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For Jean-Jacques Rousseau, liberty can only be achieved where there is also equality and fraternity. What does this mean?

First, it is an allusion to the slogan popularly advocated by many participants in the French Revolution (including the infamous Robespierre in December 1790), which went on to become the national motto of France: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity. The phrase itself was derived from Rousseau's flawed, but seminal book The Social Contract, published in 1762. This and other Rousseau writings are considered by most scholars to be the intellectual and philosophical foundations of the French Revolution, for all the mixed results that the bloody revolution generated. Indeed, while the idealism behind the slogan may have been sincerely and benevolently intended, the execution - no pun intended - of the means necessary to achieve these ideals was, in the French Revolution, and has been several times since, incompatible with these ideals. While these three words express the aspirations that characterize modernity, the abuse of these words by those responsible for the unspeakable horrors of this century may lead us to disown the ideals themselves. (Lustiger, 1997, p. 38) The principles which inspire a revolution neither necessarily effect a humane rebellion or a functional post-rebellion government which puts these ideals into practice, a similar disconnect between theory and reality for which Rousseau himself was often personally criticized. Alluding to Rousseau having abandoned his five illegitimate children to an orphanage despite the noble ideas he professed in his writings, political author James Stevens wrote He melts with tenderness for those only who touch him by the remotest relation, and then, without one natural pang, casts away, gustful amours, and sends his children to the hospital of foundlings. The bear loves, licks, and forms her young; but bears are not philosophers. (Stephen, 1874, Ch. 6) However, it is premature to delve thoroughly into a critique of either Rousseau, the man, or liberty, equality, and fraternity as a collective philosophy, or why Rousseau believes the first cannot be had without the second and third, without having first deconstructed the origins and meanings of the individual phrases themselves and their meaning together in context of the evolution of citizens' relationships to their governments.

As readers of The Social Contract are aware, together, the concepts of liberty, equality, and fraternity form the basis of the social contract that Rousseau argues must exist between a people and their government. This contract also implies the concept of the 'general will,' which is the balance between collective wants and needs of the people as a whole. But what of these abstract component parts? What, for example, is liberty? According to John Stuart Mill, who may be said to summarize it better than anyone:

comprises, first, the inward domain of consciousness; demanding liberty of conscience in the most comprehensive sense, liberty of thought and feeling; absolute freedom of opinion and sentiment on all subjects practical or speculative, scientific, moral, or theological secondly, the principle requires liberty of tastes and pursuits, of framing our plan of life to suit our own character, of doing as we like, subject to such consequences as may follow, without impediment from our fellow-creatures, so long as what we do does not harm themeven though they should think our conduct foolish, perverse, or wrong. (Mill, 1869, p. 225)

Not only should there be liberty to engage in an activity or thought, but liberty from being unfairly censored, persecuted, or punished for engaging in such thoughts. Part of the beauty of Mills' conception of liberty is that he is careful to note that our pursuit of our own liberties must not interfere with others' pursuit of theirs. Where there is conflict as to the location of this boundary, the government steps in with the rule of law that, theoretically at least, is designed to be benefit Rousseau's general will.

What is equality? Simply put, equality is the notion that all men are to be treated equally under the eyes of the law, and by extension the government (or vice versa). There is also the notion of economic equality, advanced by Marxist and Communist schools of thought, and/or Socialists; ironically for those thinkers in the former category, the idea of economic equality can be said to have Biblical roots. None other than St. Paul himself advocated a highly idealistic version of economic equality: I do not mean that others should be eased and you burdened, but that as a matter of equality your abundance at the present time should supply their want, so that their abundance may supply your want, that there may be equality. As it is written, 'He who gathered much had nothing over, and he who gathered little had no lack.'" (2 Corinthians 8:13-15) There is an inherent tension between the concept of economic equality and the concept of liberty, however, which is the root of the flaw of capitalism, in that some may feel that their liberty to pursue the acquisition of unlimited wealth is unfairly abridged by any social covenant that advocates the unacceptability of poverty - hence taxes for example. Marx himself, in The Communist Manifesto, believed that the tension required erring on the side of equality, and that liberty should be conceived of in a collective sense, not in the individual sense.

Fraternity, the last of the hallowed triad, is also rooted in religious principles, deriving arguably from Jesus' command that we love our neighbors as we love ourselves. It is also a concept upon which Mill and other philosophers expanded, in Mills' case under the notion of Utilitarianism.:

The utilitarian standard . . . is not the agent's own happiness, but the greatest amount of happiness altogether; and if it may possibly be doubted whether a noble character is always the happier for its nobleness, there can be no doubt that it makes other people happier, and that the world in general is immensely a gainer by it. (Mills, p. 213, 218)

This concept implies the notion of the greater good, in which individuals may sometimes be asked or required to put the interests of others, or of the collective population, over their own. As a further subset of fraternity, the principles of ecological and generational/historical fraternity suggest that a) citizens have an important duty relative to protecting the environment, given our custodial relationship with it; and b) that history itself is impossible without fraternity between the generations, e.g., parents and children, but also generations between whom there is no direct genetic connection. The fraternity of the present, if you will, and/or the fraternity of only empathizing with those who are similar to us, is an easy trap in which to fall for even the most well-intended citizens:

The result of this misadventure of fraternity has been, once again, just the opposite of what was hoped for. The voluntary withdrawal of parents, or their inability to play their role that necessarily involves the exercise of authority, has broken the vital links of transmission from one generation to another. The result is that the young then constitute themselves as a separate, autonomous social class. This is the "youth culture" that declares itself a world unto itself When the responsibilities of paternity and maternity are denied, memory is weakened, and the very notion of history becomes unthinkable. (Lustiger, p. 43)

If this is indeed true, then the tension between fraternity and liberty is also a clear one. Citizens who buy into their nation's social contract, and in doing so accept the general will, may find their liberties abridged to an extent that they no longer wish to participate in the society in its ostensibly oppressive incarnation; if this wish becomes an epidemic, then the nation has the seeds of a revolution on its hands.

Given what we know of these three bedrock principles and the potential tension between them, Rousseau nonetheless believed that liberty was impossible to come by without both fraternity and equality. In fact, neither of these ideals could come to fruition, according to Rousseau, unless citizen participation in the social contract, e.g., popular assembly as in Roman times was mandatory. A belief in this requirement sets Rousseau apart from most of his socio-political intellectual peers. If there is lack of interest and participation in society's covenant to ensure equality and fraternity, the society begins the break down:

When the people undermine equality and fraternity, liberty will not be able to stand alone. If we recall, Rousseau believes that people can find civil freedom only by entering into the social contract and exercising popular sovereignty. If people try to buy their way out of their duty to the state, they are essentially buying their enslavement. They will no longer have a voice in how the state is run, and they will become the slaves of those in charge. (Egan, 2005)

Egan's last statement is a wise reference to the very first sentence of The Social Contract: Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains. (Rousseau, 1762, p.1) The path to liberty, then, from these chains, was the road of acceptance of the social contract embodying fraternity and equality. Only then, presumably, could mankind fully experience his innate freedom.

What is easy to conclude about Rousseau, then, was that he was a champion of the primacy of individual rights and/or that he was a populist. This was not true, however. Rousseau unfortunately had little faith in the inherent intelligence of the ordinary person, who he believed generally incapable of constructive, rational thought processes without buying into the collective apparatus of a nation-state governed by what Rousseau termed as legislators, who were intellectually and morally superior people who benevolently guided the masses. How, then would these legislators be any different from the kings of yore?

The legislator, though justified in using lies and other forms of deception for the attainment of his purposes, would have to persuade rather than force ordinary people to accept his proposals. Enlightened leadership rather than enlightened despotism was Rousseau's solution to the problem of transcending the moral and intellectual limitations of ordinary men. (Watkins, 1953, p. 13)

Rousseau, however, was also a believer in democracy in some form, given his advocacy of citizen participation in assemblies, so we must conclude that the logical practical application of his philosophy of government would be some sort of quasi-democratic totalitarianism or Communism. Ironically, in advocating the popular freedom from a repressive government, his pessimism in the individual and his belief in the paternal opened the philosophical door for newly invented forms of repression: "It is precisely because the force of things tends always to destroy equality that the force of legislation should always tend to maintain it" (Rousseau, 1987, p. 171).

Given Rousseau's totalitarian tendencies, one could in fact argue he had no legitimate claim to advocate any suggestions about liberty, equality, or fraternity whatsoever, given that with the benefit of hindsight, it is difficult in the 21st century to see much gravity in these three ideals flowing from the guiding hand of stern dictators, be they cloaked as 'legislators' or not. Rousseau's ideas were too awkward a marriage for his times to be of much practical use, and the disastrous side effects of the French Revolution are evidence to this. The rampant beheadings by the Jacobins to further their revolutionary goals were the perfect example of Rousseau's conviction of the value of a society in which coercive social contracts are used to transform people so that they can see, and also behave according to, the general will of the society. (Li, 2003) But this is again illustrative of the disconcerting disconnect between the theoretically noble ideals of Rousseau's mind and the actual living practice of dignified, truly free human life. Political philosopher James Stephen had little respect for Rousseau for this reason: I know hardly anything in literature so nauseous as Rousseau's expressions of love for mankind when read in the light of his confessions. 'Keep your love to yourself, and do not daub me or mine with it,' is the criticism which his books always suggest to me. (Stephen, 1874, Ch. 6) Even Rousseau's contemporaries, no slouches in the annals of revolutionary thought, found The Social Contract and other of Rousseau's writings ultimately repugnant. Voltaire, upon reading Discourse on the Origins of Inequality, sent Rousseau a letter saying I have received your new book against the human race, and thank you for it. Never was such a cleverness used in the design of making us all stupid. (Voltaire, 1755) This, perhaps, is the finest critique of Rousseau's attempt to link his own peculiar notions of liberty to those of equality and fraternity. Though Rousseau defended the popular will against the divine right (of kings), what he advocated as a successor concept was better perfected by other philosophers - and, more importantly, men and women who were willing to die for their beliefs. At the true heart of a belief in these three concepts is, in fact, a fundamentally optimistic viewpoint about the nature of mankind: Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; if it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it." (Hand, 1944)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

• Lustiger, Cardinal Jean-Marie. Liberty, Fraternity, Equality. First Things Journal, Volume 76, October 1996.
• Lowell, James Russell. Among My Books (2nd Series), University Press Books, 1876.
• Mill, John Stuart. On Liberty. London: Longman, Roberts & Green, 1869.
• Mill, John Stuart. On Utilitarianism. University of Adelaide Reprint, 1998.
• Marx, Karl, and Engels, Friedrich. The Communist Manifesto. Signet Classics Reprint, 1998.
• Egan, David. SparkNote on The Social Contract. 14 Apr. 2005 Available from: http://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/socialcontract.
• Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. The Social Contract. Penguin Publishers, Reprint 1968.
• Watkins, Frederick. Rousseau: Political Writings. Nelson Publishers, 1953.
• Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. The Basic Political Writings. Indianapolis: Hackett, Publishers 1987.
• Li, Bo. Equality and Democracy, Burgerschapskunde Online, 2003. Available from:
• http://www.burgerschapskunde.nl/bo3.html
• Stephen, James Fitzjames. Liberty, Equality, Fraternity (1873, 2nd edition 1874), ed. Stuart D. Warner (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1993).
• Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. Discourse on the Origins of Inequality. Penguin Publishers, Reprint 1968.
• Francois Marie Arouet (pen name Voltaire), Letter to Rousseau, 1755.
• Hand, Judge Learned. We Seek Liberty, Speech given in Central Park, New York City, May 21, 1944.

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