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"Those who want to treat politics and morals separately will never understand anything of either of the two."
-- Emile, Book IV
Beginning with his Discourse on Inequality (1755) and continuing through the Discourse on Political Economy (1755), the Geneva Manuscript (1756),[1] the Social Contract (1764), Emile (1764) and Considerations on the Government of Poland (1772), Rousseau shows a keen awareness of the problem that has come to be identified as the "Prisoners' Dilemma" (PD). For instance, early in the Geneva Manuscript (the original draft of the Social Contract) Rousseau claims that "Far from being allied, private interest and the common good are mutually exclusive in the natural order of things" (GM, 79). Similarly, in the Discourse on Inequality he points to the difficulties of cooperative group activity among human beings in the state of nature.[2] In the following I am going to argue that throughout his political writings Rousseau is effectively engaged in the attempt to provide the social and political means for stabilizing what would be the cooperative outcome in a PD game matrix (Figure 1).
Emile and the Social Contract were published in the same year and in many ways should be read as complementary works which attempt to solve PD-like problems by cultivating the virtue of citizenship from two different directions. When taken together, the educational theory presented in Emile and the political theory developed in the Social Contract show Rousseau trying to fashion individuals who would be psychologically predisposed to choosing cooperative outcomes. In other words, these works show Rousseau grappling with and modifiying the PD in significant ways (Figure 2).
I begin my discussion by examining the prisoners' dilemma in the context of Rousseau's political thought. The next two sections then explore the process for developing the virtue of citizenship by focusing on the role of education and the structure of the state. I conclude by arguing that Rousseau's understanding of the citizen as a radically dependent social being provides a viable solution to the prisoners' dilemma.
PD-type interactions derive at least in part from our particular psychological predisposition to place a higher value on our own well-being than we do on the well being of others (see Figure 1). This predisposition is so pervasive that the essence of rational behavior has come to be defined in terms of self-regarding decision making. Thus, Brams (1985, 2) argues that "to be rational is to strive for what one desires -- or at least to act as if one were pursuing some end." We are said to act rationally when we calculate the advantages and disadvantages to ourselves among a given set of options and then choose better alternatives from among those options where determination of the "better" alternative proceeds according to self-regarding criteria. PD situations would not arise, obviously, if everyone were predisposed to making the well-being of others his or her desired end. In other words, if we could redirect our desires from self-regarding to other-regarding criteria, the dilemma would no longer exist.
Initially, this might not appear to be a particularly intractable problem for Rousseau. Afterall, while he concedes in the Discourse on Inequality that self-love (amour de soi même) is a natural "principle" that governs human behavior in the state of nature, he also argues that it is tempered by pity and that this sentiment is the source for such emotions as generosity, clemency, humanity, friendship, and benevolence (DOI, 37). Thus, it is not inconceivable that we could create social institutions which would build on this sentiment so that the PD problem would dissipate as we successfully cultivated this other-regarding orientation. However, Rousseau has no doubts about which of these two natural principles exerts a stronger influence on human psychology and behavior. In Emile he writes that it is the former -- amour de soi-même -- which is "the source of our passions, the origin and the principle of all the others, the only one born with man and which never leaves him so long as he lives" (p. 212). He then goes on to describe self-love as "a primitive, innate passion, which is anterior to every other, and of which all others are in a sense only modifications" (p. 212). This need not be read as a repudiation of the ideas developed in the Discourse on Inequality insofar as we can view pity itself as an extension of the principle of self-love: we are capable of compassion for others because we can identify with (not only imagine but also feel) the suffering endured; so that the suffering of others becomes our suffering. Indeed, while pity may be a biological reaction that we experience prior to and often independent of reason, it functions by drawing on the same well of emotional responses that governs our concern for our individual well being.[3]
In acknowledging the primacy of self-love, however, Rousseau leaves himself in a difficult position. Unlike Mandeville, Smith, and Hume, for instance, each of whom made the argument that private interests lead to public benefits, Rousseau recognized that self-love presented problems for human beings who have left the pure state of nature. As he forcefully argues in both the Geneva Manuscript and Political Economy, individual private goods will very often diverge from the public good (see, for example, PE, 144; also Emile, IV, pp. 314-315). Indeed, in the Geneva Manuscript he rejects Diderot's claims concerning the existence of a general will of the human species which engenders camaraderie and cooperation among human beings, and he argues instead that "It is false that in the state of independence, reason leads us to cooperate for the common good out of a perception of our own interest." If it is false in a state of independence, it is much more so in a social state where such independence no longer obtains. He recognizes that for the vast majority of us, reason would lead us to sacrifice the common good whenever it conflicted with our own self-interest (see GM, 79-81; Emile IV, 314-315).
Yet Rousseau also rejected what might be called the Hobbesian solution to the problem; namely, relying on government coercion to force individuals to accept cooperative outcomes. In Political Economy he notes that while "It is no small thing to have brought order and peace to all the parts of the republic; it is no small thing that the state is tranquil and the law respected. But if one does nothing more, all this will be more apparent than real, and the government will have difficulty making itself obeyed if it limits itself to obedience" (PE, 148). As he goes on to argue, it is necessary for the government to do more than simply pass and enforce laws. "Form men," he writes, "if you want to command men. If you want the laws to be obeyed, make them beloved, so that for men to do what they should, they need only think they ought to do it" (PE, 148). Reliance on governmental coercion is insufficient because it does not address the root of the problem -- a propensity for individuals to identify self-interest exclusively (or at least preponderantly) in terms of narrowly self-regarding concerns -- so that laws and punishments will become successively more draconian in increasingly futile attempts to compel subjects to conform to cooperative outcomes (see, for instance, PE, 147). Yet how do we form men who will recognize that their true self-interest lies in obeying the law rather than in defecting from a cooperative agreement?
If the human species had retained its original asocial way of life, then our individual obsession with a narrow conception of self interest would be both necessary for our survival and no great cause for concern. However, as Rousseau recognized, this natural independence has given way to a radical interdependence such that at present both our physical and psychological survival relies heavily on other people. Moreover, while this transformation from solitary to social being happened largely accidentally and has given rise to human rationality, language, government, and the other arts and sciences, it nonetheless is built on a psychological substrate that is ill-equipped for dealing with the new conditions. Amour de soi-même transforms itself into pernicious amour propre, so that social cooperation, although essential for our being, becomes problematic. For Rousseau, this profound transformation in self-love bears much of the responsibility for the problems we encounter as a social being (DOI, 66-67). We end up in PD situations.
Rousseau's solution to the PD problem is neither to deny its existence nor to rely on coercion, but to cultivate the virtue of citizenship. And for a writer frequently criticized for contradiction and paradox, one cannot help being struck by his remarkable consistency on this point throughout his writings. For Rousseau we need to fashion within the members of a particular polity an understanding of self-interest that takes into account the changed circumstances of our new social dependence. Rousseau hopes to accomplish this by making radical changes in the way we educate our young and in the way we organize our political life:
"One who thinks he is capable of forming a people should feel that he can, so to speak, change human nature. He must transform each individual, who by himself is a perfect and solitary whole, into a part of a larger whole from which this individual receives, in a sense, his life and his being. He must in a sense mutilate man's constitution in order to strengthen it; substitute a partial and moral existence for the physical and independent existence we have all received from nature. He must, in short, take away all man's own, innate forces in order to give him forces that are foreign to him and that he cannot make use of without the help of others (GM, 101)."[4]
The difficulty is that we no longer are capable of living a solitary existence and thus cannot be "a perfect and solitary whole" so we need to redefine how we understand our self interest (i.e., to "mutilate man's constitution") to reflect our changed lifestyle. But such a project seems doomed to failure, for how can we hope to combat such deep seated natural prejudices? After all, as Rousseau concedes, once egoism and amour propre begin to develop, they can no longer be eradicated for "It is too late to change our natural inclinations when they have become entrenched, and habit has been combined with amour-propre. It is too late to draw us out of our ourselves once the human self concentrated in our hearts has acquired that contemptible activity that absorbs all virtue and constitutes the life of petty souls" (PE, 155; emphasis in original; see Pléiade, vol. III, 260). Rousseau's response to this is not to develop a plan which endeavors to prevent the development of any natural passions nor otherwise tries to eradicate them, for, as he notes in Emile (IV, 212), such a project is lunacy. Instead, he argues that while human nature is the ultimate source of our passions, the specific passions themselves can be a product of either natural or human processes. As we have seen, amour de soi-même is a natural and overriding passion. For Rousseau, the problem is not one of eliminating this natural passion, but rather of transforming it into something other than amour propre. We need to use our social institutions to create a psychological orientation among members of the society wherein each of us equates our self-interest with the societal interest, or, to use Rousseau's terminology, to mesh our particular wills with the general will:
"Natural man is entirely for himself. He is a numerical unity, the absolute whole which is relative only to itself or its kind. Civil man is only a fractional unity dependent on the denominator; his value is determined by his relation to the whole, which is the social body. Good social institutions are those that best know how to denature man, to take his absolute existence from him in order to give him a relative one and transport the I into the common unity, with the result that each individual believes himself no longer one but a part of the unity and no longer feels except within the whole" (Emile, I, 39-40).
In other words, when Rousseau speaks of "mutilating" human nature or "denaturing" man, what he is referring to is the necessity of redirecting our conception of self-interest so as to take account of our new social dependence. The educational program developed for the individual child presented most fully in Emile and sketched in Poland provides one means for accomplishing this task.
In writing his Considerations on the Government of Poland, Rousseau is presented with the opportunity to provide some concrete proposals for the creation of a new state; to, as it were, become the legislator forming a people. In the first chapter of this work he argues that "A good and sound constitution is one under which the law holds sway over the hearts of the citizens ..." (Poland, p. 4). He then goes on to ask "But how to reach men's hearts?" After dismissing as ineffective such obvious contenders as coercion, punishment, economic rewards, and simple justice he answers that it is "through the games they play as children, through institutions, that, though a superficial man would deem them pointless, develop habits that abide and attachments that nothing can dissolve" (p. 4). He refers to the education of youth as a preliminary but "indispensable" issue that needs to be addressed before he could tackle the more specific task at hand (i.e., an examination of the Polish constitution). This focus on the importance of a civic education intent on producing "citizens" ("individuals who participate in the sovereign authority" (SC, I, vi, 139) or, in other words, individuals who are willing to choose cooperative outcomes in the PD) is central to not only Poland, but also Political Economy, the Geneva Manuscript, the Social Contract, and of course Emile.
Rousseau has much to say about early childhood education in Emile that, while interesting, is largely irrelevant to the main points of the present discussion. In Book IV, shortly after he "transcribes" the Profession of Faith of the Savoyard Vicar, Rousseau summarizes his program and claims that to this point in Emile's education he has tried to restrain Emile's nature and to stimulate his reason. As he indicates, "In developing his nature, we have sidetracked its nascent sensibility; we have regulated it by cultivating reason" (p. 314) and that "In going back to the principles of things we have protected him from the empire of the senses." One of the aims, then, of early education would be to strengthen a child's intellectual development (its rationality) and take steps to limit the development of the natural passions. Thus, the kind of education that Rousseau offers for this stage of human development is somewhat unexpected given his emphasis on the primacy of nature throughout the Discourse on Inequality. Early in Emile he announces that he is not going to emphasize the cultivation of natural sentiments. Quite to the contrary, he now claims that "He who in the civil order wants to preserve the primacy of the sentiments of nature does not know what he wants. Always in contradiction with himself, always floating between his inclinations and his duties, he will never be either man or citizen. He will be good neither for himself nor for others. He will be one of these men of our days: a Frenchman, an Englishman, a bourgeois. He will be nothing" (Emile, I, 40). The difficulty in trying to preserve "the primacy of natural sentiments" is that, as we have seen, while the most basic of these sentiments -- self-love -- causes no great difficulties in the state of nature, its transformation in a social being bears much of the responsibility for the problems we encounter as a social being (DOI, 66-67). A viable educational system must prepare youth for the duties of life in the "civil order."
Rousseau himself distinguishes between the education necessary to raise a physically, morally, and mentally healthy child and that necessary to prepare the child for his/her entry into civic life. He characterizes the latter as a "second birth" and notes that "it is now that man is truly born to life" and that up to that point in Emile's education "our care has only been a child's game. It takes on true importance only at present." He also claims, moreover, that it is at this time where education should "properly" begin (IV, 212). To reach this point Rousseau tries to take advantage of the fact that our passions can be shaped by social forces and he builds upon the passions that are available to us. As he notes in Book IV of Emile, in order for justice and goodness to be more than simply "abstract words" it is necessary that they be built on "a natural need in the human heart" (p. 235). Thus what we find in Rousseau's pedagogy is an attempt to make a modified version of amour de soi-même the basis for reinvigorating the ancient virtue of citizenship. He notes that human history has reached the point where each of us depends crucially on other people to meet our needs; we are no longer the self-sufficient beings we were in the pure state of nature. We can see a hint as to the specific natural need Rousseau uses as the foundation for his theory in his characterization of the entrance into civic life as a second birth.
After conceding that self love is the dominant passion in human nature, Rousseau argues that given this fact, it necessarily follows that we love that which preserves us (or more accurately, those who want to preserve us.) Initially, this translates into love for our parents -- particularly our mother or whoever is responsible for nursing -- but Rousseau tries to make this emotional response the basis for renewing the virtue of citizenship. In Poland, he opens his discussion of Polish educational reform by suggesting that "The newly-born infant, upon first opening his eyes, must gaze upon the fatherland, and until his dying day should behold nothing else" and that the "true republican is a man who imbibed love of the fatherland, which is to say love of the laws and of liberty, with his mother's milk" (Poland, p. 19). Rousseau hopes to expand our sense of amour de soi-même by arranging our social institutions in such a way that we recognize that we could not exist without the aid and assistance of our fellow citizens. As the discussion of nursing seems to indicate, such a transformation is possible given that as a species we may never have been entirely self-sufficient. Lying deep within us may be a basic psychological disposition to recognize the fact that our self interest should not be defined in terms of an isolated self but rather in terms of the network of social relationships that provide the physical and psychological nourishment which we need. Many of the specific proposals for the Polish educational system seem designed to ensure that our feelings of self-worth become crucially dependent on cultivating the favorable opinion of our fellow citizens. For example, his prescription for encouraging highly competitive games among children is designed to get children accustomed "from an early moment, to rules, to equality, to fraternity, to competitions, to living with the eyes of their fellow-citizens upon them, and to seeking public approbation. The prizes and rewards for the victorious contestants should, therefore, not be conferred arbitrarily, that is, by fiat of the coaches or the school heads, but by acclamation based on the verdict of the spectators" (Poland, 22). To be sure Rousseau argues that we should try to keep our reliance on others to a minimum (and he attempts to create such a system), but he also holds that for most of us it is impossible to live a completely self-sufficient life. As he argues in Emile, "If some imperfect being could suffice unto himself, what would he enjoy according to us? He would be alone; he would be miserable. I do not conceive how someone who needs nothing can love anything. I do not conceive how someone who loves nothing can be happy" (IV, 221). What is required of us then is a close examination of our social interaction and dependency:
"the study suitable for man is that of his relations. So long as he knows himself only in his physical being, he ought to study himself in his relations with things. This is the job of his childhood. When he begins to sense his moral being, he ought to study himself in his relations with men. This is the job of his whole life..." (p. 214).
It is in turning to the study of our relations that we see the second side to Rousseau's solution to the PD; that is, the need to build social and political institutions which take advantage of this collective sense of self.
Rousseau's discussion of the legitimate basis of the state in Book I of the Social Contract is aimed precisely at addressing PD-like problems. In Chapter VI he argues that
"Now since men cannot engender new forces, but merely unite and direct existing ones, they have no other means of self-preservation except to form, by aggregation, a sum of forces that can prevail over the resistance; set them to work by a single motivation; and make them act in concert" (SC, I, vi, 138).
As we have seen amour de soi-même is the most basic existing force that can be pressed into service to unite men peaceably. The reference to "self-preservation" is important here in that if my preceding discussion is correct, what we find is Rousseau providing a hint as to the type of solution he is going to offer; for he is reminding us that we have reached a point where our "self-preservation" rests heavily on our social attachments. We all need each other in order to survive. In this context, amour de soi-même can no longer be understood exclusively in self-referential terms and instead needs to encompass a self which is defined in terms of social attachments. This understanding provides the underlying logic of and justification for the type of political arrangements Rousseau discusses in the rest of the work. In the immediately succeeding paragraph to that quoted above, Rousseau brings to the fore the PD-type problems of social interaction among calculating egoists who subscribe to a narrow conception of self preservation:
"This sum of forces can arise only from the cooperation of many. But since each man's force and freedom are the primary instruments of his self-preservation, how is he to engage them without harming himself and without neglecting the cares he owes to himself?" (SC, I, vi, 138).
His well-known conclusion is that the only means for addressing this difficulty was requiring each member of the social group to give him/herself completely to the other members of the group, without reservation. He recognizes that without this total alienation of rights, individual members are quite likely to defect from cooperative outcomes so that our social interactions would ultimately deteriorate into conditions akin to the state of nature (or the Pareto-inferior non-cooperative outcome in the PD matrix). He claims that "if some rights were left to private individuals, there would be no common superior who could judge between them and the public. Each man being his own judge on some point would soon claim to be so on all; the state of nature would subsist and the association would necessarily become tyrannical or ineffectual" (SC, 139). To avoid that fate we need to substitute a social understanding for our narrow conception of self interest: "in place of the private person of each contracting party, this act of association produces a moral and collective body, composed of as many members as there are voices in the assembly, which receives from this same act its unity, its common self, its life, and its will" (SC, I, vi, 139; emphasis in original).
Rousseau's emphasis on this collective or "common self" is particularly significant in the context of his psychological theory, for it implies that as a collective self, the group will recognize that each associate is vital for the health of the body politic so that in a sense, the amour de soi-même of the group would dictate the preservation of each of its constituent parts: "the Sovereign, formed solely by the private individual composing it, does not and cannot have any interest contrary to theirs. Consequently, the Sovereign power has no need of a guarantee toward the subjects, because it is impossible for the body ever to want to harm all its members, and we shall see later that it cannot harm any one of them as an individual. The Sovereign, by the sole fact of being, is always what it ought to be" (SC, I, vii, 140). From the other end of the equation, given the dire consequences for all members of the group in the absence of cooperative agreements, individuals who act according to the dictates of their private will (or, to use my terminology, to act with a narrow conception of their self interest) to the detriment of the collective self are a threat to that collective self:"each individual can, as a man, have a private will contrary to or differing from the general will he has as a Citizen. His private interest can speak to him quite differently from the common interest. His absolute and naturally independent existence can bring him to view what he owes the common cause as a free contribution, the loss of which will harm others less that its payment burdens him. And considering the moral person of the State as a being produced by reason because it is not a man, he might wish to enjoy the rights of the citizen without wanting to fulfill the duties of a subject, an injustice whose spread would cause the ruin of the body politic" (SC, I, vii, 141).
Here we see Rousseau recognizing and trying to come to terms with the free-rider problem; that is, of individuals acting on a narrow self-interest and defecting from the cooperative outcome so as to secure the greater individual payoff within the PD game matrix. But as Rousseau recognized, the benefits of such a move would be short lived since as defectors become more common, cooperation becomes less likely, and we soon find ourselves back in the state of nature (i.e., at the Pareto-inferior Nash equilibrium associated with non-cooperation in the PD matrix). It is in this context that we need to understand Rousseau's claims concerning the need to force men to be free. This is not a recipe for totalitarianism so much as a recognition that the body politic is entitled to preserve itself and that individuals who defect from the cooperative outcome are threatening the liberty of the other members of the association: "Therefore, in order for the social compact not to be an ineffectual formula, it tacitly includes the following engagement, which alone can give force to the others: that whoever refuses to obey the general will shall be constrained to do so by the entire body; which means only that he will be forced to be free. For this is the condition that, by giving each Citizen to the fatherland, guarantees him against all personal dependence; a condition that creates the ingenuity and functioning of the political machine, and alone gives legitimacy to civil engagements which without it would be absurd, tyrannical, and subject to the most enormous abuses" (SC, I, vii, 141). The reference to the "fatherland" and the imagery of the body politic deployed in these passages again call to mind the discussion of amour de soi même in Emile. In discussing our social ties in the language we would use to describe our personal self-preservation Rousseau is attempting to place the state in the same position vis-a-vis our self preservation as a social being that our family occupied in our self-preservation in the state of nature. In other words, if amour de soi-même guides us to love ourselves and that which preserves us, and if we come to understand that the presence and activities of each of our fellow citizens is vital for our survival (and vice-versa), and that these activities are coordinated and made manifest in the state, then it follows that we should love the state. However, in order for this transformation to come about, in order for individuals to perceive the state in this fashion, we need a radical transformation in the way we structure our political institutions. For present purposes, I will ignore the details of this restructuring since the basic point I want to make concerns the overall aim of the project, and I think that has been established. Whereas Emile focuses on the individual education necessary for creating citizens, the Social Contract looks at the same issue from the perspective of our social relations.
Rousseau's political and educational theories are attempts to stabilize the Pareto-optimal cooperative outcome of the PD matrix. Or to be more precise, they transform our social relations so that they can no longer be cast in terms of the PD. If Rousseau's educational and political projects successfully refocus our understanding of amour de soi-meme onto our social attachments, then we will see a fundamental transformation of the PD matrix into that described in Figure 2. The two highest-ranking outcomes for both players would be to cooperate; for if the pedagogy developed in Emile and Poland is successful, then our self-esteem will depend in no small part on the approbation of our peers and our God. Thus the highest outcome would be if everyone obeyed the general will. But note that even in the face of individual defections from the cooperative agreement, it would still be better for me to cooperate with the general will since we will have created institutions which can compel the compliance of defectors. Conversely, the two lower ranking outcomes are associated with choosing to follow our particular will rather than the general will. The lowest outcome would be if both players abandoned the general will inasmuch as that leads us back to the state of nature. Note that in this game both players have a dominant strategy and that the cooperative outcome is a Pareto-superior Nash equilibrium.
1. The Geneva manuscript was never published in Rousseau's lifetime. The date I cite refers to Masters and Kelly's speculation as to its probable date of composition. See Roger Masters and Christopher Kelly, Collected Works of Rousseau, IV, ix. Robert Derathé, however, argues for a somewhat later date, fixing its composition between 1758 and 1760. See Derathé "Premiere version du contrat social," In J.J. Rousseau: Oeuvres complètes, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade (5 vols to date; 1964- ), III, pp. lxxxii - xc. Subsequent references will contain an abbreviated version of the title of the work with the page numbers keyed to the Masters/Kelly edition of Rousseau's works. The two exceptions will be Emile, which will refer to the pagination in Allan Bloom's translation (Basic Books, 1979) and to the Considerations on the Government of Poland, which will refer to the pagination in Willmoore Kendall's translation (Hacket Books, 1985) since these works have yet to be published in the Masters/Kelly series. However to facilitate locating the quotes I have tried to include references to the specific structure of Rousseau's work. For example, the Social Contract is divided into four books with each book subdivided into chapters. Thus, a citation which reads (SC, I, vi, 128) would refer to the Social Contract, Book I, chapter 6, page 128 of the Masters/Kelly edition. Back to location in text
2. I am thinking especially of his account of human hunters attempting to coordinate their activities to entrap a deer. Rousseau does not deny that such episodes may have occurred, but he does note that the psychological disposition of each individual was such that should the opportunity present itself, each individual would abandon the collective effort in order to pursue some individual gain (i.e., to hunt a passing rabbit), even if that meant the other members of the group would go hungry (see "Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality Among Men," in Collected Writings of Rousseau, eds., Roger Masters and Christopher Kelly, trans. Roger Masters and Judith Bush (6 vols to date), III, 45 (hereafter cited as DOI). Ordeschook also characterizes this incident in terms of a prisoners' dilemma. See Peter Ordeschook, Game Theory and Political Theory (New York, Cambridge University Press, 1986), p. 209. Back to location in text
3. For a fuller treatment of the biology underlying Rousseau's conception of pity see my "Between Primates and Primitives: Natural Man as the Missing Link in Rousseau's Second Discourse," Journal of the History of Ideas, (1995) 54:37-58. Back to location in text.
4. A less graphic version of this passage reappears in the Social Contract (Book II, vii, p. 155). Back to location in text