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5 results

  • 5 - Rousseau’s Negative Liberty

  • Edited by David Lay Williams, DePaul University, Chicago, Matthew W. Maguire, DePaul University, Chicago
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Companion to Rousseau's <i>Social Contract</i>
    Published online:
    28 March 2024
    Print publication:
    22 February 2024, pp 88-112

  • Summary

    Rousseau’s Social Contract is often viewed as one of the early modern attempts to construct a theory of positive liberty. This interpretation makes sense. In Book I, Rousseau writes of freedom as a form of rational self-determination that enlarges and ennobles minds. Some theorists, most notably Isaiah Berlin, have argued that this notion of freedom opens the door to tyranny and blame Rousseau for the authoritarianism and fascism in the first half of the twentieth century. However, Rousseau is probably best considered a theorist of negative liberty. The Social Contract is in many respects a deeply practical work that primarily seeks to prevent both government and interpersonal domination and is animated by an underlying skepticism toward Rousseau’s very own solutions to these problems.

  • The Politics of Sour Grapes: Sartre, Elster, and Tocqueville on Frustration, Failure, and Self-Deception

  • Michael Locke McLendon
  • Journal:
    The Review of Politics / Volume 75 / Issue 2 / Spring 2013
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    09 April 2013, pp. 247-270

  • Jean-Paul Sartre and Jon Elster have taken great interest in the famous “children's” fable, “The Fox and the Grapes.” Elster believes the fable pinpoints problems in utilitarian doctrine while Sartre contends it demonstrates how consciousness copes with frustrated desire. As impressive as these insights are, neither philosopher can fully explain the cognitive and cultural processes involved in sour grapes. To improve upon their theories, I will argue that amour-propre is an important psychological motive inspiring sour grapes as well as show that sour grapes is built into the value commitments and institutional structures of democratic life through Tocqueville's analysis of American democracy.