POL 118B Lecture Notes - Lecture 13: Omnipotence, Sovereign People, Positive Liberty
13 Mar 2017
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Self-legislation > positive freedom: self-legislation (i. e. , autonomy), obedience to a law one gives to oneself, is a concept that plays a major role in rousseau"s writings, especially the social contract and mile. The self-legislator obeys no one but himself (i. 6), an obedience that entails a certain kind of freedom viz. , positive freedom. Hobbes/locke: negative: positive freedom is freedom from two things: lawless desire and personal dependence. I want to discuss rousseau"s views on self-legislation and positive freedom in more detail over the next few slides, taking the latter"s two constituents mastering one"s desires & eliminating personal dependence in turn, as they are central to rousseau"s political thought. Plato"s republic, which rousseau praises as the most beautiful educational treatise ever written ( mile, 40). {tripartite soul, etc. : rousseau contends in the social contract that man acquires with civil society, moral freedom, which alone makes man the master of himself; for to be governed by appetite alone is slavery [cf.
