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'The Social Contract'

Nazi example

"The greater the urgency of the matter, the smaller the majority required shold be"

"ruthless confrontation of the Communist Party of Germany"

Not Totalitarian:

"Majority vote is always binding on all others"

"Everyone Voting" and the "counting of that vote manifests the 'general will"

"If all the citizens assembled in order to break the pact by common consent, there would be no doubt that it had been broken quite legitimately"

The General Will

Riley: 'A Possible Explanation of Rousseau's General Will'

"The common good is obvious everywhere"

"A 'general will' is a philosophical and pycological contradiction in terms; will is a conception understandable, if at all, only in terms of idividual actions"

How can their be objective reason or will?

Example:

"When citizens had a single interest, the people had a single will"

"Oposition to the contract does not invalidate the contract, but merely prevents it from being applied to them: they are foreigners among citizens"

Is this achievable?

"Philosophical paradox of willed non-voluntarism; the general will, a will which is the corporate 'will' of a whole society, a will to stop being willful, cannot be politically defended"

"When an opinion is contrary to mine prevails, I had been mistaken"

"Oposition to the contract does not invalidate the contract, but merely prevents it from being applied to them: they are foreigners among citizens"

A Blueprint for Totalitarianism?

What is Totalitarianism?

The General Will

Isaiah Berlin

Totalitarianism

Patrick Riley

Objectivity of will and reason

Plato- Greece and Rome

'Totalitarianism is the ultimate political power of the state over its people. State holds total authority over the society and seeks to control all aspects of public and private life wherever necessary'.

Z.K Brzezinski & Carl Friedrich (1969)

Isaiah Berlin

Paradox; 'We have two absolute values: the absolute value of freedom and the absolute value of the right rules'

Conclusion

'Without freedom, without sponteneity, no society is worth having'

'Everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.'

Benito Mussolini

Bibliography:

'The whole notion of moral responsibility, which for Rousseau is the essence of man can choose, choose between alternatives, choose between them freely, be uncoerced'

Paradox Liberty as Authority

Berlin, I (2002) 'Freedom and its Betrayal'. Great Britain. Chatto & Windus p 27-50

Freedom as rationality

Riley, P (1992) 'A Possible Explanation of Rousseau's General Will'. U.S.A Rowman & Littlefield publishers inc.

Rousseau. J (1994) 'The Social Contract'. New York. Oxford University Press.

Russell. B (1946) 'History of Western Philosophy'.London. Routledge pg 125-163, 651-783

'The Social Contract'

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

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