Contrasting Views of Liberty in Hume and Rousseau (November 2024)

The introduction and diffusion of commerce as the predominant means of subsistence transforms every person into a merchant, to paraphrase Adam Smith. One implication is that commercial societies present changes and challenges to the pre-existing political and social structures.

The ancient system of direct political participation loses its appeal in favor of a more indirect form of political representation which frees individuals to dedicate themselves to the kind of activities they value the most. Benjamin Constant (1819) famously presented this distinction. But this new liberty has its benefits as well as its costs (for an analysis of this modern freedom in Rousseau and Rowls see Hurtado 2011).

David Hume ([1752] 1985) recognized that the introduction and diffusion of commerce bought about good government and good institutions:

These developments, though, have not been the product of a rational plan but rather of accidents of history. While it is true that in commercial societies people tend to have “government of Laws, not of Men” (94), this does not assure continuous security. The irrational passions that govern politics may lead to instabilities, so “authority must be acknowledged essential to its very existence” (41. For a complete analysis of the role of authority in Hume, see Harris 2018).

Similarly to Hume, Jean-Jacques Rousseau recognizes the importance of equality before of the law. But his reasoning differs. Commercial societies generate inequalities. The rich have the tendency to dominate the poor. To protect the liberty of the poor, it is indispensable that the state establishes equality before the law, so that the inequalities caused by commerce can dissipate, and so that everybody is equally dependent on the law. As individuals are citizens, when they follow the general will they follow nothing more than their own will, thus guaranteeing their own freedom:

For Rousseau, the other problematic aspect of commercial societies is related to the loss of independence that an individual faces. Commercial societies imply division of labor. Division of labor in turn implies that individuals are not able to provide for themselves, individuals become dependent on others, thus losing their freedom. Indeed:

This is why the law plays such an important role: it allows individuals to become free, as it frees them from being dependent on others.

The material dependence that Rousseau sees emerging in commercial societies has a counterpart in a psychological dependence. Both limit the freedom of an individual, who should instead aim at being independent and thus free. The psychological dependence is the result of envy and rivalry. Material inequalities cause envy so that an individual’s psychological wellbeing is now dependent on others.

For Rousseau this can be understood as a departure from the natural human condition. We become different creatures when we care too much about the opinion of others. This changes our motivations and how we interact with others, our feelings become inauthentic and pretend to be what we are not in order to get other people to like us.

With Emile,or On Education Rousseau seems to attempt to provide a solution to this dependence problem: education (Rousselière 2016). The education consists not only of how to become independent from the judgment of others, but also to reduce material dependence to a more natural dependence. Furthermore, education allows Emile to survive in a commercial society without becoming trapped in it. So, for example, choosing to be a carpenter would be better than becoming a writer, since a carpenter is better equipped to be materially independent from others (163-164).

For Rousseau’s Emile the role model to try to achieve as much independence as possible is Robinson Crouse:

What is striking, especially for the people who are familiar with Adam Smith’s work ([1759] 1982), is the isolation which Rousseau thinks is needed to develop an impartial judgment:

Hume also sees the dependence generated by commercial societies, but rather than seeing them as a cost, he sees them as a benefit. The material inequalities that commerce causes, rather than generating an unhealthy form of envy and rivalry, stimulate productivity, driving people out of sloth (“Of Refinement in the Arts”). The increased division of labor does indeed increase one’s dependence on others, but it also allows one to choose the profession one likes or sees more profitable. Hume praises the freedom he had to choose to become a writer, and thus “very opulent” and with a fulfilling life, exactly because he did not have to worry about doing the things that a carpenter does (Paganelli 2021). Interestingly enough, Hume tells us that “I was to become not only independent, but opulent” (p. xxxviii). His independence here is what Rousseau thinks of as dependence: Hume’s opulence depends on others, and it is his dependence on others that allows him to be independent.

According to Hume, even the psychological dependence that comes with commercial society has advantages. It makes people more social and more “refined”. The more luxury a society has, the more people want to get together and share their experiences. For Hume, this is not an environment that fosters envy or nasty self-love, or falsehood, but rather one that fosters friendships (even among men and women) and the most sociable and healthy aspects of human beings, including honesty and humanity.

In Hume’s view, Rousseau’s belief that the dependence in a commercial society leads to corruption is a mistake. Not only is there no necessary relationship between wealth and corruption, but the more wealth is diffused through society, the less dependent the poor are on specific individuals, freeing them from the tyranny they had long suffered. Commerce is thus the incubator of political and personal freedom for Hume, where individuals can fulfill themselves in their humanity.

So, in a sense, Hume and Rousseau share similar attitudes toward commercial societies, and in a sense they part from each other. They both see the need of a state that promotes equality before the law, and they both see the increase of dependence that commerce causes due to the increased specialization. Yet, they part as far as their understanding of the role of reason in the political realm and regarding whether this increased material and psychological dependence is overall beneficial or not. While Rousseau seems to focus more on the costs in terms of liberty associated with commerce, Hume seems to focus more on the benefits in terms of liberty associated with commerce.

Constant, Benjamin. 1819. "The Liberty of Ancients Compared with that of Moderns." In.: Unknown.

Harris, James. 2018. 'Hume.' in Mark Garnett (ed.), Conservative Moments: reading conservative texts (Bloomsbury Academic: London and New York).

Hume, David. [1752] 1985. Essays, moral, political, and literary (Liberty Fund: Indianapolis).

Hurtado, Jimena. 2011. 'Liberty and Independence: Rousseau's Real Freedom Examined.' in Ragip Ege  and Herrade Igersheim (eds.), Freedom and Happiness in Economic Thought and Philosophy. (Routledge: London and New York).

Paganelli, Maria Pia. 2021. 'Adam Smith and Dying Peacefully.' in Erin A. Dolgoy, Kimberly Hurd Hale and Bruce Peabody (eds.), Political Theory of Death and Dying (Routledge).

Rousseau, Jean-Jaques. [1762] 1921. Emile, or Education (E.P. Dutton: New York).

Rousselière, Geneviève. 2016. 'Rousseau on Freedom in Commercial Society', American Journal of Political Science, 60: 352-63.

Smith, Adam. [1759] 1982. The theory of moral sentiments (Liberty Classics: Indianapolis).

Hume, the skeptical Enlightenment thinker, and Rousseau, the romantic critic of Enlightenment, had a famous falling out, rumors of which spread throughout Europe. The two were bound to clash. The sociable Hume and the solitary Rousseau had significantly different personalities. Their philosophies were also at variance. Hume was an urbane, cosmopolitan defender of civilization. Rousseau lambasted civilization as a corrupter of morals. Their respective conceptions of liberty produced competing ideas about good government and the meaning of progress.

In 1762, the Archbishop of Paris condemned Rousseau’s book Emile, which included the “Profession of Faith of the Savoyard Vicar.” Rousseau fled Paris to avoid arrest. Writing to a mutual friend, the Comtesse de Boufflers, Hume wrote, “I am not in the least surprised that [‘The Profession of Faith of the Savoyard Vicar’] gave offence. … The liberty of the press is not so secured in any country, scarce even in this, as not to render such an open attack of popular prejudices somewhat dangerous.”

Although in this passage, Hume seemed to bemoan insufficient liberty of the press, Hume was of two minds about the liberty of the press. Later in life, Hume regarded the liberty of the press as a necessary evil that, while beneficial, tended to rile up the public. But in his early essays Hume highly praised the liberty of the press for allowing “all the learning, wit, and genius of the nation” to “be employed on the side of freedom.” When referring to “freedom” here, Hume likely had two senses of the word in mind: first, free government, and second, personal liberty. The two typically appear in conjunction.

As he stated in his last essay, “Of the Origin of Government” (1777), free government is a mixed government, with divided powers, in which the power of the people is equal to or greater than the power of the monarch. A free government is epitomized by the rule of law, not men. A free government includes frequent elections and institutional restraints on magistrates.

The opposite of a free government is an arbitrary government. As Hume observed in “Of the Rise and Progress of the Arts and Sciences” (1742), an arbitrary government is “oppressive and debasing.” In an arbitrary, or as Hume sometimes described it, a “barbarous” monarchy, the monarch “governs the subjects with full authority, as if they were his own.” The monarch delegates his power to inferior magistrates who exercise discretionary judgment, thereby debasing the people by governing them unequally in accordance with no stable system of law. The people governed in such a manner “are slaves in the full and proper sense of the word.”

Personal liberty consists of the individual’s protection against unreasonable and excessive intrusion into one’s personal affairs. A free government protects personal liberty—the individual’s life and property—by enforcing contracts, ensuring fair trials, and prohibiting unlawful searches and seizures.

A free government secures citizens’ “lives and properties,” exempts citizens “from the dominion of another,” and protects “against the violence or tyranny of … fellow-citizens.” It does so, in part,  through the efforts of the popular part of the constitution, the House of Commons, “to maintain a watchful jealousy over the magistrates, to remove all discretionary powers, and to secure every one’s life and fortune by general and inflexible laws.” A person’s liberty is secured when “no action” is “deemed a crime but what the law has plainly determined to be such”; when “no crime” is “imputed to a man but from a legal proof before his judges”; and when “these judges” are “his fellow-subjects, who are obliged, by their own interest, to have a watchful eye over the encroachments and violence of the ministers.”

Liberty, as Hume memorably remarked, is “the perfection of civil society.” Preserving liberty, however, sometimes requires conflict. In fact, free government is characterized by party conflict. There is no way to get rid of it.

Hume located the causes of party conflict in the English Constitution and in human psychology. The monarchical part of the constitution gave rise first to the Cavaliers, then to the Tories. The republican part of the constitution gave rise first to the Roundheads, then to the Whigs. On the psychological level, the former hate and fear anarchy, while the latter hate and fear tyranny.

In his widely read History of England (1754-1762), Hume traced the ultimate victory of the defenders of liberty. The Glorious Revolution of 1688-89, according to Hume, established “a new epoch in the constitution … deciding many important questions in favour of liberty” and giving the “ascendant to popular principles.” As a result, Hume wrote, “we, in this island, have ever since enjoyed, if not the best system of government, at least the most entire system of liberty, that ever was known amongst mankind.”

Hume admitted that it was necessary, both in the English Civil Wars (1642-1651) and the Glorious Revolution, for the popular part of the constitution to oppose the arbitrary and unlawful exercise of monarchical power. According to Hume, even the “wise and moderate”—those averse to tumult and above petty partisan bickering—must admit that the Stuart kings before the Civil Wars were “possessed of so exorbitant a prerogative, that it was not sufficient for liberty to remain on the defensive … it was become necessary to carry on an offensive war, and to circumscribe, within more narrow, as well as more exact bounds, the authority of the sovereign.”

For Hume, the preservation of freedom demands “an eternal jealousy … against the sovereign … no discretionary powers must ever be entrusted to him, by which the property or personal liberty of any subject can be affected.” The need to stoke the fires of this jealousy, these popular passions, to preserve liberty is the reason that “in ancient times” liberty had “been accompanied with such circumstances of violence, convulsion, civil war, and disorder.”

The transition from the absolute monarchy of the Tudors and Stuarts to the limited monarchy of the post-Glorious Revolution settlement made individual life more tranquil and public life more turbulent. In Hume’s words, it rendered “the liberty and independence of individuals … much more full, entire, and secure” and the liberty of the public “more uncertain and precarious.” The reason for this, as Hume acknowledged, is that the preservation of free government demands that the interests of the Crown and the interests of the Commons contend with each other to strike a proper balance between liberty and authority. Although this process preserves an optimal degree of civil liberty, it produces party rage and public strife.

One of Hume’s primary aims was to make not only personal liberty, but also public liberty more tranquil and secure. Private life had become more tranquil with the progress of the arts and sciences. The “middling rank of men,” which Hume called the “best and firmest basis of public liberty,” enjoyed greater levels of commerce and conversation in polite society. And Hume thought public life could become more tranquil, too. Hume noted in “Of the Rise and Progress of the Arts and Sciences” and in “Of Civil Liberty” (1741), that commerce, the arts, and sciences all arose first in free governments. But free governments, at the time Hume was writing, seemed less likely to preserve modern gains in these fields.

Hume vehemently attacked the trend toward excessive freedom in private letters written in the late 1760s and early 1770s. But long before that, in his early essays, Hume had already provided evidence for the benefits of France’s civilized monarchy over Britain’s turbulent mixed government. In “Of Civil Liberty,” Hume had argued that France had learned the right lessons from free governments, combining excellence in the fine arts with burgeoning economic freedom fostered by the rule of law. Hume thought this modernized version of French civilized monarchy would prove more tranquil and, perhaps, more long-lasting than Britain’s mixed constitution, since the latter was threatened by increasing public debt and factionalism.

This argument is consistent with the science of politics Hume articulated not only in his Essays, but also in Book 3 of his Treatise of Human Nature (1740). There, Hume described the origins of law and government. And he contended that government is a means by which to protect the institutions that make a market economy possible, namely, property, trade, and commerce. The purpose of government is to foster free economic competition in society. As Hume stated in perhaps his most optimistic statement about civilizational progress, “industry, knowledge, and humanity, are linked together by an indissoluble chain, and are found, from experience as well as reason, to be peculiar to the more polished, and, what are commonly denominated, the more luxurious ages,” those ages, namely, in which government preserves and promotes commerce.

Rousseau, on the other hand, condemned the more luxurious modern age for fostering slavery, not freedom. Whereas Hume promoted an enlightened, scientific approach to government that fostered greater economic freedom and tranquility, Rousseau detested “our politicians,” who, obsessed with economics, “only speak of commerce and wealth.” For Rousseau, liberty, personal or public, is primarily political. It is anything but tranquil. It requires boldness, action, and vigilance.

The primary problem Rousseau addressed in his moral and political writings is the way that society changes the human person. According to Rousseau, the human constitution has been disfigured by generations of social development. Law, habit, and education have pulled us away from our natural, primitive—and for Rousseau, superior—condition.

Having distinguished between primitive and civilized man in his “Discourse on the Origin and the Foundations of Inequality among Men,” Rousseau exclaimed: “How much you have changed from what you were!”  One cause of the change in man is the introduction of private property, which created a division between masters and slaves. Rousseau argued that the savage, who does not own any property, is neither master of nor slave of another man. The savage does not know “what servitude and domination are … what chains of dependence can there be among men who possess nothing?” Law itself, according to Rousseau, was created by the wealthy and powerful to retain their position in society.

The other cause of inequality—and dependence—is the fight for distinction, which transforms us from being interested in self-preservation to being interested in gaining social and economic advantage over others. After primitive man, who was “free and independent,” entered society, Rousseau explained, he became a slave to the opinions of other men by trying to appear distinct, uniquely meritorious, in their eyes. Competition and rivalry distorted our self-understanding. We became vain and inauthentic, seeking to please others.

One of the products of the “rage for distinction” was the development of the arts and sciences, which, as Rousseau surprisingly argued in the “Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts,” produced moral corruption. Rousseau thought that Athens illustrated what happens due to great achievement in the fine arts. Athens turned soft, weak, and corrupt. Its rival Sparta, on the other hand, remained rustic, noble, simple, and strong. It would have been better for the Athenians to turn away from their “prideful efforts” and remain in “that happy ignorance in which eternal wisdom had placed us.”

By becoming sociable, man became a slave, forced to live “at another’s discretion.” A free government, according to Rousseau, is one in which freedom—that is, humanity’s native independence—is restored. The purpose of the social contract, for Rousseau, is to return man to a condition of independence, in which he is his own master, setting the law for himself and for society.

But the people themselves must act to restore freedom, which Rousseau called “the most noble of man’s faculties.” The people must value freedom over tranquility. The people must desire freedom more than gain. The people must fear slavery more than poverty. This robust love of freedom requires emulation of ancient model republics, such as Sparta and Rome.

On the individual level, this means that citizens should “despise European voluptuousness” and, like “naked savages” regain the willingness to “brave hunger, fire, the sword, and death to preserve nothing but their independence.” It might seem hopeless to expect modern citizens addicted to tranquility and luxury to exhibit the strength, courage, and vigor of soul belonging to primitive man. But Rousseau supposed that a small, well-governed democracy might generate enough public spirit, enough love of the fatherland, to enable citizens to live freely in the modern world.

Rousseau argued that a legitimate government is a republic ruled by the general will. In such a republic, Rousseau wrote, “you have no masters other than those wise laws you have made, administered by upright magistrates of your choosing.” Freedom in this republic exists when there is “perfect independence with respect to all the others” and equal dependence of all on the state, which enforces the general will, the will of the people expressed in the framing of fundamental law.

Hume’s influential theory regarding the possibility of an extended commercial republic provided the framers of the American Constitution with the tools to craft a large federal republic. Rousseau, on the other hand, insisted that republics, like those of the ancient world, must be the right size, neither too small nor too big. They must be big enough that they can be self-sufficient, but not so big that they cannot be well-governed.

The difference between Hume and Rousseau on this point stems, in part, from Hume’s attempt to find the institutional means by which to prevent faction from tearing government apart. Rousseau, however, thought that independence required that individuals make laws for themselves. Rousseau thought that “the more the state grows, the more freedom diminishes,” because the individual makes up less of the sovereign power.

Free government, for Rousseau, is based on laws that are responsive to the general will. Free government, for Hume, protects life and property in a freely competitive market. For Rousseau, man is very much a political animal. For Hume, man is very much an economic animal. This is one reason why Hume thought efforts by the government to reduce material inequality were ultimately feckless and possibly unjust. The end of government, for Hume, is the protection of free exchange in civil society, not the attempt to establish a desirable end-state, for example, the redistribution of wealth according to some predetermined standard.

Rousseau, meanwhile, argued that government ought to be responsive to the general will. For this to happen, property ownership and wealth distribution must be relatively equal. If citizens are too poor, they might sell themselves. If citizens are too rich, they might attempt to buy others. For Rousseau, sumptuary laws and limits on wealth accumulation are necessary to preserve political independence.

Hume viewed progress as the result of free exchange of goods, services, and ideas in civil society. This produces advancement in the mechanical and liberal arts. Rousseau thought this kind of “progress” weakened man’s political muscles, making him morally lax, undisciplined, and dependent on representatives in parliament. Rousseau argued that a truly free republic calls for constant attentiveness to public affairs, because man is most free when he lives by his own law.

To prefer private wealth and tranquility over disciplined participation in public life is to renounce one’s freedom. And “to renounce one’s freedom,” according to Rousseau, “is to renounce one’s quality as a man.” Quoting Stanislaw Leszczynski, King of Poland, Rousseau declared: “I prefer dangerous freedom to quiet servitude.” Hume, meanwhile, sought to make freedom less dangerous.

In this essay, I will contrast two views on liberty found in the works of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and David Hume. These views are embedded in very different stories about the nature of liberty and its unfolding over the course of human history, giving rise to fundamentally different assessments of the roles played by exchange, markets, and commerce in bringing liberty to the modern world[1]  They lead to quite different conclusions about what needs to be done to realize and protect liberty in the present and future.[2]

 Chapter 1 of the Social Contract opens with the statement: “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.” (156) What does he mean by this paradoxical statement? To answer, we must go back to the conjectural history that Rousseau develops in the Second Discourse. He begins by noting that animals are “ingenious machines,” given senses by nature for self-preservation. Humans, too, are machines, but with a significant difference: “nature alone does everything in the operations of an animal, whereas man contributes as a free agent to his own operations.” (p. 52) Animals must obey what nature commands through the senses. Humans feel the impetus of nature but, unlike animals, can go along or resist. In the awareness of freedom lies the spirituality of the human soul and the faculty of self-perfection. To be a free individual for Rousseau is to be the author of one’s own actions. To be unfree means to be dependent upon the actions and judgements of others. Loss of freedom essentially means to be dependent on others for one’s material and emotional well-being.

The hypothetical evolution of human civilization that Rousseau describes in Part Two of the Second Discourse is the story of the fall from natural liberty that originally existed in the state of nature. From isolated independent individuals and small families living in primitive conditions to small bands of wandering families to wealthy societies with laws and government to protect property, new forms of social organization make humans more interconnected and productive, and, as a result, more dependent upon one another. Over time, they learn to act collectively together and to solve problems in innovative ways. They discover the advantages of the division of labor and invent a variety of technologies, such as language, metallurgy, and agriculture. For Rousseau, there is a steep cost to liberty on the road to civilization. As social progress binds humans closer together materially and emotionally, humans are stripped of that natural freedom found in nature. The expansion of the division of labor and the growth of markets, exchange, and commerce may free us from the material limitations of nature, but they also foster conditions that enslave us to the activities and evaluations of our fellows. We can no longer take care of ourselves physically, nor can we rely upon ourselves for a proper evaluation of who we are or what we value. In becoming social creatures, we leave nature behind and become shadows of our authentic selves. We become unfree and miserable individuals, living in a society of wealth and abundance.

What does Rousseau see as a way out of this world of dependency and unfreedom?[3] In the Social Contract, Rousseau sets out to solve this problem, taking “men as they are and laws as they might be.” (p. 156) He puts the problem succinctly: We must “Find a form of association that defends and protects with all common forces the person and goods of each associate, and, by means of which, each one, while uniting with all, nevertheless obeys only himself and remains as free as before” (p. 164) How is this done? By placing ourselves and all our powers under the direction of the “General Will,” and by receiving all others in the political community as indivisible parts of the whole. Living under this General Will protects us from all personal dependency on others, the hallmark of slavery. By participating in this social contract, humans replace their natural freedom as authors of their own actions with a civic freedom where they live under a collective will for the public good that they have authorized. In Book II, Chapter 3 of the Social Contract Rousseau explains the complexity of this process of realizing civic freedom through the General Will in a well-organized political community. How can citizens be assured that citizen deliberations on the public good (the General Will) always be right and tend toward practical utility? Two conditions must be met: the deliberating body of citizens must be “sufficiently informed” and there must be no communication among citizens in thinking about the public good. The General Will is realized not through the bargaining of self-interested citizens but through the impartial and careful reflection of all citizens. Through introspection citizens discover and become authors of the General Will. As in nature where a natural man is free because he follows his own will, citizens are free in society because they authorize and follow freely the General Will.[4] Of course, one still has a private will or a will as a member of a private association, but these wills come under the direction of the General Will of the community under the terms of the social contract.  If these two lesser wills conflict with public utility, the General Will can “force people to be free.”  (see Social Contract Part I Chapter 6: 167) This conclusion about forcing people to be free is meant to shock readers about the difficulties of being free individuals in society.

 Hume takes a different approach from Rousseau to the story of liberty unfolding in human history. In both the Treatise on Human Nature and An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, he rejects Rousseau’s starting point of humanity’s metaphysical status in the state of nature, with its sharp distinction between the free actions of human beings and the determined actions of other animals in nature. Hume presents what philosophers have characterized as a compatibilist theory of freedom where humans are part of the network of causation in nature, but nevertheless can act under certain circumstances with free will properly understood.[5] This philosophical starting point has important implications for the story of liberty that Hume tells in his Essays and A History of England.

In contrast to Rousseau’s hypothetical history of the fall from freedom in the state of nature, Hume views the actual history of humankind as a perpetual struggle between authority and liberty. Liberty must be sacrificed to bring order to society.  But this sacrifice “can never, and perhaps ought never, in any constitution, to be quite entire and uncontrollable.” A society is free not because it is under a General Will authorized by the will of each citizen as it was for Rousseau, but because it operates free of arbitrary coercion under known and settled laws. Free governments, Hume argues, are those that partition power among several members who “in the usual course of administration, must act by general and equal laws known to all members of society.” (Hume, 1987: 41)

According to Hume, this liberty under the law is the “perfection of civil society.” (Hume, 1987: 41) As seen through the lens of English history, the story of liberty is a complex one that rejects Machiavelli’s idea that there are cycles in history mapping out the rise and fall of republics based upon the virtue built into their institutions. Similarly, he discounts that there ever was an ancient constitution upon which civil and political liberty rested or the enlightenment idea that material and moral progress is inevitable. He agrees with other enlightenment thinkers that rule of law is part of the civilizing force of manners and morals working throughout Europe but does not believe that it is inevitable. Events can take place that threaten the stability of government and freedom under law. Under this understanding of a free society, Hume declares in Volume VI of the History of England that “it may justly be affirmed, without any danger of exaggeration, that we in this island, have ever since enjoyed, if not the best system of government, at least the most entire system of liberty, that ever was known amongst mankind.” (Hume, 1983 VI: 531; see also Livingston 1998: Chapter 10; Miller 1981: Chapter 7; McArthur 2007, Chapters 5 and 6)

 Integrated into his arguments about constitutional and legal development in England is a rethinking of the role played by commerce and individual self-interest in human affairs. Rejecting the ancient idea that commerce and self-interest necessarily make a free and martial people weaker by corrupting their morals, a notion that Rousseau accepted, Hume argues that the opposite is the case. According to “the common course of human affairs,” the greatness of a state and the happiness of a people are linked together through trade and manufacturing. By rousing men from their natural indolence, commerce and trade encourage individuals to desire more things and to work harder to improve their conditions and transform from the bottom up the social and economic foundations upon which rest a society’s prosperity. (see Hume 1987, “Of Commerce”) Other unintended consequences follow from the changes fostered by exchange and commerce throughout a society.  In volume III of A History of England (1983 III: 76), Hume uses this argument to explain the decline of the power of the landed aristocracy in the late middle ages and the rise of more regular forms of government and freedom under the law. Adam Smith would later capture the essence of Hume’s argument in chapter 4 of Book III of the Wealth of Nations: “commerce and manufactures gradually introduced order and good government, and with them, the liberty and security of individuals, among the inhabitants of the country, who had lived before almost in a continual state of war with their neighbours, and of servile dependency upon their superiors.” (Smith, 1981: 412) Far from intensifying bonds of dependency in human history as Rousseau claimed, Hume and Smith argue that commerce and manufacturing propel the story of liberty forward in the modern world.

For Rousseau, human history is a dialectical process where the expanding productive capacities of human society are accompanied by a loss of liberty for the individual. We are born free in nature but become unfree with the evolution of human civilization. As society grows wealthier, individuals grow more miserable and unfree. His story ends with an appeal to rethink the social order and establish new conditions for liberty under the rule of the General Will in the modern world. This is nothing short of a call for a revolution on how we think about liberty and how we act in the world. Unfortunately, the General Will is a slippery concept in actual operation. Is the General Will a metaphysical entity that can exist and act in the world through the actions of properly educated citizens, or is it just a great myth, a delusion born of misguided assumptions about the nature of liberty? Is the General Will a solution to the problems of liberty in modern society, or a new form of tyranny being imposed upon individuals by the state and society?

In contrast, Hume’s story about liberty stresses the importance of the evolution of human civilization out of primitive social and economic conditions, and not a state of nature per se. For Hume, humans are not free in nature. They are simply isolated, alone, and poor. History is the story of forging institutions, laws, and manners that restrict the arbitrary power of leaders and unleash the creative actions of private individuals through exchange, markets, and commerce. Where Rousseau’s story of liberty culminates in a new vision of liberty grounded in a General Will, Hume’s story is a cautionary tale about the need to protect the institutions, laws, and manners that have made modern liberty and human prosperity possible. He rejects the idea of a social contract underlying all government, replacing it with arguments about how government is grounded in public opinion through various mechanisms of consent in history. (See Hume, 1987: “Of the Original Contract”) His warnings about the dangers of commercial institutions, such as the public debt or an overregulated mercantile system are extensions of his concerns over abusive authority that threatens to enslave individuals in modern commercial states.[6] How do we know which institutional or economic developments expand our liberties and which threaten them? What is the metric by which we measure these dangers? Such are the intellectual and political challenges that Hume leaves us to face on our own today.

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Livingston, Donald W. 1998. Philosophical Melancholy and Delirium: Hume’s Pathology of Philosophy.  Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

McArthur, Neil. 2007. David Hume’s Political Thought. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Merrill, Kenneth P.  2010. A to Z of Hume’s Philosophy. Lanham: The Scarecrow Press:

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Smith, Adam. 1981. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. Edited by R.H. Campbell and A.S. Skinner. Textual Editor W.D. Todd. Indianapolis: LibertyClassics.

Zaretsky, Robert and John T. Scott. 2009. The Philosopher’s Quarrel: Rousseau, Hume and the Limits of Human Understanding. New Haven: Yale University Press.

[1] Embedded in western political thought are several stories about liberty and how it unfolds in the course of human history that differ from those told by Rousseau and Hume. The civic republican story as found in the work of Niccolo Machiavelli and members of the Atlantic republican tradition chronicled by J.G.A. Pocock sees liberty in terms of a cyclical pattern of the rise and fall of peoples and nations. Wise and virtuous leaders build a nation’s institutions and laws. Liberty is gained through the great actions of peoples and leaders.  Liberty is lost through corruption brought on by weakness, negligence, and ill will. The ancient constitution story as articulated by late medieval and early modern writers opposed to modern state building in Europe is basically a conservative one that centers around the idea that certain institutions and laws inherited from an almost mythical past make freedom possible. The job of politics is to protect liberty by defending these institutions and laws from corruption and decline. A third story of liberty sees scientific, moral, and material progress as being the engine which drives liberty forward. For enlightenment thinkers from the Marquis de Condorcet to Karl Marx, material progress was seen as ushering in a new age of freedom, one unimaginable to earlier generations. Citizens make sure that the conditions that make progress possible are protected and expanded. Often this story is linked to an eschatological break with the past where political action ushers in a new age of prosperity and freedom for humankind.

[2] For a fascinating discussion of the interpersonal squabble between Rousseau and Adam Smith, see Zaretsky and Scott (2009) and Edmonds and Eidenow (2006).

[3] For a further discussion, see Shklar (1969).

[4] For a further discussion of Rousseau’s notion of the General Will see Riley (2001).

[5] Much of Hume’s argument about free will and necessity rests upon his innovative theories of moral responsibility, causation, and the operations of the human mind in A Treatise of Human Nature (2000) and his Enquiries (1975). For a discussion of Hume’s notion of free will and compatibilism see Penelhum (2000) Chapter 8 and Merrill (2000).

[6] See the economic essays in Part II of Hume’s Essays (1987).

David Hume and Jean-Jacques Rousseau had high opinions of each other’s works. Given their close (but subsequently soured) relationship, it is surprising that there are no signs of mutual influence in their moral and political thought. Rousseau even claimed that Pierre Bayle was the only skeptic of his time. According to Richard Popkin, this means Rousseau “never looked at Hume’s philosophical works, or sought to find out what another skeptic had to say.”[1] Nevertheless, the value of liberty is at the center of their thought. They both maintain that, in promoting public good, the end of government has to be the preservation of liberty. The disparity of their ideas results in their different conceptions of the apparatuses that can best enable conditions for liberty. The key to understanding their contrasting views consists in the relation between liberty and sovereignty.

Rousseau contended that maintaining a free state requires reciprocal support between freedom and equality.[2] Unlike Hume, Rousseau construed equality as a necessary condition for liberty since it yields the independence that serves as the essence of human freedom. Yet, only male citizens can enjoy such equality—Rousseau excluded women from the citizenry due to their alleged inability to conduct public affairs.[3] Hume’s approach, alternatively, is to maintain the dynamics of the competition between liberty and authority.[4] He claimed that all citizens must retain “a right of self-defense” against authority, that is, “a power of resistance.” He argued on this basis that “the same necessity of self-preservation, and the same motive of public good, give them the same liberty in the one case as in the other.”[5] This right, in his view, is meant to prevent the rise of an absolute government. However, given the growth of popular discontent and the prevalence of the Whig theory of resistance (which was based on a contractual theory of political legitimacy) in his time, Hume was skeptical about the purported criteria for judging when such resistance may lawfully occur.[6] In sum, comparing the two thinkers’ approaches to the end of government has already shown us the disparity in their ways of conceiving the ideas of liberty. As we shall see, Rousseau’s emphasis on the citizens’ independence paves the way to his conception of popular sovereignty as the best means to preserve liberty. Hume’s contrast of liberty with authority, nevertheless, underscores the necessity of checks and balances.

It has been argued that Hume does not have a theory of sovereignty[7] and his ground for political authority arises from the “opinion of mankind.”[8] That is to say, a government’s authority comes from the public’s belief in its right to rule, rather than any abstract theory of contract. Hume’s view resulted from his skepticism about the natural law tradition to which Rousseau belonged. For Hume, there was no historical evidence to prove the existence of such covenants. Moreover, natural law theories could not explain what motivated people to obey such laws. In other words, there are no immutable and overarching rights to both authority and liberty. What opinion reflects are the norms of judgment gleaned from conventions. It is therefore unsurprising that Hume never attempted to explicitly define the idea of liberty—its meaning only makes sense when understood in the custom and habit that enable it.[9]

The rise of English liberty is Hume’s prized example. Eighteenth-century Britain enjoyed the greatest liberty among other European nations because of its mixed constitution and representative politics.[10] But a representative government alone could hardly advance and preserve liberty to such a degree. In Hume’s historical writing, Britain’s case demonstrates that liberty arose from its persistent struggle with authority, most notably reflected in the confrontation between the Parliament and the Crown. The evolution of the mixed constitution attested that this process of using power to check power led to the convention in favor of liberty. This also means liberty, in its robust form, was not an abstract idea, nor was it rooted in any rational system of rights. Instead, it was enabled and safeguarded by an assortment of political customs and apparatuses. In Britain, this further led to the civil liberty that allowed commerce to thrive and the liberty of the press.[11]

Hume indicated that civil liberty can arise from both republic and civilized monarchy. This is contrary to Rousseau’s view that only a republican government can yield such freedom owing to its commitment to popular sovereignty. For Hume, civil liberty amounts to the security of persons and properties, which can also be achieved under a monarchical government as long as its institutions and legislation are designed to balance different branches of power. Sovereign power no longer threatened the citizenry, which enabled them to freely pursue wealth. In turn, merchants could elevate their status through purchasing titles; this means to honor encouraged the development of commerce. Since honor was the chief principle of monarchy, maintaining civil liberty would, in fact, benefit the civilized monarchies in modern Europe.[12] The checks and balances of power, in this scenario, not only relied on the rule of law but also the liberty of the press. From this perspective, the citizenry exercised their power not through Rousseauean popular sovereignty, but through the influence of public opinion. The liberty of the press would further encourage diverse opinions: “All the learning, wit, and genius of the nation may be employed on the side of freedom, and every one be animated to its defence.”[13] It is a pluralist civil society as such that preserves liberty. In this regard, the perpetual struggle between liberty and authority actually yields the political dynamics to sustain the former. Hence in a Humean free state, liberty enables liberty.

While Hume deemed the contest between liberty and authority insoluble, Rousseau argued that the two can be reconciled by submitting to the general will under a republican government. His conception of liberty is the key to differentiating his view from that of Hume. Although Hume would not deny that liberty means to be free from domination,[14] he would object to Rousseau’s view that this is only possible through popular sovereignty. This explains why he contended that liberty necessitates equality—the idea of popular sovereignty denotes the equal status of citizens. On this basis, given that the citizenry form the general will, individual citizen’s submission to this supreme authority does not constitute a state of domination. They still retain their freedom since their individual wills are incorporated into the general will. Rousseau therefore made an original contribution to the question of liberty and authority by associating liberty with the idea of popular sovereignty.[15]

Liberty and authority are no longer in conflict as Rousseauean citizens’ liberty includes the exercise of power—popular sovereignty means authority ultimately remains in their hands. Rousseau’s theory of sovereignty only becomes possible as he explicitly defined four types of liberty: natural, civil, moral and democratic. Natural freedom only exists in the state of nature where one is their “own master” and “sole judge” of their self-preservation.[16] One exchanges this freedom for civil liberty when one enters into a political society through the social contract and becomes a citizen. They retain the right to private property and are free from coercion from the state or others. Their freedom of choice is subject to the general will’s regulation. That said, moral freedom enables them to remain their own master, as it suggests that they voluntarily “prescribe” themselves the law to obey the general will. This obedience ensures that they would not become the slave of “the impulsion of mere appetite.”[17] To prevent the general will from dominating individual citizens’ will, Rousseau introduced the idea of popular sovereignty, which necessitates a form of democracy for citizens to legislate for themselves. In other words, while each citizen can enjoy civil liberty, this democratic freedom applies to the citizenry.[18] Considering that sovereignty is “inalienable” and “cannot be represented,” all laws must be rectified by “the people” taken as a whole.[19]

As a result, while Humean citizens can only influence the government’s authority through public opinion, Rousseauean citizens have a direct connection between their collective will and the legislation under a republican government. Nevertheless, comparing Hume’s and Rousseau’s conceptions of liberty does not show which one should prevail. Instead, the disparity in their thought suggests that no single form of government can perpetually guarantee liberty. Hume’s emphasis on opinion demonstrates the power of ideas; hence freedom of thought and expression fosters greater degrees of liberty. Rousseau’s conception of popular sovereignty underscores the value of equality and autonomy, which requires proactive civic participation. Altogether, liberty based on value pluralism and egalitarianism remains an invaluable legacy of Enlightenment thought for our world today.

[1] Richard Popkin, “Did Hume or Rousseau Influence the Other?” Revue internationale de philosophie 32, no. 124/125 (1978): 297–308.

[2] Jean-Jacques Rousseau, “Of the Social Contract,” in Rousseau: The Social Contract and Other Later Political Writings, ed. Victor Gourevitch, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 80 [hereafter as SC]; “Discourse on Political Economy,” in ibid., 266. David Lay Williams, “Rousseau’s Ancient Ends of Legislation: Liberty, Equality (and Fraternity),” in The Cambridge Companion to Rousseau’s Social Contract, ed. David Lay Williams and Matthew W. Maguire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024), 113–37.

[3] Helena Rosenblatt, “On the ‘Misogyny’ Of Jean-Jacques Rousseau: The Letter to D’Alembert in Historical Context,” French Historical Studies 25, no. 1 (2002): 91–114; Geneviève Rousselière, “Rousseau’s Theory of Value and the Case of Women,” European Journal of Philosophy 29, no. 2 (2021): 285–98.

[4] David Hume, Essays, Moral, Political and Literary, ed. Eugene F. Miller (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1987), 40–1.

[5] David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. David Fate Norton and Mary J. Norton, vol. 1, 2 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 3.2.10.16. [Hereafter as T]; The History of England from the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the Revolution in 1688, ed. William B. Todd, 6 vols. (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1983), 5: 380–8.

[6] T 3.2.10.1.

[7] Paul Sagar, The Opinion of Mankind: Sociability and the Theory of the State from Hobbes to Smith (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018). (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018).

[8] T 3.2.9.4; Essays, 32–3.

[9] T 3.2.5.11, 3.2.8.9, 3.2.9.1, 3.2.10.2; Essays, 465–87; David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, ed. Tom L. Beauchamp (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), Appendix 3.8. [hereafter as EPM]

[10] History, 5: 59.

[11] History, 5: 126–34; 6: 367; Essays, 9–13, 87–96. David Wootton, “David Hume: ‘The Historian,’” in The Cambridge Companion to Hume, ed. David Fate Norton and Jacqueline Taylor, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 476–7.

[12] Essays, 10–1, 92–4.

[13] Essays, 12–3.

[14] Michael Locke McLendon, “Rousseau’s Negative Liberty: Themes of Domination and Skepticism in The Social Contract,” in The Cambridge Companion to Rousseau’s Social Contract, 88–112.

[15] SC, 49–51. Robert Wokler, “Rousseau’s Two Concepts of Liberty,” in Rousseau, the Age of Enlightenment, and Their Legacies, ed. Christopher Brooke and Bryan Garsten (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012), 170–1.

[16] SC, 42.

[17] SC, 53–4.

[18] SC, 57, 114. Matthew Simpson, Rousseau’s Theory of Freedom (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2006), Ch. 4.

[19] SC, 70, 114–5.

In Western countries, we observe support for ideas not only of economic growth but also an increasing support for ideas of de-growth. We have both support for increasing luxury consumption as well as condemnations of the so-called excesses of the top 1% of income earners. We praise the connectivity of social media, but we also blame social media for psychological problems, which may even lead to suicide, especially of vulnerable young people. We call for liberty but at the same time the call for increasing government presence in many aspects of our life, including our freedom of speech. We can go on, but I think that these are enough of the possible examples of contrasting patterns that, in a broad sense, may be explained through the analysis of either David Hume or Jean-Jacques Rousseau, as illustrated by the four essays.

But from the four essays (including mine) we can also see two emerging patterns, which may offer an explanation for the persistent contrasting views: eurocentrism (or western-centrism) and a lack of testable hypothesis. By saying this, I am not suggesting that Hume and Rousseau should have done something different, nor that I have a better approach to the problem. I am simply identifying some aspects of their analysis that may be of interest.

So, let us ask: Would an Inuit today identify and agree more with Hume's concept of liberty or with Rousseau? A Yanomami? What about a pre-Columbian Inca? Or what about a Japanese samurai? I fear the question is more serious than it seems like because both Hume and Rousseau seem to imply a power of generalization in their analysis, a power of universality based on an assumption of a more or less universal human nature. Yet, not only their conclusions, but also their starting assumptions about that human nature are different. So, who is right? I fear the answer may depend on to whom one asks, which in part may explain the contrasting views we still see today.I also fear that at the root of this problem is the lack of testable hypotheses that both Hume and Rousseau present us with. What criteria should one use to see which understanding of liberty is the more generalizable, if not the most universal one? Even a weaker form of question: under what circumstances would Hume’s liberty prevail and under what circumstances would Rousseau’s liberty prevail? These remain unanswered in their works. Can we answer that question?

I am grateful to have been included in this Liberty Matters conversation on conceptions liberty in David Hume and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. My colleagues’ contributions are well-written and thought provoking.

It is helpful to think about this subject in terms of storytelling. Edward J. Harpham does an excellent job relaying the stories Hume and Rousseau tell about liberty and modernity. As Harpham observes, Rousseau’s conception of liberty arises from his conjectural history of the origin of inequality in his Second Discourse. Hume’s conception of liberty, meanwhile, arises not only from his conjectural history of the origin of justice and society in Book 3 of the Treatise, but also from his History of England. Although this history is grounded in past events, it is, as Hume noted, written in the same “philosophical spirit, which I have so much indulg’d in all my writings” (Letters of David Hume, 1:193).

Edward Harpham and Maria Pia Paganelli effectively highlight the central issue of dependence in modern commercial society. A commercial society, as Paganelli notes with reference to Smith, is a society in which each person is a merchant. It is also, I might add, a society in which all social arrangements tend to be regarded as mutually beneficial exchanges between self-interested individuals. Specialization in modern commercial society leads to what Smith called “the division of labor” and Hume called “the partition of employments.” Hume and Rousseau tell stories about the origin of commercial society. And they theorize about what can be done to secure liberty within it. Whereas Rousseau emphasized the costs of commercial society, Hume emphasized its benefits. Paganelli is right about this.

Interestingly, Paganelli writes that Hume and Rousseau differ in their “understanding of the role of reason in the political realm.” Paganelli simply did not have space to address the role of reason in the philosophies of Hume and Rousseau. But it would be helpful to elaborate on the differences here. As Hume famously stated in the Treatise, reason is the slave of passion. From his point of view, the development of justice and society, of political and economic institutions, is due not to the exercise of reason but to a combination of trial-and-error, historical contingency, and individual agency. Hume thought that conceptions of justice, virtue, and vice arise organically from the “intercourse of sentiments” in “society and conversation.” This “intercourse of sentiments” results from the operation of sympathy, a psychological mechanism that enables us to feel the pleasures and pains of others (see T 3.3.3.2).

For Rousseau, on the other hand, peace, security, and liberty in society are best assured when individuals can ascertain and submit to the General Will. This requires deliberation. Deliberation, as Harpham writes, requires that individuals are “sufficiently informed.” He also mentions that, according to Rousseau, “there must be no communication among citizens in thinking about the public good.” For Rousseau, then, strict moral discipline and political participation among relative equals within a small republic is necessary to promote the common good. This requires more independent ratiocination about the meaning and purpose of justice than Hume allows for.

Still, both thinkers are fully modern, arguing that the opinion of mankind legitimates political authority. In the Treatise (3.2.9.4), Hume argues that the opinion of mankind is “infallible” regarding all moral and political matters. And Rousseau, in the Discourse on Political Economy, adheres to the dictum that the voice of the people is the voice of God.

I think Zeng relies too much on Sagar, insofar as she thinks that Hume, who tells the story of the development of modern liberty in Great Britain, defines liberty in an historically contingent and culturally relative way. Zeng contends that Hume “never attempted to explicitly define the idea of liberty.” She does not actually mean this, of course. Later in her essay, she writes that “Hume’s emphasis on opinion demonstrates the power of ideas.” And, again, she suggests that “Hume would not deny that liberty means to be free from domination.” Hume did, then, have an idea of liberty. And he thought he could compare levels of liberty existing across cultures.

In his essay, “Of Civil Liberty,” Hume contrasted “civil liberty” with “absolute government.” The latter is arbitrary. It depends on the judgments of magistrates, rather than equal laws. Hume argued that “all kinds of government, free and absolute, seem to have undergone, in modern times, a change for the better.” He thought so because of the high level of civil liberty present in both Great Britain’s mixed government and France’s civilized monarchy. Referring to France’s civilized monarchy, Hume wrote, “Property is there secure; industry encouraged; the arts flourish; and the prince lives secure among his subjects, like a father among his children.”

For Hume, civil liberty is not confined to free governments. In fact, Hume thought “monarchical governments” showed greater prospects for improvement in this area than “popular governments.” He criticized the French monarchy for its “unequal, arbitrary, and intricate method of levying” taxes. This dampened industry and agriculture and advantaged the landed nobility. But this could easily be corrected, Hume noted, by the reformation of tax policy. The popular government of Great Britain, meanwhile, was drowning in public debt, which Hume thought would “curse our very liberty” and reduce British subjects to “servitude” through a “multiplicity of taxes” and an “inability for defense.” It would be far worse, Hume indicated, to live in servitude in a republican government than to live freely in a civilized monarchy. Equal laws matter most of all. And it does not matter, according to Hume, if you—as citizen or subject—are the author of those laws.

The four essays in this symposium reveal how complex and multilayered the ideas about liberty are in the work of Jean Jacques Rousseau and David Hume. My own contribution focuses on the different stories about liberty told by Rousseau and Hume about the unfolding of liberty in history, and the role played by exchange, markets and commerce in bringing liberty to the modern world.

Paganelli’s discussion is more narrowly targeted, centering around the pivotal role that the idea of a commercial society plays in their respective views of liberty. While Rousseau and Hume share some common ideas, such as a belief in the importance of equality before the law and the mutual dependency that results from an intensifying division of labor, she recognizes the gulf that separates Rousseau’s views from Hume’s. For Rousseau, commerce may bring wealth and prosperity to the modern world, but also material inequality and psychological misery as people lose their natural independence. In contrast, for Hume commerce brings industry and material wealth to humankind. Rather than cultivating dependency, commerce alleviates material misery and promotes human sociability, making society freer in the process.

Zubia’s and Zeng’s response essays take different tracks for understanding the differences between Rousseau and Hume on liberty. Zubia focuses on the distinction between the ideas of personal liberty and of a free government. Here Zubia draws a sharp line between Hume and Rousseau. Hume argues that personal liberty means that an individual should be protected “against the unreasonable and excessive intrusion into one’s personal affairs.” Free government protects one’s personal liberty through “enforcing contracts, ensuring fair trial, and prohibiting unlawful searches and seizures.” Zubia argues that this differs sharply from Rousseau’s notion of a free government based on laws responsive to the general will.

Zeng’s essay echoes many of Zubia’s concerns, drawing attention to the difference between Rousseau’s analysis which is rooted in the natural law tradition and Hume’s which is integrated into an analysis of English constitutional history from Roman times to the present. She argues that Rousseau “makes an original contribution to the question of liberty and authority by associating liberty with the idea of popular sovereignty.” The end of her essay raises important questions.  What are the dangers of associating liberty with popular sovereignty? Can Rousseau’s notions of liberty and sovereignty be reconciled with Hume’s notions of personal liberty and free government or are they forever in tension with one another?

Taken together, these essays point to the importance of understanding the differences between Rousseau and Hume on the question of liberty. But the essays in their current form don’t go far enough in discussing the practical implications of their notions of liberty. In the end, I believe that Rousseau and Hume present starkly different visions of what freedom means in the modern world.

Throughout his writings, David Hume stresses the role that sociability plays in human affairs. For Hume, there is no denying that fundamentally we are separate self-interested individuals with our own unique sentiments, passions, tastes, and drives. We experience the world differently, coming to value different things and ideas. But we grow up and live in human communities where we are socialized and educated to care about our own needs and wants alongside the wants and needs of others. By nature, we are sociable creatures who learn to cultivate and refine this sociability in beneficial ways, both individually and collectively. The story of liberty in human history is one of overcoming our natural condition of isolation and learning how to work together for our own good and the common good. Language, morality, government, law, technology, and the like are inventions that make the natural world a more commodious place for humans to live and find happiness as we best conceive it. Hume's analysis sets the stage for thinking about how best to foster institutional mechanisms for promoting material and emotional prosperity and enhancing human sociability.

There is considerable irony in the fact that Rousseau is often portrayed as the great defender of sociability and other communitarian values because his notion of freedom is an odd one, based upon contentious philosophical ideas about freedom and history. What Hume sees as evolving sociability and progress, Rousseau sees as intensifying slavery and corruption. Rousseau’s General Will is his imagined solution to this slavery of dependence on the wills of others. Being authorized by the impartial and independent wills of all properly educated citizens, the General Will is supposed to be the vehicle by which we can be free while living with others in a complex society. Significantly, the General Will is discovered not through the bargains and compromises of self-interested individuals in a real-world political process but through meditative self-introspection of properly educated citizens on what is in the public good. What if we as individual citizens do not grasp this General Will? What if we as individuals cannot reach a mutual understanding of what public utility is or why we might have to sacrifice our own private good to this public utility?  Rousseau’s answer is disturbing. Society has the right and the power to coerce citizens into obedience. As Rousseau so succinctly puts it, in order that the social compact is not an empty formula, citizens can be “forced to be free.”

From the perspective of the eighteenth century, this notion of forcing people to be free might simply be seen as a rhetorical flourish to embellish an idealistic political theory about freedom. From the perspective of people who have lived through the totalitarian nightmares of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, another conclusion is in order. Flawed ideas about the nature of freedom can carry with them disastrous consequences in the real world. Forcing people to be free through Rousseau’s idea of the General Will is bad in theory and worse in practice.