The notions of contract and consent were a central part of the intellectual environment of the seventeenth century, providing theorists with a formula in which to cast their particular political ideas thus, opening the way to liberalism’s language of individual rights. Locke and Rousseau consider the relationship between individuals and the state as a contract in which both sides have rights and obligations. To maintain the contract, the state guarantees basic rights to individuals while the individual has an obligation to obey the laws.
For Locke, the natural condition of human existence is “a state of perfect freedom,” in which individuals are able to “order their actions…as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of nature”(116). While the law of nature “obliges every one,” there are some individuals “who will but consult”(116-117). This is because humans, while capable of reason, are also liable to sin. Individuals come to recognize the fragility of the state of nature, and, thus, contract into political society to better serve their interests. Locke claims that the establishment of a political existence is only legitimately achieved through the consent of each individual. No one can be taken out of the state of nature and subjected to the political power of another without his/her own consent. The main source of legitimate political authority rests on the premise that individuals can only rationally consent to what is permitted within the bounds of their own rights. For example, since an individual cannot kill himself/herself, he/she cannot give others that right. Any act of political authority that threatens the life of an individual thus, voids the rights of the authority and renders it illegitimate.
In the act of contracting, individuals choose and accept constraints upon themselves. They give up equality and the executive power (“what any may do in prosecution of that law, everyone must needs have a right to do”) they had in the state of nature (132). Each individual puts himself/herself under an obligation to everyone of that society to submit to the determination of the majority. The government is thus, given a mandate from the people reflecting the majority’s preferences and works to preserve the life, liberty and property of each individual from the arbitrary force of others. Because each individual willingly furnishes the government with the rights and means to act for them and constrain them, each individual also incurs a moral obligation to the law. When the government fails to uphold its terms to the contract and when a majority of the people finds that their interests are no longer being served, Locke claims that the people no longer have a moral obligation to obey the law. In other words, the government continues to be legitimate only as long as it has the consent of the governed.
For Rousseau, Locke’s proposal for majoritarian rule accepts a degree of competitiveness and inequality that causes political obedience to require too many individuals to consent against their wills (139). Any contract that stipulates absolute power on one side and a limitless obedience on the other is illegitimate since it would not be a contract in which everyone willingly consents. In effect, Rousseau adopts the concept of the “general will”(139). The general will is to reflect only the common interest of the community, however, it does not exist independently from individual persons. It remains the will of an individual and yet subordinates private interest to common interest. A state embodies the general will to the extent that every individual is both a member of the sovereign to private individuals and a member of the state toward the sovereign (140). The shared commitment of each citizen to promote the common good, by exercising the general will, is the means by which each citizen embodies his/her will into the law - so that no citizen will be deprived of personal freedom when obeying the law.
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