First published Mon Sep 27, 2010; substantive revision Fri May 26, 2017
Jean-Jacques Rousseau remains an important figure in the history ofphilosophy, both because of his contributions to political philosophyand moral psychology and because of his influence on later thinkers.Rousseau’s own view of philosophy and philosophers was firmly negative,seeing philosophers as the post-hoc rationalizers of self-interest, asapologists for various forms of tyranny, and as playing a role in thealienation of the modern individual from humanity’s natural impulse tocompassion. The concern that dominates Rousseau’s work is to find a wayof preserving human freedom in a world where human beings areincreasingly dependent on one another for the satisfaction of theirneeds. This concern has two dimensions: material and psychological, ofwhich the latter has greater importance. In the modern world, humanbeings come to derive their very sense of self from the opinion ofothers, a fact which Rousseau sees as corrosive of freedom anddestructive of individual authenticity. In his mature work, heprincipally explores two routes to achieving and protecting freedom:the first is a political one aimed at constructing politicalinstitutions that allow for the co-existence of free and equal citizensin a community where they themselves are sovereign; the second is aproject for child development and education that fosters autonomy andavoids the development of the most destructive forms of self-interest.However, though Rousseau believes the co-existence of human beings inrelations of equality and freedom is possible, he is consistently andoverwhelmingly pessimistic that humanity will escape from a dystopia ofalienation, oppression, and unfreedom. In addition to his contributionsto philosophy, Rousseau was active as a composer and a music theorist,as the pioneer of modern autobiography, as a novelist, and as abotanist. Rousseau’s appreciation of the wonders of nature and hisstress on the importance of feeling and emotion made him an importantinfluence on and anticipator of the romantic movement. To a very largeextent, the interests and concerns that mark his philosophicalwork also inform these other activities, and Rousseau’s contributions inostensibly non-philosophical fields often serve to illuminate hisphilosophical commitments and arguments.
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- 2. Conjectural history and moral psychology
- 3. Political Philosophy
- Bibliography
1. Life
Jean-Jacques Rousseau was born in the independent Calvinistcity-state of Geneva in 1712, the son of Isaac Rousseau, a watchmaker,and Suzanne Bernard. Rousseau’s mother died nine days after his birth,with the consequence that Rousseau was raised and educated by hisfather until the age of ten. Isaac Rousseau was one of the smallminority of Geneva’s residents who enjoyed the rank of citizen ofGeneva, a status which Jean-Jacques was to inherit. Accordingto Rousseau’s own subsequent accounts, the haphazard education that hereceived from his father included both the inculcation of republicanpatriotism and the reading of classical authors such as Plutarchwho dealt with the Roman republic.On his father’s exile from the city to avoid arrest,Jean-Jacques was put in the care of a pastor at nearby Bossey andsubsequently apprenticed to an engraver. Rousseau left the cityat the age of sixteen and came under the influence of a Roman Catholicconvert noblewoman, Francoise-Louise de la Tour, Baronne de Warens. Mmede Warens arranged for Rousseau to travel to Turin, where he convertedto Roman Catholicism in April 1728. Rousseau spent some timeworking as a domestic servant in a noble household in Turin, and during this timea shameful episode occurred in which he falsely accused a fellowservant of the theft of a ribbon. This act marked him deeply and hereturns to it in his autobiographical works.
Rousseau then spent a brief period training to become a Catholicpriest before embarking on another brief career as an itinerantmusician, music copyist and teacher. In 1731 he returned to Mme deWarens at Chambéry and later briefly became her lover andthen her household manager. Rousseau remained with Mme de Warensthrough the rest of the 1730s, moving to Lyon in 1740 to take up aposition as a tutor. This appointment brought him within the orbitof both Condillac and d’Alembert and was his first contactwith major figures of the French Enlightenment. In1742 he travelled to Paris, having devised a plan for a newnumerically-based system of musical notation which he presented to theAcademy of Sciences. The system was rejected by the Academy, but in thisperiod Rousseau met Denis Diderot. A brief spell assecretary to the French Ambassador in Venice followed before Rousseaumoved to Paris on a more permanent basis from 1744, where he continuedto work mainly on music and began to write contributions to theEncyclopédie of Diderot and d’Alembert.
In 1745 Rousseau met Thérèse Levasseur, abarely literate laundry-maid who became his lover and, later, his wife.According to Rousseau’s own account, Thérèsebore him five children, all of whom were deposited at the foundlinghospital shortly after birth, an almost certain sentence of death ineighteenth-century France. Rousseau’s abandonment of his children waslater to be used against him by Voltaire.
In 1749, while walking to Vincennes to visit the briefly-imprisonedDiderot, Rousseau came across a newspaper announcement of an essay competitionorganized by the Academy of Dijon. The Academy sought submissionson the theme of whether the development of the arts and sciences hadimproved or corrupted public morals. Rousseau later claimed that he then and there experienced an epiphany whichincluded the thought, central to his world view, that humankind is goodby nature but is corrupted by society. Rousseau entered hisDiscourse on the Sciences and Arts (conventionally known asthe First Discourse) for the competition and won first prizewith his contrarian thesis that social development, including of thearts and sciences, is corrosive of both civic virtue and individual moralcharacter. The Discourse was published in 1750 and is mainlyimportant because Rousseau used it to introduce themes thathe then developed further in his later work, especially the naturalvirtue of the ordinary person and the moral corruption fostered by theurge to distinction and excellence. The First Discourse madeRousseau famous and provoked a seriesof responses to which he in turn replied.
Music remained Rousseau’s primary interest in this period, and theyears 1752 and 1753 saw his most important contributions to the field.The first of these was his opera Le Devin du Village (TheVillage Soothsayer), which was an immediate success (andstayed in the repertoire for a century). The second was hisparticipation in the “querelle des bouffons”, a controversy thatfollowed the performance in Paris of Pergolesi’s La ServaPadrona by a visiting Italian company and which pitted thepartisans of Italian music against those of the French style. Rousseau,who had already developed a taste for Italian music during his stay inVenice, joined the dispute through his Letter on French Musicand the controversy also informed his (unpublished) Essay on the Originof Languages. Rousseau’s emphasis on the importance of melody andthe communication of emotion as central to the function of music was inopposition to the views of Rameau, who stressed harmony and therelationship between music, mathematics, and physics. Rousseau went sofar as to declare the French language inherently unmusical, a viewapparently contradicted by his own practice in Le Devin.
Rousseau’s conversion to Catholicism had rendered him ineligible forhis hereditary status as Citizen of Geneva. In 1754 he regained thiscitizenship by reconverting to Calvinism. In the following year hepublished his Discourse on the Origins of Inequality, again inresponse to an essay competition from the Academy of Dijon. Though hedid not win the Academy’s prize a second time, the SecondDiscourse is a far more accomplished work, and in it Rousseau begins todevelop his theories of human social development and moral psychology.With the Second Discourse, the distancebetween Rousseau and the Encyclopédistemainstream of the French Enlightenment thought became clear. This riftwas cemented with his 1758 publication of the Letter tod’Alembert on the Theater, in which he denounced the idea that hisnative city would benefit from the construction of a theater. InRousseau’s view theater, far from improving the population, tends toweaken their attachment to the life of the polis.
The years following the publication of the Second Discoursein 1755 were the most productive and important of Rousseau’s career. Hewithdrew from Paris and, under the patronage of, first Mme d’Epinay andthen the Duke and Duchess of Luxembourg, worked on a novel, Julie,ou La Nouvelle Héloïse, and then onEmile and The Social Contract. Julie appeared in 1761and was an immediate success. The novel is centred on a love trianglebetween Julie, her tutor Saint Preux and her husband Wolmar. The workis cast in epistolary form, and is an important supplementary sourcefor the interpretation of Rousseau’s social philosophy, containing, asit does, such elements as a vision of rural community and the presenceof a manipulative genius who achieves the appearance of natural harmonythough cunning artifice and who thus anticipates both the tutor inEmile and the legislator of The Social Contract. Bothworks appeared in 1762, marking the high point of Rousseau’sintellectual achievement.
Unfortunately for Rousseau, the publication of these works led to personal catastrophe. Emile was condemned in Paris and both Emile and The Social Contract were condemned in Geneva on grounds of religiousheterodoxy. Partly in response to this, Rousseau finally renounced his Genevan citizenship in May 1763. Rousseau was forced to flee to escape arrest, seeking refugefirst in Switzerland and later, in January 1766, at the invitationof David Hume, travelling to England.
Rousseau’s stay in England was marked by increasing mentalinstability and he became wrongly convinced that Hume was at the center of aplot against him. He spent fourteen months in Staffordshire where heworked on his autobiographical work, the Confessions, whichalso contains evidence of his paranoia in its treatment of figures likeDiderot and the German author Friedrich Melchior, Baron von Grimm. He returned to France in 1767 and then spent much ofthe rest of his life working on autobiographical texts, completing theConfessions but also composing the Dialogues: RousseauJudge of Jean-Jacques and The Reveries of the SolitaryWalker. He also completed his Considerations on the Governmentof Poland in this period. In later life he further developed hisinterest in botany (where his work proved influential in England viahis letters on the subject to the Duchess of Portland) and in music, ashe met and corresponded with the operatic composer Christoph Gluck. Rousseau died in 1778. In 1794 theFrench revolutionaries transferred his remains to thePanthéon in Paris.
2. Conjectural history and moral psychology
Rousseau repeatedly claims that a single idea is at the centre ofhis world view, namely, that human beings are good by nature but arerendered corrupt by society. Unfortunately, despite the allegedcentrality of this claim, it is difficult to give it a clear andplausible interpretation. One obvious problem is present from thestart: since society, the alleged agent of corruption, is composedentirely of naturally good human beings, how can evil ever get afoothold? It is also difficult to see what “natural goodness” might be.In various places Rousseau clearly states that morality is not anatural feature of human life, so in whatever sense it is that humanbeings are good by nature, it is not the moral sense that the casualreader would ordinarily assume. In order, therefore, to address thispuzzling central claim, it is best to look first at the details ofRousseau’s moral psychology, especially as developed in theDiscourse on the Origins of Inequality and in Emile.
Rousseau attributes to all creatures an instinctual drive towardsself-preservation. Human beings therefore have such a drive,which he terms amour de soi (self love). Amour de soidirects us first to attend to our most basic biological needs forthings like food, shelter and warmth. Since, for Rousseau, humans, likeother creatures, are part of the design of a benevolent creator, theyare individually well-equipped with the means to satisfy their naturalneeds. Alongside this basic drive for self-preservation,Rousseau posits another passion which he termspitié (compassion). Pitiédirects us to attend to and relieve the suffering of others (includinganimals) where we can do so without danger to our ownself-preservation. In some of his writings, such as the SecondDiscourse, pitié is an original drive thatsits alongside amour de soi, whereas in others, such asEmile and the Essay on the Origin of Languages, it isa development of amour de soi considered as the origin of allpassions.
In the Discourse on the Origins of Inequality Rousseauimagines a multi-stage evolution of humanity from the most primitivecondition to something like a modern complex society. Rousseau denies that this is a reconstruction of history as it actually was, and Frederick Neuhouser (2014) has argued that the evolutionary story is merely a philosophical device designed to separate the natural and the artificial elements of our psychology. At each step ofthis imagined evolution human beings change their material and psychologicalrelations to one another and, correspondingly, their conception ofthemselves, or what Rousseau calls the “sentiment of theirexistence.” According to this narrative, humans live basicallysolitary lives in the original state of the human race, since they donot need one another to provide for their material needs. The humanrace barely subsists in this condition, chance meetings betweenproto-humans are the occasions for copulation and reproduction,child-care is minimal and brief in duration. If humans are naturallygood at this stage of human evolution, their goodness is merely anegative and amounts to the absence of evil. In this story, humanbeings are distinguished from the other creatures with which theyshare the primeval world only by two characteristics: freedom, andperfectibility. Freedom, in this context, is simply the ability not tobe governed solely by appetite; perfectibility is the capacity tolearn and thereby to find new and better means to satisfyneeds. Together, these characteristics give humans the potential toachieve self-consciousness, rationality, and morality. Nevertheless,it will turn out that such characteristics are more likely to condemnthem to a social world of deception, dissimulation, dependence,oppression, and domination.
As human populations grow, simple but unstable forms of co-operationevolve around activities like hunting. According to Rousseau, thecentral transitional moment in human history occurs at a stage ofsociety marked by small settled communities. At this point a change,or rather a split, takes place in the natural drive humans have tocare for themselves: competition among humans to attract sexualpartners leads them to consider their own attractiveness to others andhow that attractiveness compares to that of potentialrivals. In Emile, where Rousseau is concerned with thepsychological development of an individual in a modern society, healso associates the genesis of amour propre with sexualcompetition and the moment, puberty, when the male adolescent startsto think of himself as a sexual being with rivals for the favours ofgirls and women.
Rousseau’s term for this new type of self-interested drive,concerned with comparative success or failure as a social being, isamour propre (love of self, often rendered as pride or vanityin English translations). Amour propre makes a centralinterest of each human being the need to be recognized by others ashaving value and to be treated with respect. The presentation of amourpropre in the Second Discourse—and especially in hisnote XV to that work—often suggests that Rousseau sees it as awholly negative passion and the source of all evil. Interpretations ofamour propre centered on the Second Discourse(which, historically, are the most common ones (for example Charvet 1974)), often focus on the factthat the need for recognition always has a comparative aspect, so thatindividuals are not content merely that others acknowledge their value,but also seek to be esteemed as superior to them. This aspect of ournature then creates conflict as people try to exact this recognitionfrom others or react with anger and resentment when it is denied tothem. More recent readings of both the Second Discourse, and especially ofEmile, have indicated that a more nuanced view is possible (Den 1988, Neuhouser 2008).According to these interpretations, amour propre is both thecause of humanity’s fall as well as the promise of its redemption becauseof the way in which it develops humans’ rational capacities and their senseof themselves as social creatures among others. Although Rousseauheld that the overwhelming tendency, socially and historically, isfor amour propre to take on toxic and self-defeating(‘inflamed’) forms, he also held that there are, at least inprinciple, ways of organizing social life and individual educationthat allow it to take on a benign character. This project of containing andharnessing amour propre finds expression in both TheSocial Contract and Emile. In some works, such as theSecond Discourse, Rousseau presents amour propre as apassion that is quite distinct from amour de soi. In others,including Emile, he presents it as a form that amour desoi takes in a social environment. The latter is consistent withhis view in Emile that all the passions areoutgrowths or developments of amour de soi.
Although amour propre has its origins in sexual competitionand comparison within small societies, it does not achieve its fulltoxicity until it is combined with a growth in material interdependenceamong human beings. In the Discourse on Inequality, Rousseautraces the growth of agriculture and metallurgy and the firstestablishment of private property, together with the emergence ofinequality between those who own land and those who do not. In anunequal society, human beings who need both the social good of recognitionand such material goods as food, warmth, etc. become enmeshed insocial relations that are inimical both to their freedom and to theirsense of self worth. Subordinates need superiors in order to haveaccess to the means of life; superiors need subordinates to workfor them and also to give them the recognition they crave. In such a structurethere is a clear incentive for people to misrepresent their truebeliefs and desires in order to attain their ends. Thus,even those who receive the apparent love and adulation of theirinferiors cannot thereby find satisfaction for their amourpropre. This trope of misrepresentation and frustration receivesits clearest treatment in Rousseau’s account of the figure of theEuropean minister, towards the end of the Discourse onInequality, a figure whose need to flatter others in order tosecure his own wants leads to his alienation from his own self.
2.1 Morality
Amour de soi, amour propre andpitié are not the full complement of passions inRousseau’s thinking. Once people have achieved consciousness ofthemselves as social beings, morality also becomes possible and thisrelies on the further faculty of conscience. The fullest accounts ofRousseau’s conception of morality are found in the LettresMorales and in sections of the Confession of Faith of theSavoyard Vicar, a part of Emile. In the most primitiveforms of human existence, before the emergence of amourpropre, pitié balances or restrainsself-interest. It is, to that extent, akin to a moral sentiment such asHumean sympathy. But as something that is merely instinctual it lacks,for Rousseau, a genuinely moral quality. Genuine morality, on the otherhand, consists in the application of reason to human affairs andconduct. This requires the mental faculty that is the source of genuinely moralmotivation, namely conscience. Conscience impels us to the love ofjustice and morality in a quasi-aesthetic manner. As the appreciationof justice and the desire to act to further it, conscience is based on a rationalappreciation of the well-orderedness of a benign God’s plan for theworld. However, in a world dominated by inflamed amour propre,the normal pattern is not for a morality of reason to supplement orsupplant our natural proto-moral sympathies. Instead, the usual courseof events in civil society is for reason and sympathy tobe displaced while humans’ enhanced capacity for reasoning isput at the service, not of morality, but of the impulse to dominate,oppress and exploit. (For recent discussion of Rousseau on conscience and reason, see Neidleman, 2017, ch. 7.)
A theme of both the Second Discourse and the Letter tod’Alembert is the way in which human beings can deceive themselvesabout their own moral qualities. So, for example, theatre audiencesderive enjoyment from the eliciting of their natural compassion by atragic scene on the stage; then, convinced of their natural goodness,they are freed to act viciously outside the theater. Philosophy, too, canserve as a resource for self-deception. It can give people reasons to ignorethe promptings of pitié or,as in Rousseau’sessay Principles of the Right of War, it can underpin legal codes (such as thelaw of war and peace) that the powerful may use to licenseoppressive violence whilst deadening their natural feelings ofcompassion.
3. Political Philosophy
Rousseau’s contributions to political philosophy are scattered amongvarious works, most notable of which are the Discourse on theOrigins of Inequality, the Discourse on PoliticalEconomy, The Social Contract, and Considerations onthe Government of Poland. However, many of his other works,both major and minor, contain passages that amplify or illuminate the politicalideas in those works. His central doctrine in politics is that a statecan be legitimate only if it is guided by the “general will” of itsmembers. This idea finds its most detailed treatment in The SocialContract.
In The Social Contract, Rousseau sets out to answer what hetakes to be the fundamental question of politics, the reconciliation ofthe freedom of the individual with the authority of the state. Thisreconciliation is necessary because human society has evolved to apoint where individuals can no longer supply their needs through theirown unaided efforts, but rather must depend on the co-operationof others. The process whereby human needs expand and interdependencedeepens is set out in the Discourse on the Origins ofInequality. In that work, the final moment of Rousseau’sconjectural history involves the emergence of endemic conflict amongthe now-interdependent individuals and the argument that the Hobbesianinsecurity of this condition would lead all to consent to the establishmentof state authority and law. In the Second Discourse, thisestablishment amounts to the reinforcement of unequal and exploitativesocial relations that are now backed by law and state power. In an echoof Locke and an anticipation of Marx, Rousseau argues that this statewould, in effect, be a class state, guided by the common interest ofthe rich and propertied and imposing unfreedom and subordination on thepoor and weak. The propertyless consent to such an establishmentbecause their immediate fear of a Hobbesian state of war leads them tofail to attend to the ways in which the new state will systematicallydisadvantage them.
The Social Contract aims to set out an alternative to thisdystopia, an alternative in which, Rousseau claims, each person willenjoy the protection of the common force whilst remaining as free asthey were in the state of nature. The key to this reconciliation is theidea of the general will: that is, the collective will of the citizenbody taken as a whole. The general will is the source of law and iswilled by each and every citizen. In obeying the law each citizen isthus subject to his or her own will, and consequently, according to Rousseau,remains free.
3.1 The idea of the general will
Rousseau’s account of the general will is marked by unclarities andambiguities that have attracted the interest of commentators since its first publication.The principal tension is between a democratic conception,where the general will is simply what the citizens of the statehave decided together in their sovereign assembly, and an alternativeinterpretation where the general will is the transcendent incarnation ofthe citizens’ common interest that exists in abstraction fromwhat any of them actually wants (Bertram 2012). Both views find somesupport in Rousseau’s texts, and both have been influential. Contemporaryepistemic conceptions of democracy often make reference toRousseau’s discussion in Book 2 chapter 3 of ofThe Social Contract. These accounts typically take Condorcet’s jurytheorem as a starting point, where democratic procedures are conceivedof as a method for discovering the truth about the public interest; they theninterpret the general will as a deliberative means of seeking outcomes that satisfythe preferences of individuals and render the authority of the state legitimate (see for example, Grofman and Feld 1988).The tension between the “democratic” and the“transcendental” conceptions can be reduced if we takeRousseau to be arguing for the view that, under the right conditions andsubject to the right procedures, citizen legislators will be led toconverge on on laws that correspond to their common interest; however,where those conditions and procedures are absent, the state necessarilylacks legitimacy. On such a reading, Rousseau may be committed tosomething like an a posteriori philosophical anarchism. Such a view holds thatit is be possible, in principle, for a state to exerciselegitimate authority over its citizens, but all actual states—and indeedall states that we are likely to see in the modern era—will fail tomeet the conditions for legitimacy.
Rousseau argues that in order for the general will to be truly generalit must come from all and apply to all. This thought has bothsubstantive and formal aspects. Formally, Rousseau argues that the lawmust be general in application and universal in scope. The law cannotname particular individuals and it must apply to everyone within thestate. Rousseau believes that this condition will lead citizens, thoughguided by a consideration of what is in their own private interest, tofavor laws that both secure the common interest impartially and thatare not burdensome and intrusive. For this to be true, however, it hasto be the case that the situation of citizens is substantially similarto one another. In a state where citizens enjoy a wide diversity oflifestyles and occupations, or where there is a great deal of culturaldiversity, or where there is a high degree of economic inequality, itwill not generally be the case that the impact of the laws will be thesame for everyone. In such cases it will often not be true that acitizen can occupy the standpoint of the general will merely byimagining the impact of general and universal laws on his or her own case.
3.2 The emergence of the general will: procedure, virtue and the legislator
In The Social Contract Rousseau envisages threedifferent types or levels of will as being in play. First, individualsall have private wills corresponding to their own selfish interests asnatural individuals; second, each individual, insofar as he or she identifieswith the collective as a whole and assumes the identity of citizen,wills the general will of that collective as his or her own, setting asideselfish interest in favor of a set of laws that allow all tocoexist under conditions of equal freedom; third, and veryproblematically, a person can identify with the corporate will of asubset of the populace as a whole. The general will is therefore both a property ofthe collective and a result of its deliberations, and a property of theindividual insofar as the individual identifies as a member of thecollective. In a well-ordered society, there is no tension betweenprivate and general will, as individuals accept that both justice andtheir individual self-interest require their submission to a law whichsafeguards their freedom by protecting them from the private violenceand personal domination that would otherwise hold sway. In practice,however, Rousseau believes that many societies will fail to have thiswell-ordered character. One way in which they can fail is if privateindividuals are insufficiently enlightened or virtuous and thereforerefuse to accept the restrictions on their own conduct which thecollective interest requires. Another mode of political failure ariseswhere the political community is differentiated into factions (perhapsbased on a class division between rich and poor) and where one factioncan impose its collective will on the state as a whole.
The Social Contract harbors a further tension betweentwo accounts of how the general will emerges and its relation to theprivate wills of citizens. Sometimes Rousseau favors a procedural storyaccording to which the individual contemplation of self interest(subject to the constraints of generality and universality and underpropitious sociological background conditions such as rough equalityand culturalsimilarity) will result in the emergence of the general will from theassembly of citizens (see Sreenivasan 2000). In this account of the emergence of the generalwill, there seems to be no special need for citizens to have anyspecifically moral qualities: the constraints on their choice should beenough. However, Rousseau also clearly believes that the mere contemplationof self interest would be inadequate to generate a general will.This may partly concern issues ofcompliance, since selfish citizens who can will the general will mightstill not be moved to obey it. But Rousseau also seems to believe thatcitizen virtue is a necessary condition for the emergence of thegeneral will in the first place. This presents him with a problem forwhich his figure of the legislator is one attempted solution. As abeliever in the plasticity of human nature, Rousseau holds that goodlaws make for good citizens. However, he also believes both that goodlaws can only be willed by good citizens and that, in order to belegitimate, they must be agreed upon by the assembly. This puts him in somedifficulty, as it is unlikely that the citizens who come together toform a new state will have the moral qualities required to will goodlaws, shaped as those citizens will have been by unjust institutions.The legislator or lawgiver therefore has the function of inspiring asense of collective identity in the new citizens that allows them toidentify with the whole and be moved to support legislationthat will eventually transform them and their children into goodcitizens. In this story, however, the new citizens at first lack thecapacity to discern the good reasons that support the new laws and thelawgiver has to persuade them by non-rational means to legislate intheir own best interests.
The figure of the legislator is a puzzle. Like the tutor inEmile, the legislator has the role of manipulating the desiresof his charges, giving them the illusion of free choice without itssubstance. Little wonder then that many critics have seen thesecharacters in a somewhat sinister light. In both cases there is amystery concerning where the educator figure comes from and how hecould have acquired the knowledge and virtue necessary to perform hisrole. This, in turn, raises a problem of regress. If the legislator wasformed by a just society, then who performed the legislator’s role for thatsociety, and how was that legislator formed? How did the tutor acquire hiseducation if not from a tutor who, in turn, was educated according toRousseau’s program by an earlier tutor?
3.3 Rousseau’s claim to reconcile freedom and authority
What then of Rousseau’s key claim that freedom and authority arereconciled in his ideal republic through obedience to the general will?This claim finds notorious and deliberately paradoxical expression inBook 1 chapter 7 of The Social Contract, where Rousseau writesof citizens being “forced to be free” when they are constrained to obeythe general will. The opening words of The Social Contract themselvesrefer to freedom, with the famous saying that “Man is born free, but iseverywhere in chains”. This ringing declaration, however, is almostimmediately followed by a note of paradox, as Rousseau declares thathe can make this subjection “in chains” legitimate. Thethought that Rousseau’s commitment to freedom might not be all that itfirst appears is strengthened by other passages in the book, mostnotably his declaration that those subject to the general will are“forced to be free.” The value of freedom or liberty is at the centerof Rousseau’s concerns throughout his work. Since he uses the notion inseveral distinct ways, though, it is important to distinguish severaluses of the term. First, we should note that Rousseau regards thecapacity for choice, and therefore the ability to act against instinctand inclination, as one of the features that distinguishes the humanrace from animal species and makes truly moral action possible.In the Discourse on the Origins of Inequality, for example, hecharacterizes animal species in essentially Cartesian terms, asmechanisms programmed to a fixed pattern of behavior. Human beings, onthe other hand are not tied to any particular mode of life and canreject the promptings of instinct. This makes possible both thedevelopment of the human species and also its fall from grace, sinceindividuals can ignore benign impulses (such as pitié) ifthey wish to. The freedom to act contrary to the “mechanism of thesenses”, and the power of willing and choosing is, for Rousseau,something entirely outside the laws of the physical world and istherefore not subject to scientific explanation. Rousseau also takesthis freedom to chooseto act as the basis of all distinctively moral action.In The Social Contract the connection between freedom ofchoice and morality is central to his argument against despoticgovernment, where he writes that the renunciation of freedom is contraryto human nature and that to renounce freedom in favour of anotherperson’s authority is to “deprive one’s actions of all morality” (SC1.4).
In Book I chapter 8 of the The Social Contract, Rousseautries to illuminate his claim that the formation of the legitimatestate involves no net loss of freedom, but in fact, he makes aslightly different claim. The new claim involves the idea of an exchangeof one type of freedom (natural freedom) for another type (civilfreedom). Natural freedom involves an unlimited right to all things, anidea that is reminiscent of Hobbes’s “right of nature” in Leviathan.Since all human beings enjoy this liberty right to all things, it isclear that in a world occupied by many interdependent humans, thepractical value of that liberty may be almost nonexistent.This is because anyindividual’s capacity to get what he or she wants will be limited by his or herphysical power and the competing physical power of others. Further, inevitable conflict over scarce resources will pit individualsagainst each other, so that unhindered exercise of natural freedom will resultin violence and uncertainty. Theformation of the state, and the promulgation of laws willed by thegeneral will, transforms this condition. With sovereign power in place,individuals areguaranteed a sphere of equal freedom under the law with protection fortheir own persons and security for their property. Provided that thelaw bearing equally on everyone is not meddlesome or intrusive (andRousseau believes it will not be, since no individual has a motive tolegislate burdensome laws) there will be a netbenefit compared to the pre-political state.
Rousseau makes a further claim in the same chapter of The Social Contract,namelythat in conditions of civil society the citizen achieves “moral freedom,” bywhich he means obedience to a law that one has prescribed to oneself (for discussion see especially Neuhouser 1993).Although this latter claim is presented almost as an afterthought, itis the form of freedom most directly responsive to the challengeRousseau had set for himself two chapters earlier, which involvedfinding “a form of association” in which each citizen would “obey onlyhimself.” Naturally, this raises the question of whether the citizendoes in fact obey only himself when he obeys the general will. On theface of it, this claim looks difficult to reconcile with the fact ofmajorities and minorities within a democratic state, since thosecitizens who find themselves outvoted would seem to beconstrained by a decision with which they disagree. Rousseau’s solutionto this puzzle is found much later, in Book 4 chapter 3 of TheSocial Contract, where he argues that those who obey lawsthey did not vote for remain bound by a will that is their own, sincethe democratic process has enabled them to discover the content of ageneral will in which that they share. Many commentators have not found thisargument fully convincing.
Rousseau’s invocation of three types of freedom (natural, civil, and moral)in the text ofThe Social Contract can appear confusing. The picture isfurther complicated by the fact that he also relies on a fourthconception of freedom, related to civil freedom but distinct from it,which he nowhere names explicitly. This is “republican freedom” andconsists, not in my being subject to my own will, but rather inthe fact that the law protects me from being subject to the willof any other particular person in the manner of a slave or serf.To find Rousseau’s explicit endorsementof this idea, we have to look not to The Social Contract, butrather to some of his unpublished notes. Yet the concept is clearly implicit inthe notorious “forced to be free” passage in Book 1 chapter 7, since hethere explains that when each citizen is constrained to obey thegeneral will, he is thereby provided with a guarantee against “allpersonal dependence”.
3.4 Representation and government
One feature of Rousseau’s political philosophy that hasproved least persuasive to later thinkers is his doctrine ofsovereignty and representation, with his apparent rejection of“representative government”. At the center of Rousseau’s view inThe Social Contract is his rejection of the Hobbesian ideathat a people’s legislative will can be vested in some group orindividual that then acts with their authority but rules over them.Instead, he takes the view that to hand over one’s general right ofruling oneself to another person or body constitutes a form a slavery,and that to recognize such an authority would amount to an abdicationof moral agency. This hostility to the representation of sovereigntyalso extends to the election of representatives to sovereignassemblies, even where those representatives are subject to periodicre-election. Even in that case, the assembly would be legislating ona range of topics on which citizens have not deliberated. Laws passed bysuch assemblies would therefore bind citizens in terms that they havenot themselves agreed upon. Not only does the representation ofsovereignty constitute, for Rousseau, a surrender of moral agency, thewidespread desire to be represented in the business of self-rule is asymptom of moral decline and the loss of virtue.
The practical difficulties of direct self-rule by the entire citizenbody are obvious. Such arrangements are potentially onerous and mustseverely limit the size of legitimate states. It is noteworthy thatRousseau takes a different view in a text aimed at practicalpolitics: Considerations on the Government ofPoland. Nevertheless, it is not entirely clear that thewidespread interpretation of Rousseau as rejecting all forms ofrepresentative government is correct. One of the key distinctionsin The Social Contract is between sovereign andgovernment. The sovereign, composed of the people as a whole,promulgates laws as an expression of its general will. The governmentis a more limited body that administers the state within the boundsset by the laws, and which issues decrees applying the laws inparticular cases. If the laws are conceived of as the people setting aconstitutional framework for society, with the government’s decreescomprising the more normal business of “legislation,” thenthe distance between a Rousseauian republic and a modernconstitutional democracy may be smaller than it at firstappears. In effect, the institution of the sovereign may beinconsistent with a representative model, where the executive power ofthe government can be understood as requiring it. Such a picturegains credibility when the details of Rousseau’s views on governmentare examined. Although a variety of forms of government turn out to betheoretically compatible with popular sovereignty, Rousseau issceptical about the prospects for both democracy (where the peopleconduct the day to day running of the state and the application of thelaws) and monarchy. Instead, he favors some form of electivearistocracy: in other words, he supports the idea that the day-to-dayadministration should be in the hands of a subset of the population,elected by them according to merit.
Two important issues arise in relation to Rousseau’s account ofrelations between sovereign and government. The first of theseconcerns his political pessimism, even in the case of thebest-designed and most perfect republic. Just as any group has acollective will as opposed to the individual private will of itsmembers, so does the government. As the state becomes larger and morediffuse, and as citizens become more distant from one another bothspatially and emotionally, so the effective government of the republicwill need a proportionally smaller and more cohesive group ofmagistrates. Rousseau thinks it almost inevitable that this group willend up usurping the legitimate sovereign power of the people andsubstituting its corporate will for the people’s general will. Thesecond issue concerns how democratic Rousseau envisaged his republicto be. He sometimes suggests a picture in which the people would besubject to elite domination by the government, since the magistrateswould reserve the business of agenda-setting for the assembly tothemselves. In other cases, he endorses a conception of a more fullydemocratic republic. (For competing views of this question see Fralin1978 and Cohen 2010.)
Although Rousseau rejects Hobbes’s view of the sovereign asrepresenting or acting in the person of the subject, he has a similarview of what sovereignty is and its relation to the rights of theindividual. He rejects the idea that individuals associated togetherin a political community retain some natural rights over themselvesand their property. Rather, such rights as individuals have overthemselves, land, and external objects, are a matter of sovereigncompetence and decision. Individual rights must be specified by thesovereign in ways that are compatible with the interests of all in ajust polity, and Rousseau rejects the idea that such rights could beinsisted on as a check on the sovereign’s power.
3.5 Civil religion and toleration
The final full chapter of The Social Contract expoundsRousseau’s doctrine of civil religion. Contemporary readers werescandalized by it, and particularly by its claim that true (originalor early) Christianity is useless in fostering the spirit ofpatriotism and social solidarity necessary for a flourishing state. Inmany ways the chapter represents a striking departure from the mainthemes of the book. First, it is the only occasion where Rousseauprescribes the content of a law that a just republic musthave. Second, it amounts to his acceptance of the inevitability ofpluralism in matters of religion, and thus of religious toleration;this is in some tension with his encouragement elsewhere of culturalhomogeneity as a propitious environment for the emergence of a generalwill. Third, it represents a very concrete example of the limits ofsovereign power: following Locke, Rousseau insists upon the inabilityof the sovereign to examine the private beliefs of citizens. Thetenets of Rousseau’s civil religion include the affirmation of theexistence of a supreme being and of the afterlife, the principle thatthe just will prosper and the wicked will be punished, and the claimthat the social contract and the laws are sacred. In addition, thecivil religion requires the provision that all those willing totolerate others should themselves be tolerated, but those who insistthat there is no salvation outside their particular church cannot becitizens of the state. The structure of religious beliefs within thejust state is that of an overlapping consensus: the dogmas of thecivil religion are such that they can be affirmed by adherents of anumber of different faiths, both Christian and non-Christian.
Despite Rousseau’s concern for religious toleration both in thechapter and elsewhere, modern readers have often been repelled by onestriking note of intolerance. Rousseau argues that those who cannotaccept the dogmas can be banished from the state. This is because hebelieves that atheists, having no fear of divine punishment, cannot betrusted by their fellow citizens to obey the law. He goes even further, tosuggest the death penalty for those who affirm the dogmas but later actas if they do not believe them.
4. Language
Rousseau’s writings on language and languages are contained intwo places, the unpublished Essay on the Origin of Languagesand in a section of the Discourse on the Origins ofInequality. In the Essay, Rousseau tells us that humanbeings want to communicate as soon as they recognize that there areother beings like themselves. But he also raises the question of whylanguage, specifically, rather than gesture is needed for this purpose.The answer, strangely enough, is that language permits thecommunication of the passions in a way that gesture does not, and thatthe tone and stress of linguistic communication are crucial,rather than its content. This point enables Rousseau to make a closeconnection between the purposes of speech and melody. Such vocabularyas there originally was, according to Rousseau, was merely figurativeand words only acquire a literal meaning much later. Theories thatlocate the origin of language in the need to reason together aboutmatters of fact are, according to Rousseau, deeply mistaken. While thecry of the other awakens our natural compassion and causes us toimagine the inner life of others, our purely physical needs have ananti-social tendency because they scatter human beings more widelyacross the earth in search of subsistence. Although language and songhave a common origin in the need to communicate emotion, over time thetwo become separated, a process that becomes accelerated as a result ofthe invention of writing. In the south, language stays closer to itsnatural origins and southern languages retain their melodic andemotional quality (a fact that suits them for song and opera). Northernlanguages, by contrast, become oriented to more practical tasks and arebetter for practical and theoretical reasoning.
In Part I of the Second Discourse, Rousseau’s focus is slightlydifferent and occurs in the context of a polemic against philosophers(such as natural law theorists like Condillac) who attribute to primitive human beingsa developed capacity for abstract reasoning. Rousseau proposes need asthe cause of the development of language, but since language depends onconvention to assign arbitrary signs to objects, he puzzles abouthow it could ever get started and how primitive people couldaccomplish the feat of giving names to universals.
5. Education
Rousseau’s ideas about education are mainly expounded inEmile. In that work, he advances the idea of “negativeeducation”, which is a form of “child-centered” education. Hisessential idea is that education should be carried out, so far aspossible, in harmony with the development of the child’s naturalcapacities by a process of apparently autonomous discovery. This is incontrast to a model of education where the teacher is a figure ofauthority who conveys knowledge and skills according to apre-determined curriculum. Rousseau depends here on his thesis ofnatural goodness, which he asserts at the beginning of the book, andhis educational scheme involves the protection and development of thechild’s natural goodness through various stages, along with the isolation ofthe child from the domineering wills of others. Up to adolescence atleast, the educational program comprises a sequence of manipulations ofthe environment by the tutor. The child is not told what to do or thinkbut is led to draw its own conclusions as a result of its ownexplorations, the context for which has been carefully arranged. Thefirst stage of the program starts in infancy, where Rousseau’s crucialconcern is to avoid conveying the idea that human relations areessentially ones of domination and subordination, an idea that can tooeasily by fostered in the infant by the conjunction of its owndependence on parental care and its power to get attention by crying.Though the young child must be protected from physical harm, Rousseauis keen that it gets used to the exercise of its bodily powers and hetherefore advises that the child be left as free as possible ratherthan being confined or constrained. From the age of about twelve or so,the program moves on to the acquisition of abstract skills and concepts.This is not done with the use of books or formal lessons, but ratherthrough practical experience. The third phase of education coincideswith puberty and early adulthood. The period of isolation comes to anend and the child starts to take an interest in others (particularlythe opposite sex), and in how he or she is regarded. At this stagethe great danger is that excessive amour propre will extend toexacting recognition from others, disregarding their worth, and demandingsubordination. The task of the tutor is to ensure that the pupil’srelations with others are first mediated through the passion ofpitié (compassion) so that through the idea ofthe suffering others, of care, and of gratitude, the pupil finds a secure placefor the recognition of his own moral worth where his amourpropre is established on a non-competitive basis. The final periodof education involves the tutor changing from a manipulator of thechild’s environment into the adult’s trusted advisor. The young andautonomous adult finds a spouse who can be another source of secure andnon-competitive recognition. This final phase also involves instructioninto the nature of the social world, including the doctrines ofRousseau’s political philosophy.
6. Legacy
Rousseau’s thinking has had a profound influence on laterphilosophers and political theorists, although the tensions andambiguities in his work have meant that his ideas have been developedin radically incompatible and divergent ways. In modern politicalphilosophy, for example, it is possible to detect Rousseau as a sourceof inspiration for liberal theories, communitarian ideas, civicrepublicanism, and in theories of deliberative and participatorydemocracy. Hostile writers have portrayed Rousseau as a source ofinspiration for the more authoritarian aspects of the French revolutionand thence for aspects of fascism and communism.
Rousseau’s most important philosophical impact was on Immanuel Kant.A portrait of Rousseau was the only image on display in Kant’s house,and legend has it that the only time that Kant forgot to take his dailywalk was when reading Emile. Instances of direct influenceinclude Kant’s idea of the categorical imperative, the thirdformulation of which in the Groundwork of the Metaphysic ofMorals (the so-called formula of the kingdom of ends) recallsRousseau’s discussion of the general will in The SocialContract. Ironically, Kant’s detachment of the idea ofuniversal legislation from its context in the particularity of singlesociety reverses Rousseau’s own approach, since Rousseau had, inpreparatory work for The Social Contract rejected the idea ofa general will of the human race as that notion appeared in Diderot’sarticle “Natural Right” in the Encyclopédie.Rousseau’s influence can also be seen in Kant’s moral psychology,especially in work such as Religion Within the Limits of ReasonAlone, in Kant’s own thinking about conjectural history, and inhis writings on international justice which draw on Rousseau’sengagement with the work of the Abbé St. Pierre.
The cases of Hegel and Marx are more complex. Hegel’s directreferences to Rousseau are often uncomplimentary. Inthe Philosophy of Right, while praising Rousseau for the ideathat will is the basis of the state, he misrepresents the idea of thegeneral will as being merely the idea of the overlap between thecontingent wills of private individuals. In the EncyclopediaLogic he demonstrates an awareness that this was not Rousseau’sview. Hegel’s discussion of the master-slave dialectic and the problemof recognition in the Phenomenology of Spirit also draws onRousseau, in this case on the notion of amour propre and theways in which attempts to exact respect and recognition from otherscan be self-defeating. Karl Marx’s concerns with alienation andexploitation have also been thought to bear some kind of relationshipto Rousseau’s thinking on related topics. Here the evidence is moreindirect, since the references to Rousseau in Marx’s work are few andinsubstantial.
In contemporary political philosophy, it is clear that the thinkingof John Rawls, especially in A Theory of Justice reflects theinfluence of Rousseau. A good example of this is the way in which Rawlsuses the device of the “original position” to put self-interestedchoice at the service of the determination of the principles ofjustice. This exactly parallels Rousseau’s argument that citizens willbe drawn to select just laws as if from an impartial perspective,because the universality and generality of the law means that whenconsidering their own interests they will select the measure that bestreflects their own interests.
Bibliography
Principal works by Rousseau
The standard French edition of Rousseau is Oeuvrescomplètes (5 volumes), Bernard Gagnebin and Marcel Raymond(eds.), Paris: Gallimard, 1959–1995.
A major work that is not included in the Oeuvrescomplètes in a satisfactory form is Principes du droitde la guerre published together with Écrits sur lapaix perpetuelle, Bruno Bernadi and Gabriella Silvestrini (eds),Paris: Vrin, 2008.
The most comprehensive English edition of Rousseau’s works isCollected Writings (13 volumes), Roger Masters andChristopher Kelly (eds.), Dartmouth: University Press of New England,1990–2010. The individual works below are included in each ofthese editions.
Accessible English translations of major works include:
- The Discourses and Other Early Political Writings, VictorGourevitch (ed. and trans.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1997.
- The Social Contract and Other Later Political Writings,Victor Gourevitch (ed. and trans.), Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 1997.
- The Social Contract and Other Political Writings, QuintinHoare (trans.) and Christopher Bertram (ed.), London: Penguin,2012.(This volume includes the English translation of thereconstruction by Bernadi et al of Principles of the Right ofWar.)
- 1750, Un Discours sur les Sciences et les Arts(Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts; First Discourse).
- 1755, Un Discours sur l’Origine et les Fondemens del’Inégalité parmi les Hommes (ADiscourse on the Origin of Inequality; Second Discourse).
- c. 1753–61, Essai sur l’Origine de Langues (Essay onthe Origin of Languages).
- 1755, De l’économie politique (ADiscourse on Political Economy).
- 1755, Lettre sur la Musique Française(Letter on French Music).
- 1758, Lettre à M. d’Alembert sur lesSpectacles(Letter to d’Alembert on the Theater).
- 1761, Julie, ou La Nouvelle Héloïse.
- 1762, Émile, ou de l’Éducation (Emile,or On Education).
- 1762, Du Contrat Social (The Social Contract).
- 1764–5, Project de Constitution pour la Corse (Project for a Constitution for Corsica).
- 1764–6, Les Confessions (The Confessions).
- 1770–1, Considérations sur le Gouvernement dePologne (Considerations on the Government of Poland).
- 1772–6, Rousseau Juge de Jean-Jacques: Dialogues(Rousseau Judge of Jean-Jacques: Dialogues).
- 1776–8, Les Rêveries du Promeneur Solitaire(The Reveries of the Solitary Walker).
Works about Rousseau
- Berman, M., 1970, The Politics of Authenticity, New York:Atheneum.
- Bertram, C., 2004, Rousseau and The Social Contract,London: Routledge.
- –––, 2012, “Rousseau’s Legacy in TwoConceptions of the General Will: Democratic and Transcendent.”,Review of Politics, 74: 403–420.
- Cassirer, E, 1954, The Question of Jean-Jacques Rousseau,trans. P. Gay, Bloomington: Indiana.
- Charvet, J., 1974, The Social Problem in the Philosophy ofJean-Jacques Rousseau, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Cohen, J. 2010, Rousseau: A Free Community of Equals,Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Dent, N.J.H, 1988, Rousseau: An Introduction to hisPsychological, Social and Political Theory, Oxford: Blackwell.
- –––, 1992, A Rousseau Dictionary, Oxford:Blackwell.
- –––, 2005, Rousseau, London: Routledge.
- Fralin, R., 1978, Rousseau and Representation, New York:Columbia.
- Gauthier, D., 2006, Rousseau: The Sentiment of Existence,Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Grofman, B. and Feld, S.L., 1988, “Rousseau’s General Will:A Condorcetian Perspective”, American Political ScienceReview, 82: 567–76.
- Masters, R.D., 1968, The Political Philosophy of Rousseau,Princeton: Princeton University Press.
- Neidleman, J., 2017, Rousseau’s Ethics of Truth,London: Routledge.
- Neuhouser, F., 1993, “Freedom, Dependence andthe General Will”, Philosophical Review, 102:363–95.
- –––, 2008, Rousseau’s Theodicy of Self-Love,Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- –––, 2014, Rousseau’s Critique of Inequality,Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- O’Hagan, T., 1999, Rousseau, London: Routledge.
- Roosevelt, G.G. 1990, Reading Rousseau in the Nuclear Age,Philadelphia: Temple.
- Sreenivasan, G., 2000, “What is the General Will?”,Philosophical Review 109: 545–81.
- Starobinski, J., 1988, Transparency and Obstruction, transA. Goldhammer, Chicago: Chicago University Press.
- Williams, D.L., 2014, Rousseau’s Social Contract,Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Wokler, R., 1995, Rousseau, Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress.
- –––, 2014, Rousseau, the Age ofEnlightenment, and Their Legacies, Bryan Garsten (ed.) Princeton:Princeton University Press.
Biographies of Rousseau
- Cranston, M., 1982, Jean-Jacques: The Early Life and Workof Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 1712–1754, London: Allen Lane.
- –––, 1991, The Noble Savage: Jean-JacquesRousseau, 1754–1762, London: Allen Lane.
- –––, 1997, The Solitary Self: Jean-JacquesRousseau in Exile and Adversity, London: Allen Lane.
- Lester G. Crocker, 1974, Jean-Jacques Rousseau-the Quest1712–1758, New York: Macmillan.
- –––, 1974, Jean-Jacques Rousseau The PropheticVoice 1758–1778, New York: Macmillan.
- Damrosch, L., 2005, Jean-Jacques Rousseau: RestlessGenius, New York: Houghton Mifflin.
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Acknowledgments
The editors would like to thank Gintautas Miliauskas (VilniusUniversity) for notifying us about several typographical errors inthis entry.
Copyright © 2017 by
Christopher Bertram<[email protected]>
Christopher Bertram<[email protected]>
A forced confession is a confession obtained from a suspect or a prisoner by means of torture (including enhanced interrogation techniques) or other forms of duress. Depending on the level of coercion used, a forced confession is not valid in revealing the truth. The person being interrogated may agree to the story presented to him or even make up falsehoods himself in order to satisfy the interrogator and discontinue his suffering.[1]
For centuries the Latin phrase 'Confessio est regina probationum' (In English: Confession is the Queen of evidence) justified the use of forced confession in the European legal system. When especially during the Middle Ages acquiring a confession was the most important thing during preparations before a trial, than the method used to get the confession seemed irrelevant, de facto sanctioning the use of torture to extract forced confession.[citation needed]
By the late 18th century, most scholars and lawyers thought of the forced confession not only as a relic of past times and morally wrong but also ineffective as the victim of torture may confess to anything just to ease their suffering.
Developments in the 20th century, notably the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, greatly reduced the legal acceptance of forced confessions. However, for most of legal history they have been accepted in most of the world, and are still accepted in some jurisdictions.
- 1Modern day usage
Modern day usage[edit]
![In The Name Of The Father Forced Confessions In The Name Of The Father Forced Confessions](/uploads/1/2/5/6/125695947/375294071.jpg)
Since 2001, as part of its War on Terror the United States using the CIA operates a network of off shore prisons, called black sites, probably the most famous of which is Guantánamo Bay detention camp.State officials have admitted to the press and in court to be using various torture techniques (authorised by the District attorney) to interrogate suspects of terrorism, sometimes after forced disappearance or extraordinary rendition by the United States.
When these systematic acts were made public by the international media, the European Union, United Nations, the international press and various human rights movements condemned their practice.The US Supreme Court did not discontinue their usage and repeatedly ruled against hearing citizens that underwent forced confessions, even after they were found innocent, claiming that a trial would constitute a breach of national security.[2]
A famous case is that of Khalid El-Masri. He appealed several times aided by different international human rights movements and lawyers, yet the US Supreme Court retained its usage of forced confession techniques, and denied a hearing of the evidence.
Forced televised confessions in China[edit]
The People's Republic of China systematically employed forced televised confession against Chinese dissidents and workers of various human rights group in an attempt to discredit, smear and suppress dissident voices and activism. This facet of state propaganda has come under the spotlight. These scripted confessions, obtained via systematic duress and torture, are broadcast on the state television. Notable victims includes Wang Yu, a female human rightslawyer, and Swedish citizen Peter Dahlin, an NGO worker and human rights activist.[3][4] By the same token, owners of Causeway Bay Books – Gui Minhai and Lam Wing-kee – who were abducted by state security operating outside of Mainland China, also made such controvertial confessions. Upon regaining his freedom, Lam detailed his abduction and detention, and recanted his confessions in Hong Kong to the media.[5]
These televised confession and acts of contrition have been denounced as frauds by critics. Media organisations in China and in Hong Kong, including the South China Morning Post, which is owned by Alibaba, have come under criticism for abetting the practice by circulating the “confessions” and in some cases even participating in them. Safeguard Defenders released a report in April 2018 in which 45 high-profile examples of the so-called confessions were broadcast between July 2013 and February 2018. More than half of the subjects were journalists lawyers, and other individuals involved in promoting human rights in China. The confessions were mostly by the subjects outside of the formal legal framework, in the absence of a trial, and without regard for the presumption of innocence under Chinese law.[5] Many of those forced to record confessions explained to SD in detail how the videos were carefully scripted and made under the watchful eye of agents of the security apparatus, demonstrating their powerlessness once they are within the opaque Chinese legal system.[5]
See also[edit]
- Struggle session (Maoist China)
References[edit]
- ^Boffa, Christa (8 July 2016). 'Palazz Castellania'. Illum (in Maltese). Archived from the original on 30 July 2016.
- ^[1].
- ^Wong, Edward. 'China Uses Foreigners' Televised Confessions to Serve Its Own Ends'. Retrieved 2018-10-01.
- ^'瑞典人彼得·達林:我在中國上電視認罪,《1984》噩夢成為現實'. theinitium.com (in Chinese). Retrieved 2018-10-01.
- ^ abcMyers, Steven Lee. 'How China Uses Forced Confessions as Propaganda Tool'. The New York Times. Retrieved 2018-10-01.
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