Discourse On Rousseau's Republican Citizen

According to Rousseau's philosophical anthropology, the human nature is neither his rationality nor his sociality, but his passion. Human's original and basic passion is "amour de soi" (self-love) which transforms to "amour propre" (self-esteem) which contains two opposite and basic emotion named "vanity" and "pride" when the mankind enters the social state. As it desires only one's own interests and happiness , the self-love is a non-social emotion; As it desires the honor and the esteem and tries to achieves them by the wealth, the power or the reputation, the vanity is an anti-social emotion; By comparison, although the pride desires the same ends as the vanity, it tries to achieve it by one's virtue and merits, so it is a social emotion. Rousseau divided the mankind into three basic sorts which vis-a-vis the three basic human natures, which was the natural person who was guided by his self-love, the corrupt civilized person who was dominated by his vanity, and the virtuous citizen who was guided by bis pride.Rousseau maintained that everyone's ultimate aim was his own felicity although the way by which everyone achieved his aim diversed from each other. In the condition of the political society, one should merit happiness if he wants to get it. There is no happiness whenever there is no virtue, but the virtue doesn't imply the happiness. To make the virtue matching the happiness, there needs a legitimate and healthy political system, only which can coordinate the virtue with the happiness. The virtuous citizen can not get his contentment of his self-esteem by his virtue and merits unless the distributive and evaluative systems of the political society make the virtue and merits rather than the wealth and the power as the standards of honor and esteem. From this view it, Rousseau's political philosophy depends on his philosophical anthropology. As his philosophical anthropology aims the mankind's virtue and felicity, his political philosophy must aim a political system which can coordinate the virtue with the happiness.Rousseau's "The Social Contract" therefore imagined a "moral and collective body" as this: which both safeguards each and everyone's rights and liberties and encourages and promotes the life style which is in favor of virtue and guarantees virtues and merits as the standards by which the honor and the esteem are distributed. What distinguishes Rousseau' social contract from Hobbes' and Locke's ones is that Rousseau's social contract contains not only a primary agreement but a high-level one as well. While the junior agreement is everyone's rights and liberties, the senior one is a legitimate and health political system which promotes its member's virtue. In order of the two agreements being approved freely, all of the contractual participants must have both the righteous virtue of respecting all other's rights and liberties, and the civic virtue of making his own individual will in deference to the general will. Rousseau's contractual participants therefore are not "the enlightened and independent man" whom was discussed in "Geneva Manuscript" ,but the members of the national community whom have been "denatured" by the legislator.As in a legitimate and healthy political society, one must earn his own happiness by means of contributing to the whole' happiness, civic virtues is not only the necessary condition and constitutive ingredients of the citizen's happiness, but also the requirement of the legitimacy and stability of the "moral and collective body" . From Rousseau's point of view, the ends of the political society was the each one and everyone's happiness, but which must be attained by means of the collective rather than the individual way.