GUIDE TO THE PHILOSOPHY 1938 - 1947.pdf - Rare Books at ...

494
POLITICS
is egoistic and hedonistic, and he invokes the contract,
as Hobbes does, in order to account for the existence of
society. Men in a state of nature, being animated purely
by egoistic motives, care only for self-preservation, and it
is their desire to preserve themselves which leads them
to make the compact from which society takes its rise.
Moreover, Rousseau agrees with Hobbes, it is only in so
far as it does in fact secure the ends of preservation and
security for which it was designed, that the contract is
valid. On the assumption that human beings are by
nature egoistic, the existence of society, and of all that
society entails in the way of subordination and restraint
of self in the interests of others, constitutes the problem
which Rousseau's political philosophy takes as its starting
point. Rousseau states the problem as follows: "Since
each man's strength and liberty are the primary instruments
of his preservation, how could he pledge them
without injuring himself and neglecting his duty to him-
self?"
The solution of the problem, he holds, will be reached
if we can " find a form of association which defends, with
all the common force, the person and property of every
member, so that though he unites himself to all, he yet
obeys nobody but himself and remains as free as before".
Self-interest, in other words, sets the problem, and the
investiture of all the members of a community with rights
of control over each one of them solves it. It is this solution
which the Social Contract, if properly carried out, is
designed to achieve. It achieves it by establishing as
sovereign, not a single individual in whom all men's powers
and rights are vested, not even a number of representatives
to whom they are delegated, but the members of the
community as a whole. The only valid contract, writes
Rousseau, is "the complete submission of each member
with all his rights to the whole community. For since all
make this complete submission, the conditions are the
same for all, and consequently none can have any interest
in making them hard for the others".