Rousseau’s Political Legitimacy and Democracy
Legitimacy as People’s Will: Rousseau
Political power is sometimes seen as legitimate in origin, others by its ends. Today, appeals to the source of legitimacy for political power are popular. The first attempt to base political power on the people’s will is made by Rousseau.
The State of Nature, According to Rousseau
The Criticism of Civilization
One of the hallmarks of the Enlightenment movement is the belief in progress. The Enlightenment movement hopes that the triumph of reason will lead to the development of science and the arts. Rousseau argues that science and the arts have helped to create artificial societies where inequality dominates.
The “State of Nature” as a Hypothesis
Rousseau makes a serious attempt to show man in a state of nature. Since such a state no longer exists, one can only represent the natural man by a process of abstraction. The goal is to discover authentic human nature, to judge modern society from it, and to initiate a reform according to that nature.
Characteristics of Natural Man
In a state of nature, men live in isolation. In this state, men have not been corrupted. Men in this state are basically equal. In the state of nature, men are motivated by the desire for self-preservation and compassion for their fellow humans. In addition to these characteristics that people share with animals, there are two features that distinguish them from any other species:
- Natural liberty: The ability human beings have to choose what they want to do regardless of any natural rule.
- Perfectibility: The ability to transform their lives.
What is Democracy? (Gustavo Bueno)
The term “democracy” is on everyone’s lips. It is assumed that everyone knows what it is. However, democracy can be analyzed from two aspects: on the one hand, the ideological or systemic, and on the other, the technological.
Technological Aspects
Democracy in the technological sense is what most people know: polls, elections, political parties, candidates, the majority, i.e., everything that constitutes the technology of democracy.
Ideology
This is a more abstract aspect, which states that, for example, democracy is a political system based on the sovereignty of the popular will. The curious thing is that if you ask a person for the term “democracy”, they will respond from the technological point of view. For example, one possible response would be that “democracy is the people’s government, which controls the people”. Even someone from a particular political party will also respond from this point of view.
Gustavo Bueno makes a comparison between the term “democracy” and “religion”. As happens with religion, if you ask a practicing person what religion is, they will answer depending on their religious practices (such as going to church on Sunday, kneeling, etc.). But if you ask someone what religion is, they might answer from the ideological standpoint (“religion is the set of acts that establish the relationship between God and man”). This ideological idea is certainly darker than the other, but as dark as the God of religion is the people of democracy.