National Longevity and Moral Virtue Theme Analysis

While The Social Contract primarily focuses on what a legitimate republic should look like in theory, Rousseau also cites a number of historical examples to show why real states have failed in practice. In doing so, he emphasizes the unavoidable fact that no nation will survive forever, but he also outlines a number of strategies and best practices that nations can use to stay around for as long as possible. Even a state with perfectly-structured institutions can fail if self-perpetuating factors like inequality, inefficiency, or corruption lead the people or government administrators to put their own personal interests above the common interests of the nation. In order to remain strong, then, republics need more than a good structure: they need a culture of moral virtue that gives people faith in their institutions, like religion did in the past, and that emphasizes the good governance that keeps nations healthy.

While Rousseau emphasizes the common traits and fundamental principles that he thinks should underlie all effective states, he also acknowledges the way diverse geographical, cultural, and historical contexts make different approaches to governance more and less appropriate in different places. For instance, he notes that a state must adjust its population to the amount and quality of territory it possesses, lest it leave fertile land untended or become overpopulated. While this argument looks relatively logical today, some of Rousseau’s other explanations are based on antiquated biases. For instance, Rousseau argues that hot climates produce despots and cold climates produce barbarians, while civilization happens to come about in “temperate regions.” Similarly, he argues that certain groups of people (like Russians) are too unruly or unintelligent to form civilizations—he believes such peoples need “a master, not a liberator,” and this argument replicates the logic that was used to justify the colonial conquest of non-Europeans’ land. To contemporary political scientists and anthropologists, Rousseau’s prejudiced analyses of ethnic, cultural, and geographical differences look racist and pseudoscientific. But it is up to readers to determine if this also threatens his underlying point: that diverse nations face different kinds of challenges, and to grow strong and survive, they must adapt to their unique local contexts.

Having argued why different kinds of states are more or less suitable for different conditions, Rousseau then emphasizes something that all states, “even the best constituted” ones, have in common: they will eventually fall. Rousseau compares the body politic (or republic) to the human body: its strength determines its longevity, but it can never live forever. Rousseau compares the sovereign (legislative branch) to the body’s heart: both must continue functioning in order for the whole organism to survive. If the government falls apart, the sovereign can replace it, but nothing can save a sovereign that starts passing poor laws or loses track of the principles on which the nation was founded. According to Rousseau, states tend to collapse when a strong government usurps the power of a weak sovereign: either the executive gets too much power and starts taking over legislative functions or the legislature grows so divided and indifferent that people stop sincerely looking out for the public good. Often, it is a combination of both. Regardless, if the government—which is made of particular people following their personal, private wills—takes over the legislature—which is supposed to comprise the people as a whole implementing the general will—then the republic ceases to truly exist, because the people as a whole have lost the freedom to truly determine their own future. Rousseau argues that, while most aspects of government are relative—the concentration or dispersion of power works in some contexts and is counterproductive in others, for example—it is always possible to tell “whether a given people is well or badly governed,” in any culture, based on a number of “signs.” One such “sign” of a weakening state is a legislature that is divided into a few primary, warring factions. On the other hand, two “signs” of a strong state are a growing population and high levels of political engagement. Just as the heart has to keep beating, Rousseau concludes, the sovereign has to constantly return to the nation’s founding laws and assert its validity “in perpetuity,” just as many nations do with their founding constitutions.

For Rousseau, the way to keep the state’s “heart” beating is to form a moral culture that valorizes the nation, its laws, and its institutions. At the end of Book IV, Rousseau includes a lengthy chapter on religion, in which he implies that Christianity should have no place in prominent institutions and instead the sovereign should create its own “civil religion” to teach and reinforce moral behavior. Christianity effectively creates social harmony in unequal and hierarchical societies by convincing people to accept their oppression, Rousseau suggests, but a modern form of government needs a modern version of religion that rejects oppression. By focusing on principles like “the sanctity of the social contract and the law” and teaching people to never accept “intolerance,” Rousseau argues, a nation can teach its citizens to understand and cherish their place in the nation. This will lead them to participate actively in politics and strengthen the nation, and this moral culture can be passed down from generation to generation. More controversially, Rousseau also advocates censorship in order to “preserv[e]” a nation’s moral culture and prevent people from being “corrupted.” This point shows how profoundly important he thinks public morality is in shaping a nation’s political life, but it also raises doubts about the kinds of liberties he considers fundamental. Regardless, Rousseau’s ultimate point is that a healthy moral culture perpetuates itself and grows over time in a society: if a state correctly teaches its citizens to respect its founding laws and principles, those laws and principles grow stronger through time, and so does the state. This moral culture is like a vaccination for the state: it protects institutions from collapsing and ensures that the people will defend their rights and freedoms whenever they are threatened, even generations down the line.