# Rousseau's Government

## September 30th, 2020

-   "Well, attendance is rather light today, so I guess Rousseau is wearing people down"
    -   This was another dense reading with a LOT of terminology, at the beginning of Book III
-   ALSO, there's an ungraded discussion for this week where you can float ideas for the final project; currently, NO ONE has posted anything there, so I would try throwing an idea in before the end of this week
    -   "The final project is worth the most out of anything this semester, so I hope you take advantage of this chance to get some early input"
    -   When discussing these issues, you should be focused on polity, NOT policy - if you're discussing, say, abortion, you're not trying to argue whether abortion itself is right or wrong, but instead you're trying to argue who should decide the laws around it - the legislature? The courts? Something else?
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-   So, in Book III, Chapters 1-9, Rousseau FINALLY starts talking about government - what it is, what it should look like, and what forms it can take
    -   When it comes time to write the exegesis for Rousseau, you'll need to give an account of Rousseau's technical terminology, and you should NOT give me a vague dictionary definition or thesaurus; instead, you should tell me what Rousseau means and understands about this, what he actually, essentially means
        -   Fortunately, Rousseau defines his terms more explicitly than Locke did

-   Rousseau's definition of "government" and "democracy" are NOT how we normally use those words
    -   For Rousseau, GOVERNMENT only refers to a form of executive power for enforcing the laws
        -   So, Rousseau can be FOR popular sovereignty when making laws but AGAINST democracy when it comes to a government that actually enforces them - by Rousseau's definitions, that makes perfect sense!
    -   So, for the breakout rooms, try to come up with a 1-2 sentence summary of what Rousseau means by "government," and back it up with quotes from the Book
        -   Me: "An intermediate body established between the subjects [people being governed and subject to the law] and the Sovereign [the people who make the law, often the same] so that they might conform to one another, and charged with the execution of the laws and the maintenance of freedom" - III.1, 5
            -   Rousseau makes a distinction between legislative and executive power, where legislation is like the will to do something and the executive power is the ability to actually do it (like the desire to move and the physical capability of moving)
        -   Essentially, we agreed government is the person or group with executive power to enforce the laws; it's the intermediate between the Sovereign and the ruled subjects ("which are the same group of people, actually, just seen from different points of view")
        -   The different kinds of government can be classified by the number of people doing this enforcing
            -   DEMOCRACIES have all or most of the population enforcing the laws
            -   ARISTOCRACIES have a relatively small number of people enforcing them
            -   MONARCHIES put all this power in the hands of a single ruler
        -   Remember, though, that Rousseau thinks governments are ONLY for enforcing laws the people have legislated and made; they don't make laws of themselves
    -   Rousseau believes the SOVEREIGN (defined as the people as a whole who make laws) has a general will for the whole state, with each of those people also having private wills and wants
        -   The government/political factions, then, also have a "corporate will" for themselves as lawmaking institutions, and want to preserve their own power/prestige/comfort
    -   Rousseau thinks that we value our private wants first, then the corporate will of the organizations we're in, and then lastly the general will of preserving the people as a whole - but he thinks it should be the reverse, where people in public offices act with the good of the people first
        -   Because of that, Rousseau is concerned with the potential for corruption in anyone who serves in public life, since they'd be tempted to serve their own interests instead of the people's, and you somehow have to organize governments to reduce the impact of private interests and maximize the pull of public ones
            -   Monarchies, in Rousseau's view, are dangerous because acts are based entirely on one person's will, and they don't inherently have to compromise or bow to other people's concerns
        -   "Basically, Rousseau thinks it's inherently difficult to form a good government, because anyone in public life'll be pulled in different directions"
    -   Notice, also, that Rousseau says that smaller governments actually have more force, since the power is more concentrated, and larger states/governments are harder to administrate and organize (meaning large governments tend to leave people alone more)

-   "Rousseau has some stuff to say about representation next week that we'll be looking at; he has a good amount else to say about government, too, for us to read"