluctant to stress
the need for state control.
In the next section, I pursue the issue of whether the external character of
the practical constraints to which individuals are subject in the modern state
can be fully overcome. This time, however, I shall discuss this issue with
reference to the question as to whether or not Hegel succeeds in explaining
how individuals may come to identify themselves with the universal will
embodied in the laws and institutions of the political state, so that the
latter does not come to assume the appearance of an alien, external power
in relation to their own wills. Rather, the general will itself can be thought
to exist in each individual's own consciousness and will as well as being
embodied in the laws and institutions of the modern form of ethical life.
Hegel's discussion of the existence of the general will in the first sense centres
on providing an account of the change in co nscio usness and will that must
characterize the transition from civil society to the political state. As we
have seen, his account of the gro ups of people who occupy the extremes
of civil society, the poor and the very rich, suggests that such conscious
identification with the general will may not in fact exist. In the one case,
it is because individuals lack subjective freedom and therefore experience
the constraints to which they are subject as purely alien, external ones. In
The existence ofthe general will

the other case, it is because their subjective freedom is excessive, leading
to an inflated sense of independence. Moreover, in both cases the main
institutional means of generating a conscious identification with the general
will, that is, the corporation, is absent, whereas the role that Hegel assigns
to this institution provides one possible explanation of how a universal
consciousness and will might be generated in such a way as to effect the
transition from the type of ethical disposition associated with civil society
to the type of ethical disposition associated with the political state, without
invoking such notions as popular sovereignty and democratic self-rule.' 8
The existence of the general will
The relation between civil society and the political state in Hegel's Phi
losophy of Right can be characterized in such a way as to suggest that the
state imposes order on the forces that determine society, as when the aim
of Hegel's mature political philosophy is said to be to demonstrate the
necessity of a universal (that is, the state) that has power over the merely
particular and prevents civil society from being destroyed by its own princi
ple, which is the principle of particularity.'9 It is even said that civil society
in this way generates an autho ritarian political system.20 The last claim
is almost certainly too strong because it fails to acknowledge the extent
to which the members of civil society are able to conceive of the general
interest which the state pro tects and realizes as something that is not alien
to their own wills, because it includes the fundamental interests that they
share with others. Individuals are, moreover, educated to a more universal
standpoint by means of the practical constraints to which they are subject
in civil society, even if the universal as such, in the shape of the common
interest, does not form the direct object of their activity. As we have seen,
the universal conscio usness and will that develop in this way find their
highest institutional embodiment in the corporation.
18
Hegel's hostility to the ideas of popular sovereignty and democratic self-rule is clearly connected
with his views on the need for mediating institutions, such as the corporation, that even at the level
of civil sociery generate a uniry which ought not to be dissolved at the level of the political state,
since, if it were, political life would be left 'hanging . . . in the air' with 'the abstract individualiry
of arbitrary will [ Willkur) and opinion' as its basis, so that it is 'grounded only on contingency
rather than on a foundation which is stable and legitimate in and for itself'. Political life would
then correspond ro the following notion of 'the people': ' The many as single individuals' who 'do
indeed live together, but only as a crowd, i.e. a formless mass whose movement and acriviry can
consequently only be elemental, irrational, barbarous, and terrifying' (PR 3o3A) . These statements
imply a strong connection in Hegel's mind between Rousseau's contractualism and his commitment
to rhe idea of popular sovereignry as exercised democratically in a legislative assembly.
1 9 Cf. Horstmann, 'The Role of Civil Society in Hegel's Pol itical Philosophy'.
1 Cf. .Marcuse, Reason and Revolution, 174 and 2.02..
!88
This form of association can be tho ught to demand the exercise of

certain virtues, such as commitment to the corporation and the willingness
to subordinate particular interests to collective interests. Although actual
corporations may have arisen spontaneo usly, with individuals recognizing
that their own ends and interests can be best realized through cooperation
with others who have similar ends and interests, the pleasure and the
sense of fulfilment that come from being the member of a greater whole
may be co unted among the unintended outcomes of such a process. This
greater whole itself then becomes the direct object of the will, in the
sense that participation in it is experienced by individuals as possessing an
intrinsic value. However significant this change of consciousness may be,
it does not constitute the kind of truly universal consciousness and will
that Hegel associates with the political state. This is because the common
go od that individuals consciously pursue as members of a corporation is
not necessarily identical with the common good of the ethical whole which
forms the object and end of the political state. The co mmon interest of the
corporation may even come into conflict with this more universal end.
Thus, on the one hand, Hegel stresses how membership of the cor
poration results in the development of a less selfish standpoint, as in the
following passage:
in the association [in der Genossenschaft] , the selfish end which pursues its
own particular interest comprehends and expresses itself at the same time
as a u niversal end; and the member of civil society, i n accordance with his
particular skill, is a member of a corporation whose universal end is therefore
wholly concrete, and no wider in scope than the end inherent in the trade
which is the corporation's proper b usiness and interest. (PR 251)
On the other hand, as the last clause of this passage already implies, the
universal that forms the object and end of the corporation is a 'limited and
finite' one (PR 256) .
There is not, then, a seamless transition from civil society to the political
state that is explicable in terms of the transformation of self-interest into a
conscious concern fo r, and identification with, the good of the ethical and
political community of which one is a member. Admittedly, Hegel claims
that the end of the corporation 'has its truth in the end which is universal
in and for itself and in the absolute actuality of this end . . . The sphere of
civil society thus passes over [geht . . . uber] into the state' (PR 256) , and
that although the state is 'an external necessity' in relation to civil so ciety,
it is also the latter's 'immanent end' (PR 261) . Such claims suggest that
Hegel wants to argue that a change in conscio usness with respect to the

end which forms the object of the will defines the transition from civil
society to the political state. The same goes for the following passage:
The state is the actual i ty of concrete freedo m. But concrete .freedom req ui res
that personal i ndividuality and i ts partic ular i n terests should reach their fu ll
development and gain recognition oftheir right fo r itself (wi th in the sys tem of
the fam ily and of civil society) , and also that they sho uld, on the one hand,
pass over [ ubergehen] of their own accord [ durch sich selbst) i n to the i n terest
of the un iversal, and on the o ther, knowi ngly and willi ngly acknowledge
this universal i n teres t even as their own substantial spirit, and actively pursue
it as their ultimate end. (PR 260)
Yet it is far from clear how the transition from civil society to the
political state can be explained purely in terms of a change in the type
of universal form of consciousness and will that individuals possess. This
is especially the case when the change in question is understood to occur
partly spontaneously, as suggested by the idea that the family and civil
society pass over of 'their own accord ' into the universal interest which
is the concern of the state, and partly as the result of knowledge and
will. For however consciously the spontaneously generated general interest
which the corporation embodies is subsequently willed by its members,
the consciousness and will of its members can still be regarded as particular
ones from the standpoint of the un iversal consciousness and will that
Hegel wants to claim manifest themselves at the level of the political state.
This problem relates to the worry expressed by Ro usseau in the Social
Contract concerning factionalism, which can be generalized to incl ude any
corporate will, namely, that although a corporate will may be general in
relation to the particular wills of its individual members, it nevertheless
remains particular in relation to the general will of the state (OC m: 371;
PW2: 6o) . As Rousseau points out in connection with the government
to which the sovereign people delegates executive power, this is because a
corporate will can be viewed as a self that, like any other individual, aims
to employ its forces to preserve itself, inviting the question as to how it can
be subordi nated with in the political whole in such a way as to ensure that
it employs its forces for the benefit of th is whole (OC m : 399; PW2: 86) .
Hegel could argue that the members of the corporation cannot help
but recognize that employing their forces for the benefit of the whole
represented by the state is to employ these forces for the benefit of the
corporation to which they belong. Yet this move simply assumes an iden
tity of interest between the various corporations and the political state,
together with a consciousness of this identity of interest on the part of the
190
members of a corporation. To this extent, it remains unclear what distin

guishes Hegel's position from that of a contract theory of the state such as
Rousseau's one, which views laws and institutional constraints on natural
freedom as conditions of securing one's own fundamental interests, with
these interests themselves being held to depend on the health and main
tenance of the legal and political community of which one is member. All
Hegel appears to have done is to have tied the individual's fundamental
interests to a corporate body which is general in relation to the partic
ular wills of its members but particular in relation to the political state.
Hegel's account of the corporation admittedly also provides the model
of a form of association in which the pleasure and the sense of fulfil
ment that derive from the consciousness of being the member of a greater
whole belong among the unintended outcomes of one's membership of
such an associatio n. Participation in this type of institution might even
be said to be of more than instrumental value because such participation
is constitutive of one's own identity. Yet this move is equally available to
social contract theory, once we distinguish between what originally moti
vated the social contract and its eventual, and possibly wholly unintended,
outcomes.
Thus even if we accept that for Hegel, as for Rousseau, failure to will
the common good for its own sake results in alienation when compared to
what happens when individuals consciously identify themselves with the
general will and accord it an intrinsic, rather than merely instrumental,
value, individuals can still be thought to enjoy a high (and potentially
sufficient) degree of absence of alienation and constraint thro ugh beings
members of a corporation. They may not, it is true, enjoy the more abso
lute absence of alienation that would come from consciously identifying
themselves with the general will of the political state. It remains unclear,
however, why individuals who have not already developed the kind of
self-conception that involves conscio usly identifying themselves with this
general will would come to experience such alienation. After all, it is
precisely the existence of such a self-conception that Hegel is seeking to
explain, rather than taking its existence for granted, altho ugh, as we shall
shortly see, he simply assumes the existence of such a self-conception in
the case of those individuals who play an active role in the political state.
The possibility nevertheless remains that individuals will experience some
of the constraints that the state imposes on them as alien, external ones
even when they belong to a corporation, because the full acceptance of,
and identification with, these constraints presupposes the development of
the kind of universal consciousness and will which they themselves lack.
191
To this extent, alienation may indeed result from the lack of any conscious
identification on the part of individuals with the general will of the political
state.
This tension in Hegel's Philosophy of Right reveals itself in his identi
fication of different estates with different moments of his theory of the
modern form of ethical life. While civil society is associated with the estate
of trade and industry, the political state is identified with the universal
estate (der allgemeine Stand) , which 'has the universal interests of society as
its business' (PR 205) . Hegel here appears to assume that the members of
civil society cannot be fully trusted to will the universal interests of society
as a whole as their object, whereas other individuals, namely the high
ranking state officials who belong to the universal estate, can be trusted to
do so. It is, therefore, only the members of this second group of people
who can be relied on to exhibit the 'political virtue' which Hegel describes
as 'the willing of that tho ught end which has being in and for itself' (PR
257A) .
This division helps to explain how the particular interests of civil society
only in part spontaneously pass over into the universal interest of the state
and must therefore in part also knowingly and willingly do so. In other
words, at the level of civil society a universal consciousness and will are
generated as the largely unintended o utcomes of the pursuit of self-interest.
Yet this universal consciousness and will remain particular in relation to the
universal consciousness and will of the political state. They must, therefore,
be subjected to the conscio us control exercised by the political state, which
'knows what it wills, and knows it in its universality as something thought'
(PR 270) .21 Hegel himself says as much in the statement that the confused
situation which arises in civil society when particularity remains unchecked
'can be restored to harmony only through the forcible intervention of the
state' (PR 185Z). While with respect to the corporation, he is recorded
as claiming that it 'must come under the higher supervision of the state,
for it would otherwise become ossified and set in its ways, and decline
into a miserable guild system' (PR 255Z) . The decline in question can be
identified with the formation and the assertion of a corporate will which
employs its forces to make sure that its interests are best served, even
" Since it is, more properly, a matter of individuals willing what they know to be universally valid ends
in the name of the state, the realization of the universal interest is made to depend on contingency,
in the sense that there is no guarantee that the members of the universal estate will in fact possess
political virtue and the other qualities that they need; for, as Hegel himself acknowledges, there is
no natural link between the functions performed at the level of the political state and particular
individuals (PR 2.77, 2.91).
192
when they conflict with the more general interests of society as a whole.22
The idea of imposing order on society is not, therefore, entirely absent in
Hegel's Philosophy ofRight, despite his reluctance to advocate state control
and regulation of the economy.
Hegel consequently appears unable to explain the necessity of the tran
sition from civil society to the state in a way that makes this transition
immanent to his Philosophy ofRight. 23 This failure has something in com
mon with Kant's failure to explain the transition from civil society to a
truly ethical form of community. Once again, the limitations of a form
of explanation which relies heavily on the spontaneous generation of cer
tain outcomes that were not consciously intended by the agents concerned
become apparent in connection with an ethically conceived teleology. The
gap that has opened up between civil society and the political state raises
the question of how the universal interest which is the object and end of
the political state can be imposed upon the spontaneously generated forces
governing society.24 In Chapter 1, I related this issue to the concepts of will
Hegel outlines some institutional arrangements whereby the interests of civil society might be given
proper consideration within the political state, so that it is not simply a matter of imposing order on
a potentially recalcitrant material. These arrangements concern the assembly of the Estates which
is divided into two ho uses and forms part of the state legislature (PR 312). One house is made up
of deputies elected by each corporation (PR 308-311), whereas the other house consists of the
landed nobility (PR 305-307). Hegel often seems, however, to downplay the significance of the
deliberations of the assembly of the Estates in relation to the executive power, as in the following
claim: ' [1]he highest officials within the state necessarily have a more profound and comprehensive
insight [Einsicht] into the nature of the state's institutions and needs, and are more familiar with
its functions and more skilled in dealing with them, so that they are able to do what is best even
without the Estates, just as they must continue to do what is best when the Estates are in session'
(PR 3oiA).
>J Hegel may think that this transition ultimately needs to be explained in terms of his speculative
logic. Indeed, in a remark to the section of the Philosophy ofRight in which he identifies the will with
the various moments of the logical concept (that is, the concepts of un iversality and particularity,
and their unity in the concept of individuality), he states that the 'ultimate source of all activity,
life, and consciousness . . . belongs to logic as purely speculative philosophy' (PR 7A) . Then in
his account of the pol itical state, he claims that the various powers of the state 'are determined
by the nature of the concepl (PR 269) and that the constitution of the state 'is rational in so far
as the state differentiates and determines its activity within itself in accordance with the nature of
the concept' (PR 272) . While such statements imply that the Philosophy ofRight can only be fully
understood with reference to Hegel's speculative logic, making the transition from civil society to
the political state into a logical one would be to treat the change of consciousness and will that is
meant to accompany this transition as a matter of logical necessity, rather than a matter of practical
necessity. The latter form of necessity is, however, surely of far more interest and relevance to social
and political philosophy.
14 It is not only at the level of civil society that Hegel suggests the need for some form of constraint
aimed at making sure that the universal is not sacrificed to particular interests. On the one hand, he
wants to suggest that the state official finds satisfaction in the performance of his duties alone, with
his relationship to his work being 'the main interest of his spiritual and particular existence' (PR
29) . Yet the state official still has ordinary human needs. In relation to this point, Hegel claims
that the state must provide the state official with the resources needed to guarantee 'the satisfaction of
193
and necessity and showed that Ro usseau provides a classic formulation of

the problematic nature of the relation between these two concepts in his
acco unt of the formation of political society. He does this by offering a
description of a blind, spontaneous dependence-generating process which
has material inequality as one of its unintended outcomes, and by intro
ducing the idea of a so cial pact that is designed to explain how relations
of dependence can be structured in such a way as to prevent one person
or group of persons from dominating another person or group of per
sons within so ciety. I have shown how Kant, Fichte and Hegel provide
important contributions to a fuller acco unt of this relation, inasmuch as
they help to advance our understanding of some of the problems raised by
Rousseau, without, however, being able to solve them. The relation of will
to necessity, and the way in which this relation generates problems that
pose a threat to the idea of human perfectibility, are topics that are also
relevant to the critique of Rousseau's writings which Fichte offers in the
last lecture of the series of lectures that he gave at the University in Jena
and subsequently had published in 1794 as Some Lectures concerning the
Scholar 's Vocation.
his particularity' and to free 'his external situation and official activity from other kinds of subjective
dependence and infl u ence' (PR 294), for the 'guaranteed satisfaction of particular needs removes
that external necessity [Not] which may induce someone to seek the means of satisfying them at
the expense of his official activities and duty' (PR 294A). With his everyday human needs taken
care of, the state official is able to dedicate himself to the universal, while his habitual engagement
with issues of un iversal concern will, Hegel claims, lead any 'subjective aspects' to 'disappear of
their own accord' (PR 296). Hegel nevertheless entertains the possibility that the state officials'
common (that is, corporate) interest may lead them to adopt 'the isolated position of an aristocracy'
and to use their education and skill as 'arbitrary means of domination' (PR 297) . To prevent this
from happen ing, the intervention of the sovereign (that is, the hereditary monarch) together with
pressure exercised from below by the deputies entrusted with the task of protecting the rights of the
corporation will be needed (PR 295, 297) .
CHAPTER FIVE
Activism and idleness
Fichte s critique ofRousseau
Fichte's critique of Rousseau
The fifth and final lecture of Fich te's series of lectures known collectively as
Some Lectures concerning the Scholar's Vocation is entitled 'An Examination
of Ro usseau's Claims concerning the Infl uence on Human Welfare of the
Arts and Sciences'. This title suggests that Fichte's criticisms of Rousseau
are directed against the view associated with the Discourse on the Sciences
and Arts or First Discourse in particular that the advance of the arts and the
sciences has resulted in the corruption of the h uman race, as exemplified by
Rousseau's statement that 'our souls have become corrupted in proportion
as our Sciences and our Arts have advanced toward perfection' (OC m : 9 ;
PW1 : 9 ) . Fichte's hostility to such a view of the arts and the sciences comes
as no surprise given the lofty conception of the scholar's vocation which he
articulates in the same series of lectures, and which he s ummarizes in the
fifth lecture itsel f as follows:
I have said that man's vocation [die Bestimmung der Menschheit) consists in
the constan t advancemen t o f culture and i n the equal and continuous devel
opmen t of all of m an's talen ts and needs. I have assigned a very honorable
place within human sociery to the class which is to supervise the progress
and u n i formity of this developmen t. (GA I/3 : 6o; EPW: 1 77f.)
The class in question is the class of scholars, wh ich is accorded a cen

tral role in the process whereby h u man beings become ever more per
fect. Fichte is keen, therefore, to rebut the charge wh ich he attributes
to Rousseau that 'that class of men which does the most to promote
the advance of culture, that is, the class of scholars [der Gelehrtenstarul] ,
is the source as well as the center of all human misery and corruption'
(GA l/3: 6o; EPW: 178) . On the one hand, Fichte states that he under
stands how a noble spirit such as Rousseau could have arrived at th is view
194
Fichte s critique ofRousseau
195
given the corruption surrounding him. On the other hand, he criticizes

Rousseau for succumbing to these feelings of disgust and outrage by iden
tifying human salvation with a return to the state of nature, in which he
would no longer be afflicted by the artificial needs that civilization has
generated. 1
To be sure, Rousseau drew the correct inferences from the feelings on
which he based his reflections. Fichte nevertheless questions the ultimate
validity of these feelings themselves and, consequently, the idea based
on them that a return to the state of nature represents the only possible
salvation for humankind. Fichte even accuses Rousseau of a contradiction
because 'he labored in his own manner to advance mankind and to
promote h uman progress toward the ultimate goal', and had he recognized
the existence of this drive with in himself and what it entails, 'there would
have been unity and agreement, both in his man ner of acting and at the
same time in his manner of inferring' (GA 1/3: 6of. ; EPW: 178) .2 This
1
A s Fichte p u ts i t : 'He tho ught that if he lived in t he state of nature he would not have al l of these
needs and would thus be spared the many pains caused by lening them go unsatisfied as well as the
many even more biner pains caused by satisfying them dishonourably, and he would then rema in at
peace with hinulf (GA l/3: 64; EPW: t 8 t ) .The idea that Rousseau advocated a return to the s tate of
nature is suggested i n the Fint Discoun by such passages as the following one: 'One cannot reflect
on morals, w i thout taking delight i n recalling the image of the simp licity o f t he fi rst ti mes. I t i s a fai r
shore, adorned by the hands of nature alone, toward which one forever t u rns one's eyes, and from
which one feels oneself moving away with regret ' (OC 1 1 1 : 11; PWt: 20). It has never theless been
denied that Rousseau advocated some fo rm of primitivism, that is to say, the idea that the cond i tion
of primitive man in the state of nature represents an ideal to which human bei ngs would do well to
return. Objec tions to amibu ting such an idea to Ro usseau include the claim that it ignores the fact
that he u nderstands the state of nat u re to consist of distinct stages, and that i t is only with respect
to a much later, more culturally advanced, though still pre- poli tical , stage that he express es regret at
the fact t hat hu man kind had not remai ned i n this state. Cf. Lovejoy, 'The Supposed Pri mit ivism of
Rousse a u's Discouru 011 bzrqualiry' . Other objections i nclude the following ones: (t) Rousseau thinks
that the solution to the present evils affl i cting h u manki nd lies in the fu ture not in the past, namely,
in the condi tions outli ned in such later works as the Social Con"act and Emik; (2) the notion of the
state of nature i s in any case a mental const ruct, not a fact, so that it is misleading 10 think of it in
terms of a past to which human beings could ever re turn; and (3) even if the state of nature had once
existed, there i s no possibi l i ty of returning to i t once the t ransition has bee n made to the social state
and 10 civilization. Cf. Todorov, Frail Happinm, 9ft
Fichte speaks of Rousseau's 'unnoticed fau lty i n ference', which implies that an error of reasoning is
to blame, when he accuses him of the following inconsistency. Roussea u desires the peace that the
state of nature promises to bri ng because it would enable h i m 'to reflect on his vocation and his
duties' and 'thereby to improve himself and h i s fellowmen '. Yet the possibil ity of such reflection and
the notions o f d u ty and human perfectibility are themselves the prod ucts of an education which
can only be undertaken by leaving the state of nature. The correct conclusion to have drawn would
therefore have been that human beings should seek to transcend the present state of thi ngs by means
of culture, which con sists i n transforming nature, both nature in onesel f (for example, one's natural
needs) and nature more generally, i n to something that bears the character of the product o f free and
rational bei ngs (GA 1!3= 64f.; EPW: 1 8 2 f. ) .

criticism implies that Rousseau failed to discover the real principle guiding
his actions (that is, the goal of improving the human race) , and that if he
had properly recognized this principle, he would have changed his own
way of thinking and acting, thereby providing his life and his own self
with greater consistency. Here we encounter the notion of a unified self
which is in harmony with itself since it thinks and acts consistently in
accordance with certain principles. I shall have more to say about such a
notion of the sel Fichte claims, moreover, that for Ro usseau the greatest
evil was the sensuousness that he saw reigning in the world around him,
and that the 'primacy of sensuousness [Herrschaft der Sinnlichkeit] was
the one thing he wanted to be abolished, whatever the risk and cost'
(GA 1/3: 63; EPW: 181) . The risk and the cost of abolishing sensuousness
threaten to be very high indeed, for 'in such a state of nature vice would be
abolished - along, however, with virtue and reason as such' (GA I/3: 64;
EPW: 181) .
The problem alluded to here can be understoo d as follows. In certain
conditions, sensuo usness may lead people to act in ways that conflict with
moral duty. For Rousseau, this did not happen in the earliest stages of
the state of nature because people lived for the most part in isolation
from each other and remained self-sufficient. Consequently, they had little
opportunity and no real incentive to harm each other, except in those rare
cases when their own physical survival was at stake. They also experienced
the natural sentiment of pity, inspiring in them the maxim of natural
go odness: 'Do your good with the least possible harm to others' (OC I I I : 156;
PW1: 154) . By contrast, sensuousness results in conflict in a society in which
the multiplication of human needs leads to a condition of interdependence
and to competition between human beings seeking to satisfy their needs
in the face of limited reso urces.
Fichte describes Ro usseau as being deeply affected by the realization
that in society sensuo usness and duty are in conflict with each other, with
this realization leading him to advocate a return to the state of nature
so as eradicate this conflict within himself. For Fichte himself, the main
issue is how sensuo usness can be conquered in such a way that it does
not require the renunciation of moral virtue. In other words, the real task
is to explain how human beings may proceed towards a condition that
is both morally better than the corrupt present age and more culturally
advanced than the state of nature. Fichte's response to this task is the
following proclamation: ct! Act! That is what we are here for' (Handeln!
Handeln! das ist es, wozu wir da sind') (GA 1/3 : 67; EPW: 184) . Specifically,
Fichte 's critique ofRousseau
197
he has in mind acting upon nature, including our own animal nature,
by transforming it in accordance with principles of reason, which must
themselves be progressively developed and strengthened within human
beings, making them into truly autonomous beings.3
From what has been said above, Fichte's critique of Rousseau is clearly
based on a particular view of the self and on the idea that human per
fectibility is possible in a condition of human interdependence. The theme
of human perfectibility in society can already be detected in the way in
which Fichte attributes to Ro usseau the alleged contradiction of appeal
ing to an ideal past in the shape of the state of nature while proclaiming
the advance to an enlightened future based on the perfectibility of the
human race. Fichte seeks to resolve this contradiction by demonstrating
that nature and history, understood as the process whereby the human race
achieves perfection, are compatible.4 The state of nature is here conceived
as a golden age that lies in the future, that is, in a future in which nature has
been transformed by means of human art and reason. This transformation
includes turning nature into a place of 'free leisure and a social life without
cares'. 5 As we shall see, in speaking of 'free leisure' this particular in terpre
tation of Fichte's critique of Rousseau points beyond Fichte's early lectures
on the scholar's vocation to his later attempt to establish the conditions of
moral freedom within a law-governed condition, in which human beings
are dependent both on each o ther and on the state with respect to their
material needs. I show that Fichte, like Rousseau, nevertheless came to
exhibit a growing scepticism concerning the capacity of human laws and
institutions by themselves to result in true freedom and to lead to genuine
human fulfilment. This scepticism leads both Rousseau and Fichte to offer
their own unique accounts of an inviolable sphere of human existence
which is free of the practical, freedom-endangering constraints that living
in society with others generates.
At the same time there are some major differences between Rousseau's
attempt to explain the possibility of such a sphere of human existence and
Fichte's attempt to do something similar. In order to understand what these
' A similar activist view of the self is suggested by Hegel's claim that an . . . has his actual substantial
life in the state, in learning, etc., and otherwise in work and struggle with the external world and with
h imself, so that it is only through his division [Entzweiung] that he fights his way to self-sufficient
un iry with himself' (PR 166). This claim points to the idea of a un ified self whose un iry must
nevertheless be established by means of a struggle with nature and also with oneself in so far as one
contains conflicting aims or tendencies within oneself.
4 Cf. Janke, 'Zuriick zur Natur? Fichtes Umwendung des Rousseauischen Naturstandes'.
5 Janke, 'Zuriick zur Natur? Fichtes Umwendung des Rousseauischen Naturstandes', 21.

differences are, we must turn to the conception of the self and the moral
freedom associated with it that are at stake in Fichte's critique of Rousseau.
Although this conception of the self and moral freedom feature in some of
Rousseau's own writings, he appears to renounce this conception of the self
and moral freedom in favour of a different type of self and a different form
of freedom in his later autobiographical writings. In this respect, Ro usseau
develops a position that appears to be incompatible with the activism and
the emphasis on human perfectibility that I have mentioned in connection
with Fichte's critique of his writings. Moreover, Fichte continues to accord
the state an essential, if largely negative, role within his account of human
perfectibility, whereas Rousseau describes a highly personal, asocial form
of freedom which appears to have little, if anything, to do with laws and
political institutions, and thus appears far removed from the concerns of
the Social Contract.
Selfbood and moral freedom
As we have seen, the moral freedom described by Rousseau, Kant, Fichte

and Hegel is typically associated with the 'positive' model of freedom.
Charles Taylor argues that positive freedom is essentially grounded on
what he calls an 'exercise-concept'. Taylor associates this type of concept
with the idea of self-direction, for he thinks that it is essential to the positive
model of freedom that one actually exercises 'directing control over one's
life' . 6 This view of freedom co uld also be said to apply to the mo ral freedom
described by Rousseau, which consists in restraining one's appetites and
acting in accordance with universally valid rules of conduct. Individuals
in this way exercise a self-mastery which involves acting according to
principles that they have imposed upon themselves, rather than being
determined by the desires, drives or inclinations that they just happen to
have, or by principles whose so urce is some form of external authority.
The notion of control implies the ability to discriminate between various
motivations, instead of simply doing what one is inclined or commanded
to do at any given moment in time. Taylor accordingly describes human
actio n as being guided by certain principles or goals that we think ought
to override our more immediate desires and inclinations if they come into
conflict with these principles or goals.
Although Taylor does not himself make this po int, this conception of
freedom implies the idea of unity, including unity over time, with an
6 Taylor, 'What's Wrong with Negative Liberty', 214.
Seljhood and moralfreedom
199
ethical principle or goal providing the self with unity in the face of the
multitude of given desires and inclinations that an individual happens to
have. In this respect, the positive model of freedom points to a certain view
of the self, namely, that of a self whose unity is constituted by means of
the principles according to which it acts and which it imposes upon itself.
Indeed, some of the examples of positive freedom that Taylor himself gives,
such as some passing comfort being less important than the fulfilment of
a life-time vocation and our amour-propre being less important than a love
relationship, imply the idea of a self whose ethical (if not metaphysical)
unity over time is constituted by means of the self-imposed principles or
goals that provide its actions with consistency. This consistency wo uld
arguably be lacking if an individual were simply to act on the basis of
the desires or impulses that he or she just happens to have at a particular
point in time, rather than heeding the long-term goals that he or she has
developed, goals that are themselves shaped by what the person in question
considers to be of value and significance in life. In this way such goals can
be thought to define a person's ethical identity.7
Rousseau is said to invoke the idea of a unified self with a fully integrated
personality on the basis of such passages as the following one: 'What
causes human misery is the contradiction between our condition and
our desires, between our duties and our inclinations . . . Make man united
[rendez l'homme un] and yo u will make him as happy as he can be' (OC m:
510; PF: 41) . 8 This passage suggests that becoming a unified self is a matter
of having desires that are capable of being satisfied given the conditions
in which we find ourselves and that also accord with the notion of duty.
Moreover, the following passage from Emile, which describes what might
be called 'the man of principle', evokes the idea of a person whose identity
over time is in large part constituted by certain principles of action that
he values above all others, lending both what he says and what he does
consistency: 'To be something, to be oneself and always one, a man must
act as he speaks; he must always be decisive concerning the choice he ought
7
As Taylor puts it: 'The whole notion of our identity, whereby we recognize that some goals, desires,
allegiances are central to what we are, while others are not or are less so, can make sense only against
a background of desires and feelings which are not brute, bur what I shall call import-attributing, to
invent a term of art for the occasion.' Taylor, 'What's Wro ng with Negative Liberty', 224.
This attribution of such a model of rhe self to Rousseau is found in Melzer, The Natural Goodness of
Man, 63ff. The parts of this passage that Melzer leaves out read as follows: 'between nature and social
institutions, between the man and the citizen . . . G ive him entirely to the state or leave him entirely
to himself; bur if you divide his heart, you tear him to p ieces.' From these lines we can see that the
problem of disunity is linked to the problem of the incompatibility between the individualism of a
human being living independently and the collectivism connected with membership of. and a deep
identification with, the state.
200
to make [decide sur le parti qu on doit prendre] , make it in a lofty style,

and always stick to it' (OC IV: 250; E: 40; translation modified). In this
particular case, the principles in question are to avoid acting in ways that
conflict with what one says (that is, to avoid hypocrisy), to be decisive, to
express one's choices in the appropriate manner, and consistently to carry
out the choices that one has made, however difficult it may be to do so .
Fichte's acco unt of the scholar's vocation equally implies such a view of
the self. Fichte claims that both unity of self and self-determination are
only possible when the empirical 'I' subjects itself to the eternally valid law
which he identifies with the principle of morality. Fichte thinks, in short,
that human beings can avoid being in contradiction with themselves only
by willing and acting in accordance with principles that they take to be
unconditionally valid, with the consistency provided by these principles
imparting unity to the self in the face of the multiplicity which character
izes nature in general. Establishing harmony within ourselves, and within
society and the world more generally, consequently requires bringing the
multiplicity of nature under rational human control, thereby providing it
with the unity that it in itself lacks. This demands skill and the acqui
sition of skill is culture (GA l/3 : 31; EPW: 150). Culture is, therefore, a
precondition of achieving complete harmony with oneself. Fichte calls this
total harmony with oneself perfection ( Vollkommenheit) (GA I/3 : 32; EPW:
152) . As we shall see, despite its association with culture rather than with
morality, such perfection has a moral significance fo r Fichte because he
understands many of a human being's main moral duties to derive from
his or her social functions, the successful performance of which requires
the possession of certain aptitudes and skills.
Although this point is not made by Fichte himself, he can be seen to
view o ur first-order desires, which are merely given, to belong to the mul
tiplicity that characterizes nature in general. These given desires can only
be combined into a harmonious whole by subjecting them to higher-order
desires based on certain principles. This act of imparting unity to the self
may in turn require rejecting some of these given desires or subordinating
them to other ones. This is not to say that Fichte thinks that all individuals
will adopt the same principles and will be motivated by the same second
order desires in so far as they earnestly seek to act in accordance with
these principles. Rather, he views society as made up of different classes
of people, with each class being defined by the particular function that it
performs within society. Each specific function generates a particular set of
principles according to which an individual o ught to act. Thus individual
perfection is attainable only within a society in which the talents of one
Seljhood and moralfreedom
201
person are complemented by the talents of others. The scholar's function

in society, for example, generates a unique set of duties associated with his
true vocation which concerns 'the supreme supervision ofthe actual progress
ofthe human race in general and the unceasingpromotion ofthis progress' (GA
I/3: 54; EPW: 172) .9 It is therefore the earnest desire to act in accordance
with the duties associated with his vocation that provide the scholar's exis
tence with an overriding purpose, to which all other aspects of his existence
must be subordinated.
This activist conception of the selfleads Fichte to denigrate the indolence
which he views as part of the natural condition of humankind. In viewing
indolence as part of the natural condition of humankind, Fichte agrees with
Rousseau, who portrays natural man as by nature not only 'alone' but also
'idle' (oisif) (OC I I I : 1 4 0; PW1: 139). Rousseau accordingly speaks of 'the
indolence of the primitive state' (OC I I I : 171; PW1: 167) . Unlike Rousseau,
however, Fichte views the development of needs as an unambiguously
progressive, beneficial force, because need 'is not the mother of vice; need
is the impetus toward activity and virtue. The source of vice is laziness
[die Faulheit]', while there 'is no salvation for man until he successfully
conquers his natural indolence [ Triigheit] and finds all of his joy and
his pleasure in activity alone' (GA I/3 : 66; EPW: 183) . Based as it is on
the idea that freedom and reason must gain control over nature, which
must be taken to mean both external and internal nature, Fichte's activism
implies that work is superior to idleness and that the latter is, in fact,
sinful . Indeed, in his System of Ethics Fichte associates the notion of the
radical evil in human nature with inertia or laziness ( Triigheit) (GA I/5: 185;
SE: 191).
In his autobiographical writings Rousseau, by contrast, praises the idle
ness which he felt to be so congenial to his nature, despite the way in
which he elsewhere treats idleness as something pernicious.10 Rousseau's
praise of idleness points to an entirely different set of ideas concerning the
self and the nature of freedom. Ro usseau has been said to advocate in his
autobiographical writings a 'grand project of idleness' and 'to invent a logic
9 This is not to say that there are no general duties that all members of society are obl iged to obey.
The scholar, for example, ought not to influence people by means of compulsion or deception, since
this would violate the more general dury to respect the freedom of others (GA !13: 57; EPW: 175).
10
See, for example, the following claim from the FirJt Discourse: 'While our sciences are vain with
respect to the objects they pursue, they are even more dangerous in the effects they produce. Born
in idleness (loisivetel, they feed it in turn; and the irreparable loss of time is the first injury they
necessarily inflict on society. In politics, as in ethics, not to do good is a great evil, and every useless
citizen may be looked upon as a pernicious man' (OC m: 18; PWI: 17).
202
of subjective freedom that is unfettered by any bond or attachment, a new

sovereignty of liberty'.11 In the next section, I show that it is appropriate
to speak of 'subjective' freedom in this connection. Fichte's early critique
of Rousseau will also be shown to be accurate once Rousseau's praise of
idleness in his autobiographical writings is compared to the benefits that
he claims in the Social Contract can only be attained by renouncing one's
natural freedom on entering the civil condition. These benefits include the
exercise and development of human faculties, the enlargement of a human
being's ideas and the ennobling of his or her sentiments, all of which imply
that human perfectibility is a matter of activity. I shall then go on to com
pare the way in which Rousseau seeks to guarantee an inviolable sphere
of human existence free of the practical, freedom-endangering constraints
that living in society with others generates with the way in which Fichte
does something similar in his Rechtslehre from 1812 by making leisure into
the object of an absolute right of property. While pursuing these themes,
I shall be led to confront issues whose significance extends far beyond
eighteenth-century debates concerning human perfectibility, such as the
role of the division of labour in modern society.
When describing in his Confessions his plans to go and live on the small,
almost uninhabited I le de Saint-Pierre in the middle of Lac de Bienne
in Switzerland to escape persecution, Ro usseau speaks of this particular
choice as 'so compatible with my peaceable temperament and my soli
tary and indolent disposition [a mon humeur solitaire et paresseuse] that
I count it as one of those sweet reveries which have inspired in me the
most intense delight' (OC I: 638; C: 624) . In his critique of Ro usseau,
Fichte describes Rousseau's character in a way that fully accords with the
description of it given here, for Rousseau is said to have a passive sen
sibility which favours suffering rather than acting (GA I/3: 66f; EPW:
I83f. ) . Rousseau also speaks of the sense of anticipation caused by being
abandoned in his isolation to 'the joys of idleness [destruvrement]' (OC I:
638; C: 625). Reading these two passages from Ro usseau's Confessions in
the light of each other, it is evident that Rousseau regards reverie as one
of these joys of idleness and that idleness itself constitutes a condition of
revene.
11
Saint-Amand, 'Freedom and the Project of ldleness', 245
203
Rousseau distinguishes between idleness in the middle of society (for

example, having to sit around out of politeness listening to conversations
that one finds boring) , which he regards as a form of constraint tantamount
to 'forced labour', and idleness in the midst of solitude, which is 'free and
voluntary' (OC I : 64of.; C: 627) . Idleness is here explicitly related to
the idea of freedom, with an authentic form of idleness being viewed as
the antithesis to the constraints that society imposes upon an individual.
Rousseau's account of reverie also implies the absence of any constraints
that a person imposes upon him- or herself, which in turn suggests that
reverie, like idleness, is incompatible not only with an activist conception
of the self but also with the moral freedom or autonomy described in the
previous section. This incompatibility is evident from a central feature of
Rousseau's account of idleness. This is the way in which he stresses the
arbitrary, impulsive nature of his actions, which do not, therefore, appear
to be subject to any clear rule or principle of action.12 Rousseau says, for
example, that 'I like to be busy doing nothing, to begin a hundred things
and to finish none, to come and to go as the whim takes me, to change my
plans at every moment' (OC I: 641; C: 627) . In a similar vein, he describes
his afternoons as being given up 'entirely to my own idle and indolent
disposition and to following, without any rule [sans regie], the impulse of
the moment' (OC I : 643; C: 630; translation mo dified) .
Such statements as these ones appear far removed from the idea of a
self whose ethical unity is constituted by means of self-imposed principles
and go als that invest life with meaning and lend consistency to one's
actions. Rather, the sheer arbitrariness of the idle lifestyle described by
Rousseau appears opposed to the positive model of freedom associated
with this idea of a unified self, because such arbitrariness implies resistance
to allowing one's actions to be governed by any rule or principle whatsoever,
even a self-imposed one. Rousseau suggests, in fact, that being subject to
even a self-imposed form of constraint would, given the effort that such
autonomy requires, amount to an unwelcome constraint for someone for
whom idleness in the midst of solitude represents a form of resistance to
11
This is not to say that Rousseau regarded himself as never acting according to principles. The
idleness that he describes seems, in fact, to be at odds with what he has to say in the Third Walk of
his Reveries ofthe Solitary Walker concern ing his earlier decision to adopt a set of principles that he
felt to be right in the face of the objections that others had made in relation to these principles. He
describes the principles in question as 'the constant rule of my belief and conduct', and he claims
they are more or less the ones we find in the Savoyard Vicar's profession offairh in Emile (OC 1: 1018;
RSW: 55). Even here, though, a major difference between Rousseau's adoption of such principles
and Fichre's activist standpo int can be detected. For Rousseau's decision never to re-examine these
principles, bur merely to accept them as rules for all future conduct, provides an example of the
kind of passivity for which Fichre criticizes him.
204
the constraints imposed on an individual by so ciety, when he describes

himself in the following way: 'Rebellio us to any other will, he doesn't even
know how to obey his own, or rather he finds it so tiring even to will that
he prefers in the course of living to follow a purely mechanical impression
that carries him along witho ut his having to direct it' (OC I : 846; D: 144) .
Here submitting oneself to a form of necessity which consists in passively
obeying a succession of impressions subject to laws of association turns o ut
to be preferable to the ideal of self-direction. Indeed, Ro usseau is keen to
stress the passive nature of reverie and its consequent absence of volition
when he claims that in reverie 'one is not active. Images are traced in the
brain, where they combine as in sleep without the collaboration of the will.
All that is allowed to follow its course, and one enjoys without acting' (OC
I: 845i D: 143) .
Another way in which Rousseau's account of idleness involves an implicit
rejection of the no tion of a self which is unified by means of the principles
that it imposes upon itself concerns the form of self-awareness and the
attenuated experience of one's unity over time that he describes in his
acco unt of the kind of reverie in which his idleness allows him to engage.
In the Fifth Walk of Reveries of the Solitary Walker, Rousseau describes
himself as being lulled into a reverie by the movements of the waters of a
lake to the point that 'it was enough to make me pleasurably aware of my
existence, without tro ubling myself with thought' (OC I : 1045; RSW: 87) .
He also describes his solitary reveries as leading to
a state where the soul can find a resting-place secure enough to establish
itself and concentrate its entire being there, with no need to remember the
past or reach into the future, where time is nothing to it, where the present
runs on indefinitely but this duration goes unnoticed, with no sign of the
passing of time [sans aucune trace de succession] , and no other feeling of
deprivation or enjoyment, pleasure or pain, desire or fear than the simple
feeling of existence, a feeling that fills our soul entirely. (OC 1: 1046; RSW:
88)
I think that two main elements can be identified in these descriptions of

reverie. One element is that a feeling or sensation of one's own existence,
b ut not the thought of it, defines the experience in question. The second
element concerns the notion of temporality which Rousseau associates with
this form of self-awareness. This notion of temporality consists in some
kind of eternal present, in which there is no sense of the past nor any
concern for the future, because all consciousness is centred on the fullness
of one's present existence. The unity of the self is not, therefore, something
205
that must be established over time. Rather, it manifests itself in a single

point of time, in which one's whole being is concentrated.
Thus Rousseau appears to be describing an experience which consists
in the presence of a self whose unity does not require the discipline
exercised by seco nd-order desires on the multiplicity of the subject's given
first-order desires. In this respect, reverie might even be said to represent
a form of liberation from such self-imposed constraints. The connection
between reverie and freedom can be pursued even further by bringing out
the precise sense in which this type of freedom is a merely subjective one.
One reason for speaking of 'subjective' freedom in this context concerns
the essentially personal nature of Rousseau's experience of the fullness of
his own existence and his corresponding sense of absence of constraint.
This sense of absence of constraint nevertheless conceals an element of
constraint, so that the freedom in question can be viewed as being merely
subjective in the sense that it depends on an individual's own experience
of freedom rather than on objective conditions as well.
To begin with, Ro usseau refers to the way in which water has the effect of
inducing reverie in him.'3 In this way, the seemingly timeless experience of
his own existence is made to depend on his relation to a particular natural
environment. To this extent, the type of freedom that he enjoys while
engaged in reverie has something in common with the natural freedom
which primitive man enjoys in the earliest stages of the state of nature.
In addition to the self-sufficiency that comes from not being dependent
on other human beings, even if one is dependent on nature and thus on
things, there is the emphasis on solitude. There is also the way in which
the idleness that Rousseau describes invites comparisons with the natural
laziness which he attributes to primitive man, and which he compares
favo urably with the constant activity and restlessness of human beings in
modern society (OC m : 192; PWx: 187) . Yet unlike primitive man Ro usseau
is, in fact, dependent on the wills of other human beings, which in the
case of his stay on the I le de Saint-Pierre means the authorities in Berne,
who have the power either to tolerate his presence on the island or to expel
him from it. Ro usseau is well aware of the precariousness of his situation.
This awareness leads him to express the wish 'to be compelled to remain
so as not to be obliged to leave', and to claim to prefer 'a thousand times
over the necessity of spending the rest of my life there to the danger of
being expelled' (OC 1 : 646; C: 632). The ideas of being compelled to live
somewhere and of a willing subjection to necessity show the extent to
'3 In addition to the Fifth Walk of Reveries ofthe Solitary Walker, see OC
t:
64}; C: 628.
206
which the sense of liberation that idleness and reverie make possible is
largely a matter of Rousseau's own personal experience of an absence of
constraint, for the objective conditions of this experience remain beyond
his own control.
This dependence on others relates to what might be described as the
occluded background to Ro usseau's reflections of the kind ofliberation that
idleness and reverie make possible. A society characterized by dependence
on others and by a division of labour must still be thought to exist at the
same time as Ro usseau enjoys the idleness which allows him to engage in
reverie and to achieve a full, seemingly timeless sense of his own existence.
Rousseau's own recognition of this fact is evident from the worry that he
himself expresses about what would happen if everyone were to do the
same as he does, when human society continues to produce a whole set
of needs that can only be satisfied by means of an active life. Rousseau
expresses this worry in the following passage, in which he discusses the
failure of most human beings to appreciate the delights of reverie:
Nor would it be desirable in our present state of affairs that the avid desire
for these sweet ecstasies should give people a distaste for the active life
which their constantly recurring needs i mpose upon them as a duty. But an
unfortunate man who has been excluded from human society, and can do
nothing more in this world to serve or benefit himself or others, may be
allowed to seek in this state a compensation for human joys, a compensation
which neither fortune nor mankind can take away from him. (OC 1: 1047;
RSW: 89; translation modified)
This recognition of the necessity of an active life with respect to the

satisfaction of needs in a condition of human interdependence appears to
render both idleness and reverie selfish forms of liberation, turning them
into rather guilty pleasures.
The parts of Ro usseau's autobiographical writings that deal with the joys
of idleness and reverie can be related to a number of points that Fichte
makes in his early critique of Rousseau. First of all, there is the claim that
Rousseau advocates a 'return' to the state of nature. Altho ugh Rousseau
may think that it is impossible to return to such a condition as primitive
man wo uld have experienced it, the kind of experience he describes in his
acco unts of reverie can be understood as an attempt to recreate certain
features of this hypo thetical condition. Fichte also seems to be right in
explaining the wish to return to such a condition in terms of Rousseau's
passivity, together with the way in which this passivity made it impossible
for him to confront the moral corruption that he encountered in society in
Fichte on leisure
207
a more positive manner, by seeking actively to bring nature under rational

human control and thereby to advance culture as a condition of human
perfectibility. In connection with the last point, Rousseau also appears
to renounce the idea of a self whose ethical unity is constituted by the
principles that it imposes upon itself and in accordance with which it acts,
whereas he includes the development of such a self among the benefits of
a legitimate social pact.
Fichte views the self as having a social dimension, for the consistency
of one's ethical disposition and actions is for him in large part achieved
by means of a set of self-imposed duties that derive from particular social
functions. This viewpoint reflects Fichte's commitment to the idea that
human perfection is only possible in a society in which the talents of one
person complement those of others. Given this implicit recognition of the
reality and unavoidability of human interdependence, the idea of a unified
self which exercises self-discipline by conscientiously acting in accordance
with the duties deriving from a particular social function may appear more
attractive than the idle, isolated self that we encounter in Ro usseau's autobi
ographical writings. As regards the idea of human perfectibility, moreover,
Fichte's later doctrine or theory of right (Rechtslehre) from 1812 provides
an account of how nature can be brought under rational human control.
Fichte nevertheless demonstrates an equal concern to explain the possi
bility of an inviolable, personal sphere of existence free of the practical
constraints imposed by the need to work in a condition of human interde
pendence. The sphere in question is that of leisure (Mujfe). Fichte in this
way appears to allow some room for idleness, despite his ethical activism.
At the same time, and in accordance with his critique of Rousseau and his
commitment to the idea of human perfectibility conceived in moral terms,
Fichte does not regard idleness as something that ought to fill this sphere
which is free of the practical constraints imposed by the need to work, and
whose possibility he seeks to explain.
Fichte
on
leisure
In many respects Fichte's Rechtslehre from 1812 corresponds to the theory of

right which he had previously developed in the Foundations ofNatural Right
and The Closed Commercial State. The originality of the Rechtslehre from
1812 mainly consists in Fichte's recognition of necessity and the implications
that his recognition of it has in relation to his earlier theory of property.
The necessity in question concerns not only natural necessity but also a
conventional form of necessity. This conventional form of necessity has to
208
do with the way in wh ich the state's function as guarantor of the terms
of the property contract means that each person is obliged to contribute
towards the maintenance of the state and its officials. Consequently every
person must labour not only to provide themselves with the means to live
but also to be able to fulfil this obligation.
In this way, human freedom becomes subject both to natural necessity
and to a conventional, legal form of necessity. In the fi rst case, necessity
consists in having to satisfy the basic conditions of hu man survival, while
in the second case it consists in the practical necessity of having to do
someth ing (that is, contribute towards the maintenance of the state and
its officials th rough the payment of taxes) so as to avoid certain sanctions,
though individuals may subject themselves to this second form of necessity
also because they recognize that the maintenance of the state and its
officials represents a condition of their own agency. In both cases, work
is the means by which the demands in question are met. Work turns out,
then, to be a form of practical necessity to which the two specific forms
of necessity described above can be reduced. Given this subjection to
necessity, Fichte claims that 'The human being has no freedom at all under
these conditions' (GA lll13: 223) . The essential problem is stated as follows.
The property contract is meant to guarantee each and every person a
determinate sphere for the exercise of his or her freedom. Yet the conditions
of guaranteeing this sphere turn out to incl ude being compelled to work,
even though individuals accept the terms of the property contract and
enter into a condition of right (Rechtszustand} solely for the sake of their
freedom (GA l ll13: 224) . In what sense, then, can they really be said to be
free when they are subj ect to this necessity? In raising this question, Fichte
introd uces more stringent conditions with respect to what it means to be
free than those found in the Foundations ofNatural Right, in wh ich it was
held to be enough if individuals could recognize the constraints to which
they are subject as self-imposed ones, in the sense of being able to endorse
these constrai nts as conditions of the effective exercise of their own free and
rational agency. It now turns out that even these self-imposed constraints
fall short of what is required by gen uine freedom because of the element
of necessitation that they involve.
For Fichte, the only solution to the problem of how genuine freedom
is possible in such a condition is for al l persons to be left some freedom
for thei r freely formed ends (Freiheit for frei zu entwerfende Zweke} once
they have gained the necessities of life by means of their own labour and
they have fulfilled their duties as citizens, which include contributing
towards the maintenance of the state and its officials (GA lll13: 224) .
Fichte on leisure
209
In other words, leisure constitutes the determinate sphere of freedom

which right, together with the state as its condition, must secure, whereas
in the Foundations of Natural Right this sphere was identified with the
activity by means of which a person was able to live from his or her labour.
In the Rechtslehre from 1812, Fichte accordingly defines the absolute right
of property which every person possesses as the 'free leisure for arbitrary
ends' ( freie Mujle zu beliebigen Zweken) that individuals enjoy after
having worked for the sake of their own self-preservation and to put
themselves in the position to fulfil their obligation to maintain the state
(GA IIII3: 229).
The state's task of pro tecting its citizens' property requires, therefore,
guaranteeing them some leisure. The more leisure a state is able to guarantee
its citizens, the better it can be said to fulfil its task of protecting their
pro perty. Conversely, a state which failed to guarantee its citizens a sufficient
amount of leisure would be one in which individuals were subject to
necessity alone and were co nsequently unfree. This failure on the part of
the state to guarantee freedom would result in tyranny, because we co uld
no longer speak of right but only of 'mere coercion and subj ugation' (GA
II/13 : 226) . The main difference between Fichte's earlier and later theories of
property is dear, for in the Rechtslehre from 1812 the sphere of freedom that
the state must guarantee is associated with freedom from work, whereas in
the Foundations ofNatural Right it was identified with the right to be able
to live from one's labour. In this sphere of leisure, human beings are free
of the constraints of wo rk and state supervision. Fichte's use of the term
'leisure' can therefore be understood in a negative sense as freedom from
work. It can nevertheless also be understood more positively as denoting a
condition of genuine free agency.
Although the existence of leisure does not entail idleness, it allows us to
think of work and idleness as being compatible as long as they belong to
different periods of time. Fichte himself makes dear that when he speaks
of 'free leisure for arbitrary ends', he means arbitrary in the sense of freely
chosen. This implies that idleness would be as legitimate as any other
arbitrary end. Yet he also views leisure in teleological terms, treating it as
the condition of a higher, mo ral freedom, whose ends lie not in nature
nor in that which is merely given but in a higher world, which reveals
a capacity within human beings to adopt supersensible ends (GA Ilh3:
223f.).14 This moral freedom ought, Fichte claims, to pervade all of the
'1
Rechtszustand Bedingung der sittl. Freiheit. Diese [hat] einen Zwek der durchaus nicht in der
Natur, und Fakticitat liegt, sondern in einer hohern Welt. Dies sonach [ist] die wahre Freiheit: das
Vermogen iibersinnlicher Zweke.
210
human being's activity, as opposed to being reserved for certain periods

of time or being a matter of particular arrangements. For this reason, he
praises the institution of the Jewish Sabbath inasmuch as it expresses the
idea of compelling people who, driven by greed, would o therwise never
have stopped working, or would have forced those people working under
them to labour continuously, to stop working, in the hope of making them
discover that they have spirit ( Geist) and reflect upon it (GA II/13: 225) .
Such statements suggest that Fichte does not want to equate leisure with
the kind of arbitrariness and randomness that Ro usseau associates with an
authentic form of idleness. Rather, leisure has an essential role to play in the
development of moral freedom, '5 and in this respect it plays an important
part in Fichte's acco unt of human perfectibility, which relies on the idea
of a self whose ethical unity is provided by the principles that it imposes
upon itself.
In the next section, I discuss two interrelated issues that Fichte's acco unt
of the relation of work (and necessity) to leisure (and freedom) raises in
connection both with the activist notion of the self which he adopts and
with the role played by the mo dern division of labour in increasing the
amo unt of leisure available in a condition of human interdependence.
The first issue concerns the role that such a self might play in securing the
conditions of its own realization by helping to make the greatest possible
amo unt ofleisure available not only to oneself but also to others. Leisure is
clearly, for Fichte, a resource that must be distributed fairly among the
citizens of a state. A condition in which some people were allowed to enjoy
ever greater amo unts of leisure while other people continued to work for
the same period of time, or were made to work for even longer than before,
so as to increase levels of production and wealth, which could mean the
personal wealth of others, wo uld therefore have to be regarded as a highly
unjust one. As we shall see, Fichte recognizes that in a condition of human
interdependence increasing the amount of leisure that can be distributed
among the citizens of a state will depend on each and every individual,
who is in a position to do so , playing his or her part in creating the greatest
possible amount ofleisure on the basis of a social division of labour. Fichte
here provides a clear statement of the significance of forms of work that aim
either at producing or at administering the resources and wealth needed
to satisfy human needs and to guarantee freedom: these forms of work are
not ends in themselves but are instead simply the means to an end that
s
Hence Fichte's statement that 'the moral law directs itself only at the will that has been freed
of all external ends, the will that is, so to speak, naturally idle and pronounced free by nature
[den . . . gleichsam von der Natur mussigen, u. von ihr losgesprochnen Willen]' (GA IIII3: 214) .
Ethical activism and the modern division oflabour
211
should always be kept in view when it comes to the amount of work which
people can be expected to undertake in a society that claims to honour the
principles of equality and freedom. The second issue concerns the effects
of the division of labour on the moral freedom which an increase in the
amount of leisure available is meant to make possible. I suggest that in
certain cases these effects constitute po tentially insurmountable limits to
human perfectibility as Fichte understands it.
Ethical activism and the modern division of labour
Fichte views a social division of labo ur in a positive light because it can

reduce the amount of necessary labour time and correspondingly increase
the amount of leisure time available. Any gains in productivity that are
made possible by the division of labo ur are therefore not considered to
be good in themselves: they are good only in so far as they serve to make
greater periods of leisure available to the citizens of the state. Fichte even
makes the novel suggestion that a nation's wealth should be assessed in
terms of the amount of leisure which it makes available to its members
rather than in terms of what this nation produces (GA II/13; 229f.) . Wo rk
is here conceived as the necessary means of securing freedom, which, in
the first instance, must take the form of leisure in the face of the necessity
that characterizes a condition of human interdependence and life in a state.
The state is acco rdingly charged with the task of ensuring that this means
of securing freedom becomes ever smaller. The relevance of Fichte's activist
conception of the self to his account of the role of the divisio n of labour
can be shown with reference to the following passage from Adam Smith's
famous discussion of the division oflabour facilitated by the mechanization
of the workplace in the Wealth ofNations:
A man commonly saunters a little in turning his hand from one sort of
employment to another. When he first begins the new work he is seldom
very keen and hearty; his mind, as they say, does not go to it, and for some
time he rather trifles than applies to good purpose. The habit of sauntering
and of indolent careless application, which is naturally, or rather necessarily
acquired by every country workman who is obliged to change his work
and his tools every half hour, and to apply his hand in twenty different
ways almost every day of his life; renders him almost always slothful and
lazy, and incapable of any vigorous application even on the most pressing
occasions.16
16
Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes ofthe Wealth ofNations, vol . 1, 19.
212
Smith's main concern in this passage is to highlight the inefficiency

which results from the same person performing more than one type of
work. In connection with the present topic, it should be noted that Smith
suggests that human beings are naturally indolent when he speaks of the
worker as being 'seldom very keen and hearty' as he begins to work,
although it is difficult to know here what is cause and what is effect, for the
passage in question could be interpreted as meaning that the necessity of
having repeatedly to change occupations renders people 'slothful and lazy' .
The self-disciplined, unified self that we encounter in Fichte's writings
can be thought to represent the antithesis of the indolent, inefficient and
undisciplined worker described above and, therefore, the sort of self that
the worker in the modern division of labour ought ideally to have.
For Smith, the ideal worker appears to be someone who sticks to a certain
task and performs it in a conscientious and vigorous manner. The effective
performance of this task in this respect could be thought to depend on the
adoption of certain higher-order desires that lend one's actions consistency
over time, such as the desire to labour for the public good by playing
one's part in increasing the nation's wealth. In Fichte's case, adopting this
particular principle of action would mean playing one's part in increasing
the amount of leisure available in the society of which one is a member. In
contrast, Rousseau's description of the aimlessness and arbitrariness that
characterize the experience of selfhood and freedom which unconstrained
idleness allows him to enjoy provides a possible object of Smith's negative
assessment of a situation in which a person constantly changes activities,
and of the laziness which is either the cause or the effect of such constant
change. Take, for instance, the following passage from the Confessiom, part
of which I have already quoted:
I
like to be busy doing nothing, to begin a hundred things and to finish

none, to come and to go as the whim takes me, to change my plans at
every moment, to follow each twist and turn of a fly, to dig up a rock to see
what is underneath it, to embark with ardour upon a task of ten years and
to abandon it without regret at the end of ten minutes, in short, to while
away the whole day without plan or purpose and to follow in everything
the caprice of the moment. (OC 1 : 641; C : 627)
The modern division of labour's need for a self-disciplined, unified

self, as opposed to the undisciplined self which Rousseau describes, is also
suggested by Karl Marx's description of the labo ur process, when he stresses
how human labour differs from the instinctive behaviour of non-human
animals, because it involves an interaction with nature which is initiated
213
by human beings and is consciously directed by them in accordance with

certain previously formed ends.17 The purpose in accordance with which
human beings interact with nature is said to have 'the rigidity of a law'
to which the worker 'must subordinate his will'.1 8 The less the worker is
attracted to the work that he performs, and the less, therefore, he enjoys
it, 'the closer his attention is forced to be'.'9
The last claim can be taken to mean that the self-discipline which
consists in making oneself act in accordance with the end that provides
the law guiding one's activity will be much greater when the work to be
performed is not of an intrinsically satisfying and rewarding kind, because it
does not allow for the full exercise and development of the worker's mental
or physical powers. This interpretation of the claim in question raises some
doubts concerning the compatibility of the ideal of an autonomous self
with the strict division of labour brought about by the mechanization of
the workplace in industrial society, for it suggests that individuals will not
freely adopt the ends associated with highly restricted mechanical forms
of labour. Rather, necessity forces them to adopt these ends, in the sense
that it is only by performing such labo ur that they can provide themselves
with the means to survive. It is evident that M arx himself understands the
type of necessity involved in certain forms of work in capitalist society in
these terms from the way in which he classes work that one is compelled to
perform - he himself speaks of labour that is 'not voluntary but coerced,
forced labour' - as alienated labour, and speaks of such work as 'not the
satisfaction of a need b ut rather just a means to satisfy needs outside
itself'.20 In other words, an individual works simply in order to survive.
This amounts, Marx claims, to eradicating the essential difference between
the 'free conscious activity' of human beings, and that of non-human
animals, for the latter produce 'only under the pressure of immediate
physical need, whereas man produces when free of physical need and in
fact truly produces only when free of such need'.21 Each worker's relations
to other workers is, moreover, in this way determined by the natural
necessity which co nsists in having to satisfy the basic conditions of human
survival. Hence Marx's claim that under capitalist relatio ns of production
the union of workers is 'in no way a voluntary one - as described, for
example, in [Rousseau's] Contrat social, but rather an association dictated by
necessity'.22
1 7 Marx, Capital, vol. I , 283f.
1 8 Marx, Capital, vol. I, 284.
1 0 Marx, Early Political Writings, 73
1 9 Marx, Capital, vol. 1, 284.
11 Marx, Early Political Writings, 174
11 Marx, Early Political Writings, 75f.
214
Fichte's awareness of the existence of this problem leads him to treat

leisure as the only genuine sphere of freedom available to individuals in a
condition of material interdependence. The originality of Fichte's position
can, in fact, be stressed by claiming that we do not encounter a similar
idea until Marx's distinction between the realm of necessity (Reich der
Notwendigkeit) , in which work appears as an externally imposed activity
based on natural necessity, and the realm of freedom (Reich der Freiheit) ,
in which begins the development of human powers regarded as an end
in itself. 13 Marx draws a firm distinction between these two spheres in
a passage from Capital in which he maintains that freedom truly begins
only beyond the sphere of material production, whose aim is to main
tain and reproduce life, and which expands with the development of
new needs and the forces of production that provide the means of sat
isfying these needs. Although the sphere of material production allows
for some freedom, Marx characterizes it as belonging to the realm of
necessity:
Freedom in this field can only consist in socialised man, the associated
producers, rationally regulating their interchange with nature, bringing it
under their common control, instead of being ruled by it as by the blind
forces of nature; and achieving this with the least expenditure of energy and
under conditions most favourable to , and worthy of, their human nature.
But it nonetheless still remains a realm of necessity. Beyond it begins that
development of human energy which is an end in itself, the true realm of
freedom, which, however, can blossom forth only with this realm of necessity
as its basis. The shortening of the working-day is its basic prerequisite.14
This passage, in which we encounter a clear echo of Fichte's view that

freedom becomes truly possible only when human beings are freed from
the practical constraints imposed on them by the need to work, raises the
following issues.
The first issue has already been alluded to, for it concerns the compat
ibility of the notion of an autonomous self with the modern division of
labour, which, as previously mentioned, may be thought to require the
existence of such a self if it is to be fully effective. Here it should be borne
in mind that Fichte treats work as incompatible with freedom only when it
is undertaken purely as a matter of necessity. The strict dichotomy between
work and freedom might, therefore, be overcome if an explanation could
be offered as to how work can be freely undertaken even in the case of
1) Cf. Buhr, 'Die Philosophie Johann Gottlieb Fichtes und die Franz6sische Revolution', 72f.
1 Marx, Capita vol. m , 820.
215
restricted, mechanical forms of labour that do not appear to allow for the
full development and exercise of human powers. 25 A second issue concerns
the possible effects of the modern division of labo ur on the moral freedom
of which state-guaranteed leisure is held to be the condition.
As regards the first issue, Fichte suggests that work can be freely under
taken if it is performed in accordance with the higher standpoint repre
sented by moral freedom and by the kind of self that he associates with
this freedom, when he offers the following vision of a society characterized
by interdependence, and in which the ends of reason are promoted by
individuals performing determinate forms of work:
Reason's end is furthered in each estate, beginning with that estate that
wrests from the soil its fruits, which is a condition for the preservation of
our species in the sensible world, through the scholar, who thinks of future
ages and works for them, and including the legislator and the wise ruler,
who establishes institutions that embody the thoughts of the researcher for
the well-being of the most remote generations. (GA 1/5: 244; SE: 261)
'5
This dichotomy might be said to arise in Marx's case because of his firm distinction between the
realm of necessity and the realm of freedom. This distinction suggests that certain forms of labour
are inescapably alienating and unfree, not least because Marx himself in his early writings treats
work that one is compelled to perform as a matter of necessity as alienated labour. For a discussion
of this issue which attempts to show that Marx continued to hold the view that even 'necessary'
labour (that is, labour that aims at meeting material needs) can be a free and self-realizing activity,
see Sayers, 'Freedom and the "Realm of Necessity"'. Here it is argued that human practical activity
involves degrees of freedom and that simply working on an object already manifests some degree
of freedom compared to the act of merely consuming an object. However, although Marx was
certainly keen to distinguish human labour from the instinctual behaviour of non-human animals,
the difference is, perhaps, not so great in the case of certain mechanical forms of labour as to
warrant speaking of degrees of freedom rather than degrees of necessity. At the same time, there can
be said to be an element of freedom even in the realm of necessity when production is rationally
regulated by the associated producers. This is because the producers exercise control over nature
and the forces of production as opposed to being dominated by them, and thereby exercise some
self-direction. Yet this does not amount to viewing certain activities that aim at meeting material
needs as being essentially other than a matter of necessity, for it could be that human beings would
simply choose not to perform such activities if it somehow became possible for them to satisfy their
material needs without having to undertake these activities.
Many individuals in communist society would have to work to provide for the material needs
of society, even though they may also find this work intrinsically rewarding. I ndeed, Marx himself
describes such labour aimed at meeting material needs as a feature of all societies, leading him to
call it 'an eternal natural necessity'. Marx, Capita vol. 1, I33 Thus even in communist society
the sphere of material production 'remains a realm of necessity' in the sense that natural necessity
continues to form a constraint on human agency, though this necessity no longer constitutes the
only reason that individuals perform forms of labour aimed at meeting material needs. Once it is
accepted that natural necessity will in many cases continue to be one of the main factors, if not the
only one, determining an individual's actions in the realm of material production, it seems that this
realm will, by definition, continue to be one of necessity, even if not to the same degree as it was in
capitalist society.
216
This passage presents us with various complementary estates that are

made up of people who engage in certain determinate activities, with each
of these activities being essential to accomplishing the end of reason. Each
estate is made up of various professions, some of which belong to the
higher ones, whose members act immediately upon the community of all
rational beings which forms the object of the end of reason, while others
belong to the lower ones, whose members act upon nature for the sake
of this community. Since both the higher and the lower professions are
essential to realizing the end of reason, this division into higher and lower
professions concerns only the nature of the activities performed as judged in
terms of a theory of human perfectibility, which views moral autonomy and
the establishment of a realm of pure reason as the final ends of all human
endeavour. This division does not, however, accord more importance to
one activity in relation to other activities in achieving the end of reason.
Fichte himself makes clear that the higher form of activity that he associates
with such people as the scholar, the cleric and the state official would not
itself be possible in the absence of the type of activity associated with the
lower professions, whose members act to provide the basic means of human
subsistence without which the members of the higher professions could
not even exist (GA l/5: 3 14; SE: 341f.) .
While the scholar, cleric or state official perform activities that might
be considered to be intrinsically rewarding, so that it is easy to think of
these individuals as engaging freely in these activities rather than doing
so only as a matter of necessity, the case of the lower professions is more
interesting because it includes occupations that are socially important b ut
are, in certain cases at least, ones that arguably no individual would will
ingly perform. Fichte implies, however, that individuals could view their
participation in such occupations as contributing to a greater good when
he treats all particular duties, including the duties that derive from the
estate to which one belongs, as being comprehended by the more general
duty to further the end of reason (GA I/5: 285; SE: 308) . Consequently,
in working in accordance with these duties rather than from mere neces
sity, individuals would be exercising moral freedom within a condition of
human interdependence. The exercise of such freedom would not, there
fore, be restricted to the periods of leisure that are guaranteed by the state.
This moral freedom nevertheless demands that the individuals concerned
genuinely choose to act in accordance with the duties associated with
their occupations, for no one can be compelled to be moral if the idea
of moral freedom itself is to be preserved. In this respect, overcoming the
division between work and freedom becomes a contingent matter, in the
217
sense that there is no guarantee that individuals will view the work that they
perfo rm in terms of its greater ethical significance. Thus the dichotomy
between work and freedom remains, leaving us with the idea that the
amount of time spent working must be minimized so as to increase the
amount of leisure available to each person. As we have seen, this aim of
increasing the amount of leisure available is something that Fichte thinks
can be fulfilled by means of a social division of labour.
This brings me to the second issue which concerns the problem that
securing more leisure by means of a social division of labo ur may, in fact,
undermine the moral freedom which the existence of more leisure is meant
to make possible. As we have seen, Fichte associates the capacity for moral
freedom with a certain type of self-activity and self-sufficiency, namely, that
of seeking ethical truth within oneself, rather than its being imposed by
some external authority. The essential role played by this self-activity and
self-sufficiency in moral freedom means that:
No one is convinced who does not delve into himself and feel inwardly the
consent of his own self to the truth that has been presented, a consent that
is an affect of the heart and by no means a conclusion of the understanding.
Such attentiveness to ourselves depends upon our freedom, and the consent
itself is therefore freely given and never forced. (GA 1/5: 278f.; SE: 30of.)
It may be, however, that the performance of certain tasks within the
social division of labour turns out to be inimical to the development
of the capacities needed to identify ethical truth. These capacities can be
thought to include the willingness and the energy to identify all the relevant
possibilities and to reflect upon them in cases in which what one ought
to do in the circumstances is far from obvious, and also, as suggested by
Fichte himself in the passage quoted above, the ability to experience certain
sentiments. Such a concern regarding the potentially harmful moral effects
of the modern division of labour is expressed by Adam Smith when he
claims that
In the progress of the division of labour, the employment of the far greater
part of those who live by labour, that is, of the great body of the people, comes
to be confined to a few very simple operations; frequently to one or two. But
the u nderstandings of the greater part of men are necessarily formed by their
ordinary employments. The man whose whole life is spent in performing
a few simple operations, of which the effects too are, perhaps, always the
same, or very nearly the same, has no occasion to exert his understanding, or
to exercise his invention in finding out expedients for removing difficulties
which never occur. He naturally loses, therefore, the habit of such exertion,
218

and generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human
creature to become. The torpor of his m ind renders him, not only incapable
of relishing or bearing a part in any rational conversation, but of conceiving
any generous, noble, or tender sentiment, and consequently of forming any
j ust j udgment concerning many even of the ordinary duties of private life.26
In this passage, Smith suggests that the stunting of human reason

brought about by the division of labour will almost certainly adversely
affect an individual's capacity for moral reasoning. Smith's description of
the effects of the division of labour in this way threatens to undermine
Fichte's neat division between work and leisure in so far as this division is
designed to explain the possibility of moral freedom.
This division between work and leisure implies that the shortening of
the working day represents the best hope when it comes to promoting
moral freedom, while this shortening of the working day is held to be
achievable by means of the social division of labour. The question arises,
however, as to whether the wo rk that an individual performs and this same
individual's moral existence can really be so easily separated from each o ther,
given the way in which, as Smith recognizes, the former may influence the
latter. Rather, by means of its deadening effects on the capacity for moral
judgement and on the ability to experience certain sentiments, the modern
division of labour may in fact undermine the moral agency of which it is
meant to be a condition, even if the state succeeds in guaranteeing equal
amo unts of leisure to all of its citizens. It seems, then, that some account is
needed of how the pernicio us effects of the division of labour can be either
counteracted or else prevented from arising in the first place by means of a
radical restructuring of society which seeks to avoid turning a condition of
moral freedom (that is, the division of labour as the means of generating
more leisure) into something that threatens this very same freedom by
rendering individuals incapable of exercising it effectively.
As regards counteracting the morally harmful effects of the division of
labour, it is significant that Smith's description of the moral effects of the
division of labour appears as part of a discussion of the need for some form
of public education, for in addition to the need for leisure, Fichte speaks
of the need fo r institutions aimed at cultivating everyone towards freedom
16
Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth ofNations, vol. 1 1 , 781f. See also the
following description that Marx gives of the effects of factory work under the conditions of capitalist
production: 'Factory work exhausts the nervous system to the uttermost; at the same time, it does
away with the many-sided play of the muscles, and confiscates every atom of freedom, both in
bodily and in intellectual activity. Even the lighten ing of the labour becomes an instrument of
torture, since the machine does not free the worker from the work, but rather deprives the work
itself of all content. ' Marx, Capita vol. 1, 548.
219
(Anstaltenfor die Bildung aller zur Freiheit) (GA III 13: 22 7) . Education is, in
short, presented as the means of ensuring that individuals spend their leisure
time in ways that promote their capacity for moral freedom. Yet in order
to preserve mo ral freedom, these same individuals cannot be compelled to
attend these institutions, and even if they could be legitimately compelled
to attend them, they certainly could not be legitimately compelled to
accept what they were taught in these institutions purely on the authority
of their teachers, since this would itself constitute a violation of their moral
freedom, which demands self-activity and self-sufficiency.
With regard to the idea of restructuring society so as to prevent the
pernicio us effects of the division of labour from arising in the first place,
various means of doing so are compatible with Marx's idea of the associated
producers' rational regulation of their interaction with nature. Some indi
viduals could, for example, continue to be tied to restricted, mechanical
forms of labour while also having some control over how the productive
pro cess in which they are engaged is organized, giving them the opportunity
to exercise some degree of self-direction and thus to develop the capacities
associated with moral freedom. At the same time, such self-direction itself
involves the actual exercise of moral freedom, in the sense that it consists in
acting in accordance with an end of reason which is defined in social terms.
Yet this is not a solution that Fichte himself proposes, for although in The
Closed Commercial State he advocates conscious collective control over all
production and exchange in society, he assigns the function of exercising
such control to the state as opposed to the individuals who engage in par
ticular acts of production and exchange. Another possibility wo uld be to
organize production in such a way that the division of labour is overcome
by allowing individuals within society to perform a variety of tasks.27 This
solution is, once again, one that Fichte appears unable to endorse. This
time it is because he treats the realization of the end of reason as requiring
a strict division of labour which ensures that the activity of one individual
17
This type of scenario is suggested by Marx's description of commun ist society as one in which 'no
one has an exclusive sphere of activity which is imposed upon him' and 'society regulates the general
production and in doing so makes it possible for me to do this today, and that tomorrow' . .\1arx,
Early Political Writings, 132. Doubts have been expressed, however, regarding the extent to which the
passage in question represents Marx's own ideas concerning communist society and the abolition
of the division of labour. Cf. Carver, 'Communism for Critical Critics? The German Ideology and
the Problem of Technology'. Still, Marx elsewhere makes claims regarding communist society that
do suggest the idea of overcoming a strict division of labour through individuals performing both
material and intellectual forms of labour so as to develop themselves more fully, as when he speaks of
a higher form of communist society in which not only the division of labour but also the antithesis
between mental and physical labour has disappeared. Cf. Marx, Later Political Writings, 214.
220
does not interfere with the activity of another individual, thereby reducing
the chances of realizing this end (GA I/5: 243; SE: 259f.).
Fichte's theory of right in this way points to the existence of some
potentially insurmountable obstacles to human perfectibility. First of all,
he accepts that work may in certain cases be a matter of mere necessity, even
though individuals could, in principle, regard the occupations that they
perform as having an ethical significance. Some individuals will, therefore,
be condemned to spending a significant portion of their lives engaged in
a type of activity that secures the possibility of their highest end, which
is moral freedom, but need not itself involve the actual exercise of this
freedom or the development of the powers on which the effective exercise
of such freedom depends. Indeed, engagement in such forms of work may
even hinder or prevent the development of these powers. Thus, in treating
a social divisio n of labour as a condition of moral freedom in the sense
that it promises to make more leisure available to the citizens of a state
than would otherwise be the case, Fichte is faced with the problem of
explaining how this same division of labour will not serve to undermine
the moral freedom of which it is meant to be a condition, by depriving
individuals of the capacities that the exercise of this freedom demands of
them.
Ro usseau's account of how idleness is favo urable to reverie and how
the latter gives rise to a liberating sense of self, which does not appear to
depend on one's relations to o ther human beings but only on one's rela
tions to things in the natural world, provides one possible alternative to
the freedom-endangering conditions of modern society with its division of
labour and high levels of interdependence. Yet the merely subjective nature
of this freedom and self-sufficiency must be regarded as deficient when
compared to the moral freedom which Rousseau himself praises. Rousseau
implies that this moral freedom becomes possible only in a rightfully con
stituted state in which there are relations of dependence between human
beings, including the type of dependence that I have identified as depen
dence on other human beings as mediated by dependence on things, but
in which these relations of dependence are nevertheless regulated in such a
way as to remove or to prevent the evils, especially that of domination, to
which they tend to give rise. In this way, a sense of absence of constraint
reflects objective conditions, as opposed to its having to be won despite
objective conditions by means of solitude, idleness and reverie. Thus, if the
subjective freedom that Ro usseau associates with idleness and reverie is con
ceived as an alternative to a moral freedom which is anchored in objective
conditions, it must also be tho ught to imply a scepticism on Rousseau's
221
part concerning the prospects of human perfectibility in a condition of

human interdependence.
Although Kant, Fichte and Hegel do not share this scepticism, I have
shown that each of these philosophers fails in his own way to meet certain
challenges posed by Rousseau's account of the freedom-endangering nature
of a condition of human interdependence. As we have seen, the central
challenges include explaining the possibility of moral freedom in the face
of the practical constraints generated by such a condition and how a just
social and political order can be established in such a way as to remove the
potential for domination produced by relations of dependence between
human beings when these relations assume asymmetrical forms because of
existing material inequality. The failures to meet these challenges that we
have encountered include Kant's inability to offer a convincing account of
how a genuine ethical community can arise in the course of history on the
basis of the civil so ciety which he conceives in terms of his theory of the
radical evil in human nature. This type of failure can also be detected in
Hegel's attempt to explain the transition from civil so ciety to the political
state in his Philosophy of Right, in so far as this transition is explained in
terms of a change in individuals' ethical dispositions and a corresponding
change in the primary object of their willing. Both Kant and Hegel appeal
to the educative function and the beneficial, but unintended outcomes of
a largely blind, spontaneous pro cess. Fichte, by contrast, lacks any faith in
the ability of such a process to generate the right outcomes, leading him
to emphasize the need to impose order on the economic and social forces
that threaten equality and freedom. This approach raises the problem as to
how the moral freedom of individuals can be preserved in cases when they
must be forced to act in accordance with the constraints associated with the
principles of equality and freedom and with their legal and institutional
embodiments.
Since Kant, Fichte and Hegel each in his own way regards a legal and
political community as the condition of moral freedom, these failures to
meet certain challenges posed by Rousseau amount to a failure to explain
how collective human perfectibility conceived in moral as well as in purely
cultural terms is genuinely possible within a condition of human inter
dependence. In each case, mo reover, Rousseau has something illuminating
to say about the grounds of these failures to meet challenges that he
himself poses. The inconclusiveness of Fichte's attempt to explain in his
later theory of right how moral freedom is possible in a condition of human
independence, and in a state in which the principles of equality and freedom
are hono ured, therefore provides a fitting end to this book, for it points to an
222
ongoing, potentially unrealizable, task, rather than a goal which has already
been achieved, whether in theory or in practice. The notion of such a task
implies the need for further reflection and for social and political change, as
opposed to an acceptance of existing conditions which can be of a willing or
fatalistic kind, depending on whether or not these conditions favour one's
own interests. In other words, when left unexamined, appeals to necessity
threaten to perform the ideological function of convincing people that they
are powerless to change conditions that benefit o thers while disadvantaging
them, even when these conditions may not, in fact, be objectively necessary
ones.
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Index
amour ek soi 69-70

amour-propr 12, 69-73, 8 8 , 91.
authorimrianism 11.6
consti[u[ion 6 1-61., 86
civil 68
democra[ic 131
au wnomy u , 1 5 , 1.4, 3 1., 34. 78, 9 1. , 95, 111., 119,

1.03, 1.16
Berlin, Isaiah 161.
bourgois 1 64
Fich[e's theory of 13o-131, 137-138

ra[ional s[a[e 1 1 4
republican 6 3 , 83
rightful 11.4
comi ngency 14-15, 44, 143-144. 185
comrac[ (pac[)
Capital (Marx) 1.14

capitalism 43, 85
Cassirer, Erns[ 89
as basis of all righ[S 97

civil u3, u6, 1 1.7, 133, 136
original 86-87
Christianity 1 5 6, 158
ci tizenship 111.
property 113, u s , 1 1. 5-11.6, 1.08

and free choice 11.5
Kam's disti nc[ion between ac[ive and passive

86
civil society 8, 1 7 , 51, 6 6 , 6 9 , 73, 7 8-83, 8 7 , 97,
144, 1 54-1 5 5 , 16o-161, 1 63-169, 1 71.-174,
prmection 113
social i !J-1.4. 3 1 , n . 45 6 1., ')0, 93 9 5-97 101,
105, 118, 178, 190, 193, 1.07
and equality 101
fea[ures shared by Fich[e's [heory of righ[
and Rousseau's version of 104-105,
176-177, 179, 18 1-181., 184-1 86, 188, 1.1.1

dependence on 1 8 5
11o-1 1 1.
fraudulen [ 39, 46-48, 100, 1 1 1 , 11.9
as maner of necess i ty 46, 48, 54
founder of 1 00
and freedom 74-76
and poli [ical s[a[e 153, 179, 18 6-191., 1.1.1
as sta[e of necessity 165
Th Closd Commrcia/ Stilt (Fich[e) 1 01., 104.
1 1.3-1 1.5, 1.07, 1.19
coercion 3 . 16, 76, 94. 141, 18 3, 1.09
law of 139
need for 61., 11.9
as prescribed by reason 68
righ[ of 109
Cohen, Joshua 1 1 1 , 11.8
coloniza[ion 173
commonweal [h 59, IO!J-110,
13 1-131.
comm unity
ethical 6 s, 67, n-8o, 87
unifica[ion 113
Contribution towards Ccting th Public 's
judgmmt oft Frt:nch Rvolution
(Fich[e) 1 1 3
corporation 176-179, 1 8 4 , 1 87-1 91
Corsica 48, 1 1 9-1 1.1.
cul[ure 10, 51., 54-55, 67, 71, 73, 78-80, 1 41 , 194.
1.00, 1.07
and morali cy 79
vices of 71, 73. 76-78, 84-8 5
democracy
direc[ 1)1-1)1., 137-138
dependence 1.-7, 14-16, 1 1.o-1 1.1, 1 8 1.
Th Conupt ofth Political (Schmin) SS

Con[rssio1u ( Roussea u) 1.01., 1.1 1.
o n civil society 1 8 5
and freedom 1.-7, 18, 33, 1 5 1.
conscience
[rue 1 61
indirec[ form of 1. 5
infi n i [e i ncrease i n 1 8 1.
227
228
Index
dependence (cont.)
natural form of t66
and needs 1 6 4
obedience to general will guarantee against
personal 94
on opinions of others 36-37, 42
on other h uman bein as mediated by
dependence on things 4. 24-26, 33,
3 5-36, 44. 46, 49, 8 5 , 8 7-90, u6 , 1 82,
220
on things 1 8-20, 26-29, 34. 37-3 8 , 40-42,
44-45 49. 55
unequal relations of 5, 44, 46, 8 5-86, 1 1 1 , u6,
1 2 2, t68
Discount on tht Origin and Fowularions of
lntquality among Mm (Rousseau) su
Stcond Discourst
Discount on Political Economy (Rousseau) 133
Discount on tht Scimcts andAns (Rousseau)
194
Discou= on Wtaith (Rousseau) 37
domination 4-7, 16, 25, 30, 45-46 , 49-50, 8 5 --8 6,
88--89. 121, t68, 220
Kant's theory of 1 5, 55, 57 1, 64, 70, 77,

83--84
radical 53-54 s8. 6s , 68-69. 76, 201 , 221

as social product 53, 85
and the state 55-56
fashion 166
force 8 , 10, 19, 20, 23, 92, 97, 1 1 1 , I I 3
common 104
as matter of necess i ty 8 , 16, 63
as sanction of righ t 64
and will 1 3 2
Foundations ofNatural Right (Fichte) 13, 101,
123, 1 2 5-1 26 , 130, 13 5-136, 138, 140, 207,
208-209
free choice 6, 14, 31, 34, 58, IOl, 105, 112 , 125, 147,
1 57 163, 173 181
and Fichte's property contract 125

of occupation 1 25-1 26, 179-1 8 1
free d om 2, 9-10, 1 2-13, 17, 44, 5 7 , 6 4 , 8 3-84, 8 7 ,
8 9--9 0 , 9 5 , 102-103 , 106, I l 2-II3, I I 5 ,
11 9-120, 1 24, 1 2 6 , 141-142, 144. 1 50, 1 5 5.
t67-t68, 197-1 98. 201 , 21Q-2 12 , 221
economic 76-77, 83
freedom as absence of 4
duty 31-32, 6o-6t, 72, 134, 1 5 2, 196, 1 9 9 , 206
conflict with sensuousness 196
Fichte's theory of social 200 , 207, 21 6
to further the end of reason 216
incen tive of 64
as absence of domi nation 4

absolute u 2
abstract 1 5 1, 1 67
alienation of 98
of all members of society 56
as autonomy II, 32, 34
civil to, 21-23, 52, 54, 74-76, 79, 82, 84. 8 9 ,
education 52, 139, 167, 169

public 2 1 8-219
egoism
universal as basis of Fich te's theory of right 64
Emile (Rousseau) t8-19, 5l. 199
and civil society 7 4-76

concrete 189
conflict with nature 52
democratic 21-24, 89
as subspecies of moral freedom 24. 96
tension i n Rousseau's account of 1 27-130
and dependence 2-7, 18, 33
division of 103, 107
as end of property u6-u7
and idleness 203
liberal 3-4. 8, 1 6
loss of 3 5
misuse of 66
102, 105
Encyclopatdia oftht Philosophical Sdmus
(Hegel) 148, 183

ephorate 136-140
equality to, t6-17, 20, 76, 85, 87--90, 102, to8,
II9, 124, 14J, 1 50, 18 1 , 2II, 221
before the law 56, 75

and division of freedom 107-108
as end of property u 6-u7
po(itica( JOI
as principal end of legislation 9 8
public 8 8
and right t o b e able t o live from one's labour
u s-u6
and social contract (pact) 101

ethical life 1 5 6, 1 6 9
abstract concept of 160
modern form of 144, t 51-1 5 5 . 1 57-1 59. t 6 t-t6<J,
170, 172-174. 176-177, t8t, t86, 191
evi1 1 2 , 14, 57, 84
moral t s-t 6, 21-24. 31-32, so-52, 54. 57, 8 4.

93 --9 5 . 103, 1 1 2, 1 1 9, 12 5 , 1 45-1 46 , 1 5 1-152,
1 5 4. 1 5 6-1 58, 171, 1 97-1 98, 203 , 209-2 II,
21 5-221
and democratic 24, 96

threats to 1 29
natural 22, 24. 29-30, 33, 39, 49, 5 l. 83, 98,
105, II3, u6 , 12 5 , 1 53, t68, 190, 201, 205
and necess ity 2, 9-10, 1 5, 163, 1 6 5 , 169,

172-173 17 5-176. 179-1 80, t83-t86,
208-209, 21 1 , 213-214
Index
negative 3, 4, 2.6, 94. II2., 146-147 1 50, 1 52.,
2.09
objective 145, 1 5 1
political t o
positive I, 3 , 1 5 , 2.1-2.2., I I :Z., I So-l SI , 1 53-1 54
1 6 1 , 170, 186, 198-199, 2.03 , 2.09
as principal end of legislation 98
rational laws and institutions as conditions of
149
republican 3-5, 7-8, 1 5-16, 2.1
and reverie 2.05
righ t to 107
subjective 144-145, 1 5 1 , 1 54-1 56, 1 58-1 59
1 6 1-162., 1 6 4. 1 69-172., 179 183-1 87, 2.02.,
w s. 2. 2.0
pri nciple of 1 5 6-1s8, 16o-163, 176--177, 179,
1 8 1 , 186
right of 1 56 , 1 58, 176
of trade 74. 175
as truth of necess i ty 1 83-186
wild 68
God 12., 40
goodness
natural 53 ss. 57 63, 71-73
maxim o f 1 9 6
negative nature of 71-73
and the state ss-s 6
governmen t s 6, 97 II8, 1 3 1 , 136. 1 8 9
g ood 138
as i nstrument of the people's will 12.8, 133
people must have more power than 139-140
republican form of s6
small 170
tendency to oppress sovereign 1 3 6
happiness 5 6 , 1 45-146, I SO
Hayek, F. A. 43-45
histo ry 47, 54, 87, 90, 141, 1 56 , 1 58
Christian view of II
Kant's philosophy of 10, 51, 82.
Hegel's philosophy of 13
and nature 197
as theodicy 52.-53
Hobbes, Thomas ss. 91-92., 94
ldta for a Univmal Hisf()ry with a Cosmopolitafl

Aim ( Kan t) 6s , 73. 79, 87
indolence 2.01
idleness 2.01-2.04. 2.06-2.07, 2.09-2.10, 2.12., 2.2.0
and freedom 2.03
grand project of 2.01
inequality 14. 99-100
economic and social 7 4o 88-89
Hegel's defence of 181
229
material 6, 16, 36--39, 43 , 45-47, 49-50, 85-87,

90, 99 101, III, II6, I SO, 182., 186, 193 2.2.1
moral or poli tical 2.6, 2.8-2.9, 34 3 8-39. 44
nat ural or physical 2.6, 2.9, 3 5
i nsigh t
rational 1 59-161, 1 64, 170
Jewish Sabbath 2.10
j ustice so, 97 , 138-139, 141
innate sense of 134
labour
and dependence 86
division of 2.9, 34-35, 1 64-1 65, 1 82., 2.02., 2.06 ,
2.to-2. J S , 2.17-2.19, 2.2.0
forced 2.03 , 2.13
as ground of property rights 99-100, 1 2.7
human 2.12.
to live from one's II4-I I7, 2.08-2.09
law, laws 9, I I , 1 5 , 19-2.0, 2.2., 48, 65, 68, 73,
78-79. 83-84, 8 6-87. 9Q-9 1 , 94-9 6,
1oo-101, 104-JOS, 118, 1 44. 1 57, 167, 170,
190, 1 97-198
based on thought 145
of coercion 139
disposition of individuals towards 1 59
economic 172.-175 179, 184
equality before s6, 75
external con formity with 64
and interpretation of general (common) will
33-136
making of versus execution of 1 2.8, 131-132.
moral 31-3 2., 57-58, 6 o-6 2., 6s, 67, 6 9,
77-78
resistance to 62., 70
of motion 41
natural 42, 17 4
of nature 2.7, 174-175
obedience to a matter of necessity rather than
freed om 12.9
positive 9. 109, 174
principle of morality as eternally valid 2.00
products of will 174-175
public 68
as public reason J33
rational 1 49, 1 5 1 , 1 53
of right 109
right to propose 1 2.8
society governed by s6 , 69
as sovereign 12.6
un iversal 61-62., 65-68, 76--7 7, 82., 85
universality of 131
of virtue 79
laziness 2.01 , 2.05, 2.12.
legislator 47-48, 86, 2.1 5
Index
leisure 29-30, 197, 207, ZO?-ZIZ, li4-ZIS, no
as objec1 of absolu1e righ t of property zoz,
209
liberalism 3 n. 126
hostil ity to state in tervention ss-s 6
Kant's 53-54- 5 6-57. 65, 76-77, S45
luxury 1 S 1
Machiavelli, Niccol<'J 55, 5 9
market economy S, 43-45, 173-174, 179
Marx, Karl Z 1 2-215, 219
money 16, 124
exchange of goods wi thout 122
as threat to equality and fi-eedom 1 1 9-1 22
Momesquieu, Charles de Secondat, baron
de 1 21
morality 1o-1 1, 32, 59, 64, So, 112, 140, 1 56- sS,
1 64, 200
and culture 79
Fichte's separation from right 64
incompatibility with self-interest S1
principle of zoo
nature 6, 11-13, 4S, 52, 63, 71, 73, 7S, So, 16S, 197,
zoo-z01, zos, 207, 209, zn-214. 219
conflict with freedom 52
and history 197
immed iacy of 166
laws of 27, 174-175
plan of 71, 73. 7S, Sz, S7
second 171
state of 18-19, n, 25-29, 35, 4o-41 , 44, 46,
4 9-50, 69-73, 97, 10S, 11o-m , 16S, 1 97,
zos
return to 39, 195-197. zo6
necessity s. 1 5 , zS, 41-42, 44, 46 , 7 6 , S z, 9 2, 95,
113, 141-142, ss. lSI, 20], 216, no, lll
artificial 3S
causal 17 :Z.. 1Sz, 204
economic form of S-9, 155, 163, 171-173 176,
JS3-I S S
educative function of 1 5 4
external 165-166, 170, 1 S S
and freedom z, 9-10, 15, 1 6 3 , 1 6 5 , 1 6 9 , 1 7 2 ,
175-176, 179-1 So, 1S3-1 S6, zo8-zo9, 211,
213-214
and law 9, 20, zoS
logical i S z
natural S-9, 13, l]-28 , 30, 34, 3 S , 41 , 44-46,
50, 54, 63, 6S, 126, 141, 1 65-1 67, 174-175,
20]-ZOS, 213
practical z, 7-9, 13, 6S, 77 126, 152, 163,
172-173 . 182, zoS
pressure of 46
rational 176, 1S3
and social bonds 177
social con tract (pact) a maner of 46, 4S, 54

social form of 8--9 , 1 63, 166, 169, 1S3
Slate of 165
subjective 30, 3S
unconscious 175
unnatural form of zS
and will 17, 25, 45-51, 17 4. I]S-179 . 192-193
willing subjection to 205
yoke of 41, 49
needs 6--'] , n, 26-29, 3 5-36, 3S, 46, 55, 72, 76,
S 1 , 1 23-1 25, 15S, 161, 173, 1S1, 194.
196-197 201, zo6, 210, ZI3-ZI4
artificial 30, 34. 1 67
and dependence 1 64
natural 16S
particularization of 166
for recognition 72, S1
and social recognition 1 6 6-167
sphere of 172
spiri tual 165
system of 1 64- 6s , 1 69, 172
true 30, 34
Neuhouser, Frederick 12, 149
On tht Common Saying: This May bt Trut in

Theory, but it dots not Apply in Practict
(Kant) 64
opinion 1 65-1 66
as form of dependence 36-3S
general will standard independen t of 134
and needs 1 66-1 67
public 41-42
patriotism
modern 1 62-163
perfectibility 1 1-1 5, 17, s -sz. ss. 65, 71, n 9 6,
4 -142, ss -1 56, 16S, 176, 1 93 . 197-19S,
zoz, 207, uo-211, z s-u6, no-zu
impulse of t3
and the state 57
perfection
as complete harmony with oneself zoo
moral so, S :Z.. 7S
of sciences and arJS 1 94
personality 1 5 6-157, 199
Pettit, Philip 5
philosophy
Hegel's speculative 149
and reconciliation with actuality 15S
Philosophy ofRight (Hegel) 142, 144-145. 14S, I SI,
ss. 1 57-1 59. 174, IS7, I 91-I9z
pity ]Z, I96
Poland 1 1 9-1 21
political economy I72-I74 I S S
poverty I 7 3 I77
progress 1o-11, IS, 79, Sz, S4o I95. 201
Index
property 22, 47 74. 95, 182
in broadest sense of the word 114
as condition of active citizenship S 6
concept of 106
con tract 113, n s. 20S
Fichte's theory of 10, 57, S 9-90, 1 1 2-1 1 9
as foundation of civil society 9 6
as foundation o f social pact 9 6
grounded in reciprocal recognition 109
leisure as object of absolute right of 202,
209
liberal theory of 57. S9, 117
as means to equality and freedom 1 1 6-1 1 7
private 3 5 . 3S, 96--97, 1 00
righ t o f 3 5. S9, I03-104. 1 0 6 , 1o8-1 19, 1 24. 1 27,
1 57
to be able to live absolute, inalienable 114
Rousseau's t heory of 93, 96-IOI, 112
and the state 93, 96--\) S , 101, 1 1 3 , 1 17-I IS, 1 53 ,
170, 20 9
Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph 117
Rawls, John 134
reason, rationali ty 1 1-13, 1 5 , 2S, 64, 6S-69, 142,
196-197 201
end of 215-21 6, 219
duty to further 21 6
idea of S6
immanent 1 5 2
public 133-134
pure practical 31, 76
self-legislating nature of 1 1
stunting o f 21 S
as unity of universality and individuality
145
of wi11 1 43. 144
Ruhnkhrr (Fich te) 130, 13S, 14o-141, 202, 207,
209
Rligion within th &undaris ofMrr &ason

(Kam) 69-70, 79
represen tation
necessity of 1 3 2
republic
Rousseau's definition o f S 4
republicanism
neo- 3-s. 1 5-16
Rousseau's 3
reform 9
possibility of 6, 44-45
reverie 4o-41, 202-206, 220
and freedom 205
Rvtris ofth Solitary Walkrr (Rousseau) 25,

3 8-43 45 204
revolution 139
right, rights 64, 66, S s-S6, SS, IOS-I06 , 1 26, 133,
! 60, 174-175. 209
231
abs1rac1 1 57, 163

alienalion of 1 10, 1 12, nS, 1 26
anlinomy of poli1ical 1 26-1 27
civil 97
of coercion 109
concept of 102-103, 107, 1 1 2
condi 1ion of 20S
as condition of i ndividualiry 102
as condition of self-consciousness 102
doctrine of 131 , 136, 207
as exis1ence of free will 1 so, 174
Fich1e's separa1ion from moral i ty 64, 1 1 2
o f firs1 occupan 1 97-101, 10!)-11 1 , 1 1 4
formal 1 5 6
t o freedom 107
Hegel's 1heory of 145, 1 47, 1 50, 1 57, 172
instrumental role i n relation to morali ty 7S,
112
t o land 9 S , 1 1 4
law of 1o9
as limitation on arbitrary wiii i S2-I S3
to live from one's labour 1 1 4-117, 1 23-1 25, 1 27,
209
natural 47, 64, 109
original 105-106, 109
of particularity 1 S 1
of personal individuality 1S9
political 1 3 1
of property 35, S9, 103-104. 1 0 6 , 10S-1 19, 124.
1 27, 1 57
to be able to live absolute, i nalienable 114
leisure as object of absolute 202, 209
to propose laws 1 28
and reflection 1 59-1 6o
relation of 113
rule o f 10s
science of 64. 104
of self-preservation 10S
of subjective freedom 156, 15S
of subjective particularity 1 5S, 176
of subjectivity 1 5S
of subject to find satisfaction in action 1 sS
task of constructing 141
use 117
to vote S6
Roman world 156
Schmiu, Carl ss-s6
Suond Discouru (Rousseau) 1S, 24-26, 2S, 34,

3 8-39. 41-42 , 44. 46-48, s s . S7, 91 , 99.
100, I l l , 119, 1 29, IS2
self-consciousness
ethical living principle of 1 59
infinite form of 146
particularity of 1 S 4
right a s condition o f 102
2 32
Index
self-in terest 47, 63, 65, I48, I S4. I77, 188,

191
as basis of un i o n I48
incompatibility with morali ty 81
principle of 165
self-love 6cHJl, 64o 66, 77, 8o-8I
two forms of 69-7I
self-preserva tion so, 54, 63, 689. 71, 1 1 3 ,
109
right of to8
self-sufficiency 3 1-33, 37, 40, 1 1 1, I Sl, 105, 117,
119, llO
Smith, Adam 74, 177-178, 111-lll, 117-218
on 'man of system' 91
sociability
unsocial 67. 73, 7 6
Social Contract {Rousseau) 18, 24, 46, 48-49, 52,
91, 1 10, 1 34. 189, I98, lOI-lOl
Somt Ltctum oncrrning tht Srhoillr 's Vation
{Fichte) 193-1 94
sovereignty 101, 1 3 6, 138
popular 101, 130, I33 137, 141, 187
Spinola, Baruch de I83
state 47, ss. 63, 79, 81, 84-8 5, tol-I03 , 1 1 1 , 1 1 1 ,
114. 1 16 , 13 2, 136, I4I. 49 ss. 97
108-W9, 1 1 1 , 116, li9, llO
civil so
and civil society 1 53 , I79 I 8 6-I9l, 111
con tract theory of 1 43-144, 148-I49, S3- S4.
J 6 J , 1 70, 190
decline of 134
economic life of 1 11, IlS
and equali ty 85
and evil s s-s6
external t 6 J
founding o f 91
Hegel's theory of I
individual's dependence on 1 1 4-1 1 5
in terdict 137
intervention SS-57 74o 83, 175. 9 - 91
living in a mauer of necessity I 69-171
modern 48 , t 6t-t6l, I?O, 176, 183, t8S-t86
principle of 161
as nation of devi ls 54, 6I-6l
and natural goodness ss-s 6
of necessity 1 6 5
and perfectibility 5 7
political ? 1 3 8 , ss. 1 64, 1 7 6 , I 8 6 , 1 8 8
and pro pe rty 9 3 , 96 -9 8, 101, 109
rational t l6, 141
rational i nsigh t i nto 159-I6o
role in ensuring right to be able to live from
one's labour 1 17-1 18, Jl3-I l S
rules o f reason of 48
and society s6
trust towards 1 61-1 63

universality of 1 5 4
w i l l as principle of 143-145
subjectivity I S7-I S9. 1 67
i ndeterminate 1 51
pri nciple of 161
right of t s8
Systtm ofEthics {Fichte) 101
Taylor, Charles I98-199
theodicy J J-I l, I<J. 51-53, 6s, 83
Tht Thtory ofMoral Smtimmn {Smi th) 1 77
Viroli, Maurizio s
virtue I96
political I9J
vocation
of scholar I94 197, loo-lot
wealt h
nalion's 21 1-11 2
Wraith ofNations {Smith) 111
welfare 8 5, I S8-J S9. t 6l-t 6s, 170, I76-177
wickedness
as opposi tion between private will and public
will 61
wiii 8-IO, 14-I S, 44, 90, 105, 1 41 , 167, 178, 181,
188-I 89, lO<J, 113
of all I07, 148-149
arbi trary 143-I44o 183
right as limitation on I Sl-1 53
of child 146
concept of I47-150, 1 5 5, 1 57
right as objectification of 1 50
conscious I43
conten t of I 47. 1 49- S 153
corporate 189, 191
ethical 146
existence of I S S
a n d force 1 3 1
free 4 3 , 147, I?l, 1 8 1
right a s existence o f 1 50, 174
general {common, universal) 11, 48, 63, 91,
94-96. IOl, 107-108, I l l, 114> I l?-130,
I36. I38-I39 14l-I44. 178. t86-I87.
t89-191
Hegel's re-conceptualiution of I4S.
147-1 50
interpretation of 1 28 , 1 3 1-136, I37
impurity of 6o
as object 1 53 , ss
and particular will t 6o
standard independen t of human wi11 134
versus will of all 148
Hegel's theory of 1 45-147
233
Index
i ndividual 1 43
laws product of 17 4-175
moral 1 51
natural 1 5 1
a n d necess i ty 17, 15, 45-5 1 , 174. 178-179,
191-193
objective 1 46, 1 60
opposition between private and public 61-63
paniculac as opposed to general 1 3 6
as principle of th e Slate 1 43-145
rarional 1 51
rationality of 143-144
of ruler 139
of slave 146
subjective 1 47, 1 58, 1 6o-161
subjectivity of t6o
supersti tious 1 46
union as content of 178
universal 143, 1 54-156, 1 6 1 , 179, 187-191
u niversality of 155, 16o
universally valid 66
weakness of 6o

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ROUSSEAU AND GERMAN IDEALISM

The claim that Rousseau's writings influenced the development of

is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University

ROUSSEAU AND GERMAN

University Printing House, Cambridge CB2 8os, Un ited Kingdom

David James 2013

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception

A catalogue recordfor this publication is availablefrom the British Library

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of

Ro usseau on freedom, dependence and necessity

The transition from dependence on things to dependence on men

The spectre of primitive man in

Reveries ofthe Solitary Walker

Will and necessity

Evil and perfectibility in Kant's liberalism

A civil society of intelligent devils

Culture and the ethical community

Imposing order: Rousseau and Fichte on property

Will and necessity in Hegel's Philosophy ofRight

Activism and idleness: Fichte's critique of Ro usseau

Confessions, trans. Angela Scholar (Oxford University Press,

Bush (Hanover: University Press of New England, 2005). Cited

Kant's gesammelte Schriften, ed. Konigliche preuBische {later

Fichte: Early Philosophical Writings, ed. and trans. Daniel

'Enzyklopadie der philosophischen Wissenschaften im

Philosophie des Rechts. Die Vorlesungen von I8IfT20 in einer

The claim that important aspects of the writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau

freedom, dependence and necessity. I show, moreover, that Rousseau poses

In Rousseau's writings the idea of freedom is closely connected with the

Freedom and dependence

in which one human being is dependent on another human being. This

the potential for domination contained in such a situation. The classic

Freedom and dependence

one.? The neo-republican account of freedom as independence of the arbi

which they seemingly have no control, in which case, as indicated above,

by means of material objects. A condition of interdependence based on

While freedom forms a staple topic of modern political philosophy as does,

In its most obvious form, practical necessity consists in being compelled

problems concern the question as to whether the idea of human freedom

is the theme of perfectibility, which is also found in the philosophies of

Rousseau is viewed as an impo rtant figure in Kant's development because

of human history. This theodicy begins with an original harmony among

consists in human beings developing certain latent capacities through their

account of freedom as absence of dependence on the arbitrary wills of o thers

Cf. Skinner, Liberty before Liberalism, 82fT.

Cf. Viroli, Republicanism, 54

Rousseau on freedom, dependence and necessity

Freedom and dependence

In Emile, his treatise on education, Ro usseau draws a firm distinction

Freedom and dependence

Rousseau on freedom, dependence and necessity

Freedom and dependence

Rousseau on freedom, dependence and necessity

Freedom and dependence

Rousseau on freedom, dependence and necessity

interdependence. In this respect they can be seen to follow Rousseau's

Freedom and dependence

Rousseau on freedom, dependence and necessity

The transition fro m dependence on things to dependence on men

Dependence on thingr and dependence on men

include any obligations that he has to others generated by the necessity of

Rousseau on freedom, dependence and necessity

Dependence on thingr and dependence on men

gradual enlightenment does not go beyond mere dependence on things.