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發錶於1762年的《社會契約論》是盧梭重要的政治著作,書中提齣的“主權在民”思想具有劃時代的意義,是現代民主政治的基石。其核心思想“閤法的國傢必須根據普遍意誌來進行管理”代錶瞭人民專製對舊有製度的替代,象徵瞭主權和自由。 作者簡介
讓-雅剋·盧梭(1712—1778)法國偉大的啓濛思想傢、哲學傢、教育傢、文學傢,十八世紀法國大革命的思想先驅,啓濛運動卓越的代錶人物之一。主要著作有《論人類不平等的起源和基礎》、《社會契約論》、《懺悔錄》等。《社會契約論》的主權在民思想,是現代民主製度的基石。
精彩書評
沒有盧梭,就不會有法國大革命。
——拿破侖
盧梭是另一個牛頓。牛頓完成瞭外界自然的科學,盧梭完成瞭人的內在宇宙的科學,正如牛頓揭示瞭外在世界秩序和規律一樣,盧梭則發現瞭人的內在本性
——康德
在《社會契約論》中康德找到瞭自己的道德啓濛,即“自由是人所特有的”這一原則。所有狂飆突進時期的德國天纔人物,從先驅者萊辛和赫爾德開始,直到歌德和席勒……都是盧梭的崇拜者。
——羅曼·羅蘭 目錄
Introduction
A Note on the Text and Translation
Select Bibliography
A Chronology of Jean-Jacques Rousseau
POLITICAL ECONOMY
THE SOCIAL CONTRACT
Appendix: The General Society of the Human Race
Explanatory Notes
Index 精彩書摘
BOOK I
I INTEND to examine whether, in the ordering of society, there can be any reliable and legitimate rule of administration, taking men as they are, and laws as they can be. I shall try, throughout my enquiry, to combine what is allowed by right* with what is prescribed by self-interest, in order that justice and utility should not be separated.
I begin my discussion without proving the importance of my subject. People will ask me whether I write on politics because I am a ruler or legislator. I answer that I am not; and that is the reason why I write on politics. If I were a ruler or a legislator, I should not waste my time saying what ought to be done; I should do it, or hold my peace.
I was born a citizen of a free state and a member of its sovereign body,* and however weak may be the influence of my voice in public affairs, my right to vote on them suffices to impose on me the duty of studying them. How happy I am, each time that I reflect on governments, always to find new reasons, in my researches, to cherish the government of my country!
Chapter i
The Subject of the First Book
Man was born free,* and everywhere he is in chains. There are some who may believe themselves masters of others, and are no less enslaved than they. How has this change come about? I do not know. How can it be made legitimate That is a question which I believe I can resolve.
If I were to consider force alone, and the effects that it produces, I should say: for so long as a nation is constrained to obey, and does so, it does well; as soon as it is able to throw off its servitude, and does so, it does better; for since it regains freedom by the same right that was exercised when its freedom was seized, either the nation was justified in taking freedom back, or else those who took it away were unjustified in doing so. Whereas the social order is sacred right, and provides a foundation for all other rights. Yet it is a right that does not come from nature; therefore it is based on agreed conventions. Our business is to find out what those conventions are. Before we come to that, I must make good the assertion that I have just put forward.
Chapter ii
The First Societies
THE most ancient of all societies, and the only one that is natural, is the family. Even in this case, the bond between children and father persists only so long as they have need of him for their conservation. As soon as this need ceases, the natural bond is dissolved. The children are released from the obedience they owe to their father, the father is released from the duty of care to the children, and all become equally independent. If they continue to remain living together, it is not by nature but voluntarily, and the family itself is maintained only through convention. *
Tis shared freedom is result of man’s nature. His first law is his won conservation, his first cares are owed to himself; as soon as he reaches the age of reason, he alone is the judge of how best to look after himself, and thus he becomes his own master.
If we wish, then, the family may be regarded as the first model of political society: the leader corresponds to the father, the people to the children, and all being born free and equal, none alienates his freedom except for reasons of utility. The sole difference is that, in the family, the father is paid for the care he takes of his children by the love he bears them, while in the state this love is replaced by the pleasure of being in command, the chief having no love for his people.
Grotius denies that all human power is instituted for the benefit of the governed. * He cites slavery as an example; his commonest mode of reasoning is to base a right on a fact. A more logical method could be employed, but not one that is more favourable to tyrants.
It is therefore doubtful, following Grotius, whether the human race belongs to a hundred or so men, or whether these hundred men belong to the human race, and he seems inclined, throughout his book, towards the former opinion. This is Hobbes’s view also.* Behold then the human race divided into herds of cattle, each with its chief, who preserves it in order to devour it.
‘As a shepherd is of a nature superior to that of his flock, so too the shepherds of men, their chiefs, are of a nature superior to their peoples’—this argument, according to Philo, was used by the Emperor Caligula;* who would conclude (correctly enough, given his analogy) either that kings were gods or that the people were animals.
The reasoning employed by this Caligula amounts to the same as that of Hobbes and Grotius. Aristotle* too had said, earlier than any of them, that men are not naturally equal, but that some are born for slavery and some for mastery.
Aristotle was right, but he took the effect for the cause. Any man who is born in slavery is born for slavery; there is nothing surer. Slaves in their chains lose everything, even the desire to be rid of them; they love their servitude, like the companions of Odysseus, who loved their brutishness. If there are slaves by nature, it is because slaves have been made against nature. The first slaves were made by force, and they remained so through cowardice.
I have said nothing of King Adam or of the Emperor Noah, the father of three great monarches who shared the universe among themselves, like the children of Saturn, with whom they have been identified.* I hope that my restraint in this respect will be appreciated; for being descended directly from one or other of these princes, and maybe from the senior branch of the family, who knows but that, if my entitlement were verified, I might not find that I am the legitimate king of the human race? However that may be, it cannot be denied that Adam was sovereign over the world, like Crusoe on his iland, for so long as he was the sole inhabitant; and the advantage of this form of rule was that the monarch, firm on his throne, had neither rebellions, nor wars, nor conspirators to fear.
Chapter iii
The Right of the Strongest
THE stronger party is never strong enough to remain the master for ever, unless he transforms his strength into right, and obedience into duty. This is the source of the ‘right of the strongest’, a right which people treat with apparent irony * and which in reality is an established principle. But can anyone ever explain the phrase? Force is a physical power; I do not see how any morality can be based on its effects. To yield to force is an act of necessity, not of consent; at best it is an act of prudence. In what sense can it be a duty?
Let us suppose for a moment that this alleged right is valid. I say that the result would be completely senseless. For as soon as right is founded on force, the effect will alter with its cause; any force that is stronger than the first must have right on its side in its turn. As soon as anyone is able to disobey with impunity he may do so legitimately, and since the strongest is always right the only question is how to ensure that one is the strongest. But what kind of a right is it that is extinguished when that strength is lost? If we must obey because of force we have no need to obey out of duty, and if we are no longer forced to obey we no longer have any obligation to do so. It can be seen therefore that the word ‘right’ adds nothing to force; it has no meaning at all here.
‘Obey the powers that be’.* If this means: ‘Yield to force’, it is a sound precept, but superfluous; I can guarantee that it will never be violated. All power is from God, I admit; but all dicease is from God also.
……
前言/序言
In 1755, the publication of Rousseau’s Discourse on Inequality brought him considerable success, but also created obligations. The Discourse, in tracing the moral decay of man in society, drew a large-scale contrast between the state of nature, in which man had at least the potential for good, and the social state, which as Rousseau described it had led to misery and tyranny . The contrast between nature and society made it possible to denounce many political and social evils, but left fundamental questions unanswered; the author owed it to himself and to his public to develop his ideas further. One question was how the individual’s potential for good could be preserved in the social milieu of the mid-eighteenth century, and to this answer came with émile, or Education (1762); another was whether coexistence in society necessarily made all the citizens hostile to each other, seeking their own interests at the expense of everyone else. The historical approach of the Discourse, together with the discreet omission of direct political reference, left it unclear whether the evils depicted by Rousseau were those only of his own time and place, or were inevitable in all societies at every period. The Social Contract, expanding some hints in an enigmatic paragraph of the Discourse, denies this inevitability and offers a more optimistic evaluation. However, the optimism is fragile; Rousseau shows that politically organized society, ‘the state’ as he usually calls it, can be beneficial and just, but also that the threats to a well-ordered state are persistent and ubiquitous.
During the years that it took for his thought to mature, he contributed his article Political Economy to Diderot and d’Alembert’s Encyclopédie and discussed the social and moral aspects of culture in the long Letter to d’Alembert on theatre (1758). He also wrote one of the century’s most popular and influential novels, Julie, but abandoned an ambitious project he had started, a work on political institutions generally. He says at the beginning of the Social Contract, which appeared in 1762, the same year as émile, that it is all that remains of this larger work. The paragraph in the Discourse on Inequality (towards the end of Part II) had sketched the main theory in outline: ‘The people having, as regards their social relations, concentrated all their wills into one, the several articles in respect of which this will is expressed become so many fundamental laws. . . and one of articles regulates the choice and power of the magistrates [officers of state] appointed to watch over the execution of the rest’,. Rousseau introduces the passage with a guarded remark that he is here adopting the ‘common opinion’ that society is based on a contract, or blinding agreement; he thus acknowledges that he was working within a particular conceptual tradition, the contract theory of the state. This dated back to ancient times, and had been of fundamental importance in European thought since the sixteenth century.
As regards Rousseau’s contribution to the tradition, two preliminary observations should be made: that for most educated Europeans the standard view, even as late as 1762, was probably not the contract theory, despite its influence, but the belief that kings had a divine right to rule, a right that was seen as the origin and basis of social organization; and secondly, that among those who preferred the contract theory, the usual view again favoured monarchy, interpreting the contract as some kind of agreement between ruler and subjects (a ‘contract of submission’) by which the subjects consent to be ruled. Rousseau made a great change. It lies in the words ‘having concentrated all their wills into one’. The notion thus expressed was later, in the article Political Economy, to become the ‘volonté générale’, or general will. It is this concept, rather than his view of the contract, which is Rousseau’s lasting contribution to political theory. Its appearance in the Contract is a clear sign that monarchist theories of the state were beginning to give way to democratic ideas, ‘the people’ having (in Rousseau’s formulation of the contract) an active rather than a passive role. In an even wider context, the concept of the general will is of importance to anyone reflecting on the relationship of the individual to the social group or groups of which he is a member, since it seeks to define the nature of the bond by which the group is created.
The Political Economy article, though published like the second Discourse in 1755, seems likely (the point is debatable) to have been written after it, the Discourse dating back to an essay competition announced in 1753. Rousseau wrote the article when he and Diderot were close friends; they quarreled a few years later. Diderot commissioned the article, and he and Rousseau seem to have cooperated in working out their political ideas, since Diderot wrote, for the same volume, an article on Nature Law (Droit naturel) to which Rousseau’s article refers, and on which he must have reflected deeply. A chapter discarded from the Contract, given here in the Appendix, refutes some of its arguments. ‘La volonté générale’, however is a phrase used also by Diderot, and Rousseau’s reference to him in the Encyclopédie concerns the general will; it appears in a passage which compares society, the ‘the body politic’, to a human body. This is part of an argument that a social group, while it consists of separate individuals, possesses a single will, which like the will of a particular person ‘tends always to the conservation and well-being of the whole’. What part Diderot played in the genesis of the idea now always connected with Rousseau is unclear, but the passage in the Political Economy article testifies to an important stage in its development.
In various other respects also Rousseau’s article, commonly known as his Discourse on Political Economy, is transitional between the Discourse on Inequality and the Social Contract. It retains the high moral tone and some of the indignant rhetoric of the earlier discourse, for instance in the third section when contrasting the situations of rich and poor, and displays already the later work’s anxiety about the maintenance of the social bond, constantly at risk because of the selfishness and partiality of particular elements of society, whether individuals or groups. Less methodical and abstract than the Contract, and superficially more modern in that there are fewer illustrations taken from the ancient world, it tackles one major subject barely mentioned in the Contract, that of taxation, and has much to say on patriotism, which the Contract does not discuss explicitly; the link between patriotism and the maintenance of social feeling, however, will be clear. The feel of the two works is different, too. Perhaps in adapting himself to the authoritative style expected from an encyclopaedia, Rousseau tends in article to treat society from the administrative angle, a manner that seems not to have suited him, because he did not return to it. He was prepared to play the loftier role of legislator, as in his A Projected Constitution for Corsica (written in about 1764-5) or his Considerations on the Government of Poland (1771-2), but not that of public official. In the Social Contract, the voice is that of the theorist, but one who is more on the side of the individual than of government. The essential vision is that of the member of society, the figure Rousseau usually calls the citizen, a man (it has to be accepted that, whether out of obedience to convention or deliberate choice, Rousseau’s terminology is consistently masculine) who is not isolated as he conceivably would be in the ‘state of nature’, but one among many others of the same kind forming a society.
The precise date at which Rousseau began working towards his treatise is not known. In the Confessions, Book X, he explains that it was on moving house late in 1757 that he abandoned most of the larger project on political institutions in general. Of the Contract, a partial first version has survived in what is called ‘the Geneva manuscript’. It contains roughly the same material, differently arranged, as the first two books of the published work, breaking off soon after the beginning of the third; there is also a draft of the last main chapter, on civil religion.
The manuscript also shows that Rousseau hesitated over his title. Apparently not fully satisfied with the word Contract, he at one time preferred ‘On civil society’. In the text, he often uses synonyms such as pact, notably in the title of the sixth chapter of Book I, a basic chapter which follows some preliminary arguments rebutting earlier theories of society. The essential idea is that of a voluntary agreement among a group. Initially, the agreement is seen as the answer to the problem of ensuring joint protection for a number of people living in unsafe conditions; later it becomes something more like a consensus on the value of living in society. Even in the formulation of the problem in I. vi, the concept of the general will is hinted at, and the definition of the pact, when it comes, in effect defines the general will also. Beginning in terms of self-interest—each future associate seeks to remain free, while receiving benefits from the cooperation of all the others—the argument leads towards the mutual surrender of individualism; after agreement is reached the association transforms itself into a corporate entity with a single will.
智者之聲:穿越時空的政治與倫理思辨集 本書收錄瞭十八世紀歐洲啓濛運動中幾位最具影響力的思想傢關於人類社會構建、政治閤法性以及個體自由與公共利益之間張力的核心論著。它並非對既有社會結構的簡單辯護,而是一次深刻的、對“我們如何共同生活”這一根本性問題的嚴肅探究。 在人類文明的宏大敘事中,總有一些思想的火花,在特定曆史節點被點燃,其光芒足以穿透歲月的塵埃,照亮後世的迷思。本書匯集瞭三部重量級文稿,它們共同勾勒齣理性時代對國傢、法律和道德秩序的審慎思量。 第一部分:論政治經濟學——財富的分配與國傢的職責 本部分收錄瞭法國思想傢讓-雅剋·盧梭(Jean-Jacques Rousseau)早期的重要論述,《論政治經濟學講論》(Discourse on Political Economy)。這部作品,雖然篇幅相對精煉,卻以驚人的洞察力,觸及瞭現代國傢管理和公民福祉的核心議題。 盧梭在這篇講論中,首先對“政治經濟學”的概念進行瞭界定,區分瞭傢庭管理(Oikonomia)與國傢治理(Politikē Economia)的根本差異。他強調,一個健康、穩固的國傢,其財富的積纍不應以犧牲公民的自由和道德為代價。這與當時重商主義盛行的觀念形成瞭鮮明的對比。 文章的核心論點在於,政治經濟學的真正目標不是增加國庫的儲備,而是優化社會資源的分配,確保全體公民都能享有體麵的生活條件。盧梭犀利地指齣,財富的過度集中和分配的嚴重失衡,是滋生社會不滿和政治動蕩的溫床。一個富裕的精英階層與被剝削的大眾,其共存本身就暗示著治理體係的根本性缺陷。 他深入探討瞭公共教育在塑造公民品德方麵扮演的關鍵角色。在盧梭看來,公民的“德性”(Virtue)是共和國最寶貴的財富。國傢有責任通過培養公民的愛國心、對法律的尊重以及對公共事務的參與感,來維護其政治肌體的健康。法律必須被視為全體人民共同意誌的錶達,而不是統治者為個人利益服務的工具。 此外,盧梭對稅收製度的公平性進行瞭探討,主張稅負應根據個體的能力和對公共利益的依賴程度進行閤理分攤。他警告說,任何試圖通過強製手段或隱蔽的剝削來積纍國傢財富的做法,最終都會侵蝕公民對政府的信任,動搖國傢的根基。這篇講論不僅是對十八世紀經濟思想的批判性反思,更是對當代社會福利和財富公平分配理念的早期預言。 第二部分:論社會契約——自由與主權的構建 本書的重頭戲,無疑是奠定現代政治哲學基石的巨著——《社會契約論》(The Social Contract)。這部著作以其清晰的邏輯和激進的理念,徹底顛覆瞭君權神授的傳統觀念,為人民主權理論提供瞭最堅實的理論支撐。 盧梭從一個引人深思的悖論開始:“人人生而自由,卻無往不在枷鎖之中。” 他試圖在自然狀態的絕對自由與社會生活的必要約束之間,尋找一個閤法性的基礎。他否定瞭通過暴力徵服或父權製來建立社會秩序的閤理性,轉而提齣瞭一個革命性的概念:社會契約。 社會契約的本質:個體通過自願的、完全的轉讓,將自己的一切自然權利轉讓給全體集體。但這種轉讓並非意味著奴役,而是通過“異化”(Alienation),將個體的自然權利轉化為公民權利。每個人都將自己奉獻給集體,也就意味著對自己不奉獻任何部分,從而確保瞭平等的條件和自由的保障。 公意(The General Will) 是全書最核心、也最具爭議的概念。盧梭明確區分瞭“眾人的意誌”(Will of All,即私利的簡單相加)和“公意”(General Will,即追求共同利益的意誌)。公意永遠是正確的,並且永遠緻力於公共福祉。 法律,作為公意的體現,對每一個公民都是具有約束力的,因為每個公民在締結契約時已經同意服從公意。當一個人不服從公意時,他實際上是在違背自己作為契約締結者時所作齣的承諾,因此,“強迫他自由”成為瞭可能。 本書對主權(Sovereignty) 的論述極具穿透力。盧梭堅持主權是不可分割、不可轉讓的,它永遠屬於人民。代議製政府被視為對主權的削弱,因為一旦人民選舉代錶行使立法權,他們就放棄瞭對自身意誌的直接控製。他推崇小型、直接民主的城邦模式,強調公民必須積極參與立法過程,纔能真正享有自由。 《社會契約論》不僅是政治理論的裏程碑,更是法國大革命的精神源泉。它迫使後世的政治傢和哲學傢正視一個永恒的難題:在一個追求個體自由的社會中,如何界定和實現真正的公共利益? 第三部分:對主權理論的補充與辯護——論政府形式 在對社會契約和公意進行深入探討後,本書的第三部分通過對不同政府形式的比較分析,進一步闡釋瞭社會契約的實踐性。 盧梭冷靜地分析瞭民主製、貴族製和君主製的優缺點。他認為,“嚴格意義上的民主製,從未真正存在過,也將永遠不會存在”,因為它要求全體人民同時充當立法者和執行者,這在實踐中幾乎不可能維持。 他更傾嚮於一種民選貴族製,即由人民選舉一部分公民來行使行政權(政府),而人民本身則永遠保留立法權(主權)。這裏的關鍵在於區分主權者(Sovereign,人民) 與政府(Government,行政機構)。政府隻是主權者委托的代理人,它必須對主權者負責。當政府的行為背離瞭公意時,人民有權且有義務解除其職務,甚至重訂契約。 本書的敘事風格一以貫之,充滿瞭對理性、平等和公民責任的堅定信念。它沒有提供一套一成不變的社會藍圖,而是提供瞭一套檢驗任何政治體係閤法性的基本原則:隻有當政治結構能夠有效地將個體自由融入一個以共同福祉為依歸的法律體係中時,它纔稱得上是正當的。 這部匯編,是理解現代政治思想譜係中“激進自由主義”與“共和主義”兩條主綫的必讀之作。它超越瞭曆史的局限,持續引發著關於權力、權利與道德義務的永恒對話。