[2] Lévy-Bruhl, _Loc. cit_. p. 330. The citation appears to be from a romance, and I have not seen the context.
[3] Letter 3 contains a profound criticism of the supposed actual “state of nature,” and it might be said with truth that the whole subject of the letters is the problem “how man is to be free without ceasing to be sensuous.”
{ 238} 2. Returning to our immediate subject, the Philosophy of Right, we will consider for a moment the specific relation of Rousseau’s idea of Freedom to Kantian or post-Kantian thought. It is permissible, perhaps, to embody the chief part of what has to be said in extracts from works of great original value and not very generally accessible. Not only the poets and sentimentalists of Germany, but also the great philosophers, distinctly recognised the debt of the German genius to the ideas of Rousseau. The conception of the “Social Contract” has an importance which surprises the modern reader in the political philosophy of Kant and more especially of Fichte, and it is not till we come to Hegel that the literal interpretation of the “Social Contract” is completely discriminated from the truth conveyed by the doctrine of the General Will. Apart from all questions about the literal meaning of the “Social Contract,” it is simple fact that the whole political philosophy of Kant, Hegel, and Fichte is founded on the idea of freedom as the essence of man, first announced--such was Hegel’s distinct judgment--by Rousseau. I begin by citing the crucial passage from Hegel’s _History of Philosophy_, which gives in a few lines the basis of his own theory of Right, as well as his view of Rousseau’s position. [1]
[1] Hegel’s _Geschichte der Philosophie_, iii. 477.
After explaining that Rousseau treated the right of Government as on one side, in its historical aspect, resting [1] on force and compulsion, Hegel { 239} continues,
“But the principle of this justification (the absolute justification of the State) Rousseau makes the free will, and, disregarding the positive right (or law) of States, he answers to the above question [2] (as to the justification or basis of the State) that man has free will, seeing that ‘Freedom is the distinctive quality of man. [3] To renounce one’s freedom, means to renounce one’s humanity. Not to be free is therefore a renunciation of one’s human rights, and even of one’s duties.’ The slave has neither rights nor duties. Rousseau says, therefore, [4] The _fundamental problem_ [5] is to find a form of association which shall protect and defend at once the person and the property of every member with the whole common force, and in which each individual, inasmuch as he attaches himself to this association, _obeys only himself, and remains as free as before_ [5] The solution is given by the _Social Contract_; [5] it (Rousseau says) is this combination, to which each belongs through his will."