ABSTRACT OF PAPER
Title: Session: Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Freedom and Equality
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Session abstract Rousseau’s concern for material justice has been widely acknowledged and discussed. His criticism of market society is based upon his clear perception of this social organization as utterly unjust. Injustice can be seen, following Rousseau, in terms of wealth distribution and in terms of freedom. Market society, based upon monetary exchanges, exacerbates artificial inequality leaving most of its members, be they very rich or very poor, outside the rule of law. As individuals are not submitted to the law and because they need each other in order to provide for their needs and desires they can be submitted to others loosing their freedom. Proclaiming equality and liberty as the two fundamental social values of a well-organized society, Rousseau not only criticizes market society but also proposes an alternative social organization: the society of the General Will. In this session, through three papers, we will try to explore these two features of Rousseau’s thought from various perspectives: the injustice inherent in market activity because of the types of goods traded or because of the submission to another’s will implied; the injustice due to the kind of freedom associated with market activity and with the type of social link derived from this activity; the type of individual behavior related to this society and the kind of rationality needed to overcome it. The session will also explore the tensions inherent to Rousseau’s thought: his different notions of freedom and equality and their possible compatibility or contradiction. This way, the session inscribes itself in a relatively recent attempt of recovering Rousseau for the history of economic thought, showing the relevance of his criticisms and of his proposals in the construction of and alternatives to liberal political economy. Paper abstracts Rousseau’s critique of the market Bertil Fridén Rousseau criticized the market continuously in his writings. He did it from several perspectives such as personal experiences of fraud, cases of market imperfections (especially asymmetric information), and the vulnerability of those dependent on the market for survival goods compared with those only demanding luxury goods. It will be argued that his critique is not only an expression of a personality trait (Starobinski), but expresses a consistent philosophy. But is his market critique a special case of a general critique of egoistic pleasure maximization or is it founded on a conscious critique of the market as a way to optimization for the provision of important life qualities? Two features in Rousseau’s writings will be considered. The first is his discussion of the danger of being dependent on the market for goods necessary for one’s survival (a danger which often is far from negligible Sen, Friden 1991). The second is his critique of status goods, consumed in order for the consumer to get well-considered. In contrast he pictures a kind of productive consumption of something above necessities for survival such as the Elysium in Julie ou la nouvelle Héloïse. Jean-Jacques Rousseau on Liberty Jimena Hurtado Universidad de los Andes Natural freedom and civil freedom are two main concepts in Rousseau’s thought. His criticism of market society relies on the inherent contradiction he sees within this social organization between natural freedom and community life. The contradiction consists in the permanent conflict derived from the confrontation of individual wills opening the possibility of personal submission. Rousseau identifies market society with Hobbes’s state of nature. As an alternative, Rousseau’s social project proposes a denaturation of human beings which would transform their natural freedom into civil freedom. The freedom of doing whatever one pleases with available resources is transformed into the liberty of acting according to the rule one gives oneself. This text explores these two notions of freedom in the Second Discourse and the Social Contract trying to assess Rousseau’s criticism of market society as regards its consequences on liberty and his notion of the General Will. Bounds of Rationality: Rousseau’s Idea of Prudence Christophe Salvat CNRS-GREQAM (France) Robinson College, Centre for History and Economics, Cambridge (UK) We intend to present an interpretation of Rousseau built on the notions of fragility, responsibility and prudence that underlie his political and moral philosophy. This attempt is part of a more general reflection on rationality and freedom and must be read within this theoretical context. The coexistence and potentially the opposition between a general and a particular will preceding the individual deliberation raises two major rousseauist issues, namely sovereignty and virtue. Rationality requires the agent to choose general will but liberty means that he is free to make the wrong decision. Political societies, and beyond them individual freedom, are doomed to failure unless their members actually take conscience of the fragility of the political artifact and of the personal responsibility borne by each of them. The claim we want to make here is that the indeterminacy faced by agents and the way they individually choose to cope with it should be considered as a significant issue in economics. In particular, we would like to stress one of the few practices that have already been acknowledged by the most influential philosophers from Aristotle to Habermas as a reasonable and a moral criterion of choice: prudence.
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