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In his Lettres écrites de la montagne, Rousseau writes this:

It's all very well to confuse independence with freedom. The two things are so different that they are even mutually exclusive. When people do as they please, they often do what others do not like, and that is not called a free state. Freedom consists not so much in doing one's own will as in not being subject to the will of others; it also consists in not subjecting the will of others to our own. Whoever is master cannot be free, and to reign is to obey. [...] I know of no will that is truly free except that which no one has the right to resist; in common freedom no one has the right to do what the freedom of another forbids him to do, and true freedom is never self-destructive. Thus freedom without justice is a real contradiction; for however one goes about it, everything hinders the execution of a disordered will. There is therefore no freedom without laws, nor where someone is above the law: in the very state of nature man is free only because of the natural law that commands all. A free people obeys, but it does not serve; it has leaders, not masters; it obeys the laws, but it obeys only the laws, and it is by the force of the laws that it does not obey men.

My question is, according to Rousseau, why am I not free if I am subject to another? Why am I not freer if I am the master?

John Smith
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Rousseau is making the point that 'freedom' means accepting and working within a structure of laws/rules. That's the heart of the "Government of Laws, not of Men" quote (from John Adams) that gets thrown around from time to time. Laws are stable, impartial, and universal; men can be capricious, biased, and irrational. Obedience to the first is very different from obedience to the second.

That being said, a 'master' is (for our purposes) a person who dictates the laws and rules for everyone else. That activity can lean in one of two directions:

  • People under the master agree with. accept, and work within the laws/rules that the master sets
  • People under the master disagree with. reject, and subvert the laws/rules that the master sets

In the first case people under the master are free (in Rousseau's worldview), and so the master is free because he doesn't really have anything to do. In the second case people under the master feel oppressed, and struggle for their freedom. So the master must impose his own will on them. He is forced by the people under him to hunt out and punish rule-breakers, to install locks and walls and safeguards, to judge others without allowing himself to be subject to judgement. The master must remove himself from the community of those under him and treat them as mere objects, and expend enormous effort and resources trying to contain and stifle their urge towards freedom.

It's all about the rules. If people are free (accepting the rules freely) then the master is free, and ultimately the entire distinction between the master and others is erased. If people are not free (rejecting the rules) then the master cannot be free, caught in an endless battle for dominance. Many people will gladly (if ignorantly) sacrifice their freedom for wealth, security, or status, sure. But freedom is not something one can 'buy back' later.

Ted Wrigley
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