Michaela Rehm

The paper discusses the foundation and genesis of the political society according to Locke, elaborating why the relationship between the civil society and the government is not defined in contractual terms, but by the notion of “trust”. Rehm argues against the view that Locke supports a liberal proceduralism, stressing that consent for him is indeed the necessary, but not the sufficient condition of legitimate political power: what needs to be added is action in accordance with the law of nature.

The paper is an analysis of Rousseau’s concept of property. It shows that Rousseau wants to draft a new system of politics that will not forbid private property but will limit its scale. It aims to clarify that Rousseau owes much to John Locke’s theory and even adopts Locke’s definition that it is a basic purpose of the social contract to protect the citizen’s property. It is argued that in spite of these similarities Rousseau’s account differs fundamentally from Locke’s. Having a right of ownership to something for Locke means to be entitled to exclude anybody else from it: to say “this is mine” in Locke is synonymous to “it is not yours”. For Rousseau having a right of ownership to something implies a self-limitation by the proprietor: to say “this is mine” in Rousseau signifies “everything else is not mine”. While property rights in Locke have the purpose of legitimizing “pleonexia” and economic inequality, Rousseau tries to use them as restrictions to citizens’ desires and greed.

The author offers a critical commentary on Rousseau’s chapter on civil religion in the “Social Contract”, book 4, chapter 8. It investigates Rousseau’s attempt to overcome the conflict between politics and religion by merging a civil religion that creates an emotional bond to the particular state without fostering superstition and intolerance, and it shows that this attempt fails. It is demonstrated that Rousseau’s concept of civil religion neither offers any doctrine of salvation transcending this life nor prescribes any content going beyond moral norms. Civil religion for Rousseau is in service to politics and its instrumental character is desired by the citizens who are supposed autonomously to agree on the need of a secularized civil ethic.

Is Rousseau an advocate of natural law or not? The purpose of Rehm’s paper is to suggest a positive answer to this controversially discussed question. On the one hand, Rousseau presents a critical history of traditional natural law theory which in his view is based on flawed suppositions: not upon natural, but on artificial qualities of man, and even rationality and sociability are counted among the latter. On the other hand he presents the self-confident manifesto for a fresh start in natural law theory, founded on what to Rousseau’s mind is the true idea of human nature. The paper intends to show that the only natural qualities which can be seen as anthropological constants are those that keep man flexible, namely perfectibility and freedom of will. It is argued that these are exactly the qualities which according to Rousseau serve as the standard of natural law for the system of politics and its laws: Only a state based upon the free consent of individuals can do justice to man’s perfectibility and freedom of will. Rehm stresses that because of perfectibility and freedom of will, this self-commitment has to be revisable, which is why the republic of the “Social Contract” should not have a constitution, or any law that the citizens cannot alter. It is demonstrated that in Rousseau’s view, this republic is the enabling condition of natural liberty.

The claim of this paper is to show that the “Discourse on the Arts and Sciences” does not propose a general critique of progress as such, but a critique of the idea of progress as promoted by the 18th century “philosophers”. It is argued that Rousseau is no proponent of a Counter-Enlightenment, on the contrary he aims to go further than other thinkers of his time by scrutinizing even progress itself, Enlightenment’s pet notion. In defining arts and sciences as the very driving forces of progress, the “philosophers” according to Rousseau are fostering inequality, because only an elite will be able to succeed in them. By contrast, talking about progress in Rousseau’s view only makes sense if “progress” is defined in moral and political terms, as enabling all men to participate in the promotion of everybody’s well-being. The paper intends to show that Rousseau’s answer to the shortcomings of civilization is not a “return to nature”, but the advancement of artificial institutions: namely, the egalitarian republic.

It appears that Rousseau has annulled the dichotomy between man and citizen for the benefit of the citizen – after all, the social contract implies the “total alienation of each associate, together with all his rights, to the whole community”. Does this not mean the individual is completely absorbed by the collectivity? The paper takes up the role of religion for politics in Rousseau’s work to show that even civil religion cannot help to re-establish the lost unity between man and citizen, on the contrary, it only makes this division visible. As long as the individual is part of the body politic, he or she has to accept having a fragmented existence. The text aims to clarify that Rousseau blamed the protagonists of the established churches as well as his fellow Enlightenment philosophers for striving to overcome the contradictions of human existence, while Rousseau himself defended the distinction between “res privata” and “res publica” and the tensions it might cause in the individual. The paper therefore suggests a liberal reading of Rousseau.

Even his peers called Locke's political philosophy “The ABC of Politics“: not only does he clarify why one should exit the state of nature (government guarantees protection of life, freedom, and wealth) but also what a good government has to provide. A government should protect individuals from assaults of fellow citizens, other countries, and itself. Locke also shows how to put limits to the power of political institutions: by division of powers, by law, by neutral judges, and by making people trust their government -- and having the right to revolt when their trust is betrayed. This book provides a cooperative commentary to all important topics of Locke's "Two Treatises". With entries by Wolfgang von Leyden, Bernd Ludwig, Peter Niesen, Francis Oakley, Birger P. Priddat, Michaela Rehm, Michael Schefczyk, Ludwig Siep, A. John Simmons, und Simone Zurbuchen.

What holds a society together? Is it sufficient if a state relies on the citizens’ law-abidance only? Rousseau mistrusts a purely legal foundation of the state and searches for a bond that ties the citizens to it emotionally. The author aims to show that the civil religion Rousseau presents in the “Social Contract” is his answer to that problem. She focuses on the artificiality of civil religion which for Rousseau needs to be the product of the citizens’ will, inseparable from society’s rational construction by means of the social contract. It is shown that in spite of the voluntarist positing of civil religion’s contents, Rousseau has to presuppose a theistic profession of faith: civil religion cannot produce any faith itself and therefore needs to be the beneficiary of an already existing faith of the individuals that has to be imported into the public sphere.

The paper offers a systematic analysis of the phenomenon of civil religion. It reconstructs its historical preconditions and explains that civil religion is advocated when a pluralist society seems about to lose a traditional religion or ideology perceived as former guarantor of social stability. Civil religion is then propagated as a means to create a new equilibrium. The text aims to clarify that this notion is based on the idea that morality depends on religion. The conclusion is that the morality civil religion strives to promote needs to be non-universalist in order to meet civil religion’s purpose, namely to foster unity within a specific community.