Rousseau’s Republican Citizenship: The Moral Psychology of The Social Contract

TY - CHAP

T1 - Rousseau’s Republican Citizenship

T2 - The Moral Psychology of The Social Contract

AU - Douglass, Robin

PY - 2024

Y1 - 2024

N2 - The success of Rousseau’s political vision depends on citizens placing the common interest above their private interest whenever the two conflict. Rousseau says very little about how citizens could be motivated to do so in the Social Contract, however, which gives rise to questions about how the text relates to his other works. This chapter challenges liberal-egalitarian interpretations of Rousseau that draw on Emile to extract a model of modern citizenship for the Social Contract and instead argues that the Discourse on Political Economy is the most informative text for understanding the theory of republican citizenship required to make the Social Contract project viable. In doing so, it elucidates the moral psychology underpinning Rousseau’s proposals for cultivating political virtue, before responding to the objection that this cannot have been what he had in mind for his native Geneva, which he claimed to have taken as the model for the Social Contract.

AB - The success of Rousseau’s political vision depends on citizens placing the common interest above their private interest whenever the two conflict. Rousseau says very little about how citizens could be motivated to do so in the Social Contract, however, which gives rise to questions about how the text relates to his other works. This chapter challenges liberal-egalitarian interpretations of Rousseau that draw on Emile to extract a model of modern citizenship for the Social Contract and instead argues that the Discourse on Political Economy is the most informative text for understanding the theory of republican citizenship required to make the Social Contract project viable. In doing so, it elucidates the moral psychology underpinning Rousseau’s proposals for cultivating political virtue, before responding to the objection that this cannot have been what he had in mind for his native Geneva, which he claimed to have taken as the model for the Social Contract.

KW - Rousseau, Jean-Jacques

KW - citizenship

KW - amour-propre

KW - virtue

U2 - 10.1017/9781108989770.004

DO - 10.1017/9781108989770.004

M3 - Chapter

SP - 64

EP - 87

BT - The Cambridge Companion to Rousseau's Social Contract

A2 - Williams, David Lay

A2 - Maguire, Matthew

PB - Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

ER -