"The Social Contract" and "After Virtue" Review

    Due to the continued pervasiveness of technology in our daily lives, political decision-making and statecraft have become increasingly influenced by technology. Much of the foundation of Western politics has been shaped by Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s The Social Contract, and its contractualist principles, such as sovereignty, the general will, and the social contract. However, Rousseau’s abstract collectivist perspective has been abused by authoritarian regimes throughout history. This is a symptom of a broader realization of the Enlightenment’s failure to address modern ethical dilemmas due their abstract and subjective ethical frameworks. Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue argues for a return to moral and ethical reasoning rooted in virtue ethics. This essay will offer my personal review of these two philosophical works, and how I have analyzed their similarities and differences.

    Rousseau’s The Social Contract asserts that mankind was initially free before being restrained by the onset of civilization as he states “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.” He claims that the state was originally derived from a mutual agreement, the social contract, between a sovereign and the citizenry. Much like a contract is a binding agreement between individuals, Rousseau believes the social contract must treat the collective people as a corporate unit which he calls the “general will” by stating “Each of us puts his person and all his power in common under the supreme direction of the general will.” He argues that people must unite under this collective and obey the general will to secure the civil liberties of everyone. He further asserts that people must not only fulfill their civic duty, but those who dissent from the social contract must either be “forced to be free” or be expelled from society.

    Rousseau’s philosophy requires a centralized and collectivized form of government which paradoxically leads to totalitarianism in the pursuit of freedom and equality. The general will is the backbone of his contractualist worldview, since an ethical government is contingent on the ability of the sovereign to negotiate their rule with the people. However, I believe this framework is incompatible with the pluralistic nature of society, since authority is dispersed across competing institutions and interest groups, which has historically led to revolution and conflict as groups attempt to assert their dominance and impose their will. Rousseau’s argument for the general will to be binding deprives individuals of their free will to reject society’s imposition on them, and deprives traditional institutions of their role as mediating moral authorities between the state and people. It is for these reasons I reject Rousseau’s theory of the general will and his contractualist ethics.

    However, Rousseau offers a sharp repudiation of radical individualism, as he insists that legitimate lawmaking must serve the common good, rather than private interests, which are embodied in the general will. Therefore, laws should reflect the people’s shared history, customs, and identity, since these shared traits guide the moral and ethical foundation of the general will. I believe this should be achieved organically through traditions and customs protected by the state, which necessitates a locally decentralized and like-minded society.  Rousseau’s contractualist framework ties the legitimacy of the sovereign to reciprocal obligations. When institutions violate the interests and moral virtues of the people, the social contract authorizes a moral duty to rebellion. These two concepts help me understand my ethical view on the relationship between the state and the people.

    While The Social Contract is often summarized by its diagnosis of political power and sovereignty, the second half of his work discusses Rousseau’s ideal form of government. He believes that a mix of democracy, autocracy, and monarchy are ideal for a healthy government. He also goes on to discuss the role of religion in the ideal state. He advocates for the creation of a civil religion that would motivate the citizens to struggle and fight for the strength and safety of the state.

    MacIntyre’s After Virtue asserts that modern moral and ethical discourse is based on a misunderstanding of morality, which was caused by the surge of “emotivism”, which are the fragments of arguments, logical reasoning, and language based on feeling. He argues that the Enlightenment’s failure to prescribe man’s purpose led to the rise of emotivism and moral decay. Because the Enlightenment philosophers rejected Aristotelian virtue ethics in pursuit of rationality, we have lost our foundation to judge right and wrong, as he states “Moral judgements are linguistic survivals from the practices of classical theism which have lost the context provided by these practices.” MacIntyre defines practices, which are coherent and complex activities that contain an internal good. He believes that virtue enables us to achieve the internal good in a practice, which is part of a person’s narrative. A narrative is the intent and identity that justify our actions, shaped by the world around us. He summarizes this by stating “We are never more (and sometimes less) than the co-authors of our own narratives.” MacIntyre concludes that we inherit these narratives from moral tradition, and therefore we must participate and engage in practices and virtues stemming from moral tradition to ensure the continuity of our narratives. 

    MacIntyre’s assessment of virtue ethics resonates with my religious conviction, artistic sensibilities, and political philosophy. MacIntyre’s analysis on practices emphasize the cultivation of virtues through struggle, which closely align with “eternal struggle”, the continuous metaphysical inner conflict against physical tribulation, spiritual temptation, and political struggle against evil. MacIntyre’s assessment of narratives parallel characteristics found in the romanticist movement, which emphasize intuition, emotion, beauty, and mysticism. These traits reflect man’s desire for narrative depth guiding their lives and actions, which promote vibrant and traditional expressions of practices that sustain moral identity across time. MacIntyre’s assessment of moral tradition calls for a duty to preserve and keep the traditions that shape our narratives. This aligns with my political thought that by preserving tradition, we ensure that laws, institutions, and moral practices do not degrade the moral character of the people or undermine institutions vital for the preservation of culture and identity.

    However, I remain cautious about virtue ethics’ limitations as a comprehensive moral framework. By emphasizing virtue and tradition, virtue ethics can sometimes obscure the need for universal moral principles that transcend culture and tradition. I believe that moral truth is also derived from divine authority that sometimes supersedes culture and tradition. Therefore, there are non-negotiable ethical boundaries that no virtue can override. Another challenge for virtue ethics is how it prioritizes virtues, since without a transcendent standard, virtue ethics can devolve into moral relativism. Moreover, the preservation of tradition for its own sake can not only be used to justify immoral actions, it also risks elevating human tradition and achievement over the divine, which I find problematic.

    I found MacIntyre’s often overlooked description of emotivism as a compelling critique of modernity. Emotivist moral judgements are merely expressions of personal preferences or emotions, which MacIntyre believes is the reason why moral disagreements become irresolvable, since MacIntyre states “To say that a judgment is merely an expression of feeling is to deny that it can be true or false in the way factual statements can be true or false.” This eventually leads to the resurgence of “characters”, or social roles that guide or constrain the actions and relationships of people who take on those characters. MacIntyre argues that these characters are manipulative and lack morality because of emotivism.

    Rousseau argues that as part of the social contract between the citizens and the sovereign, the citizens must give up their selfish desires and aim to get involved in civic life to advance the general will. I would argue this aligns closely with MacIntyre’s analysis of how narratives are and ought to be influenced by society, as well as the duty of preserving our moral traditions. Rousseau contrasts the general will with the “will of all”, which is simply the collective sum of individual wants. This is surely seen in the description of the characters that MacIntyre describes as being products of emotivism, who only care about their own individual wellbeing at the expense of those around them.

    However, the two ultimately disagree on everything else. MacIntyre heavily criticized Enlightenment thinkers such as Rousseau because they discarded virtue ethics and traditions of the past with rationalism. Rousseau’s social contract hinges on citizens being rational people who are all equally invested in the political process, and have the intellectual capacity to contribute to laws without prejudice. However, as MacIntyre points out, the lack of virtue simply creates characters without morality or even a desire for reason if it impedes on their comforts or ambition for control. This would then necessitate the use of force so that the people align themselves with the general will.

    In conclusion, reading Rousseau’s The Social Contract helped me understand presuppositions of classical liberalism which have been foundational in modern political discourse. As my ethics are inspired by my political views, it was enlightening to read how Rosseau’s ideas have been taken for granted due to its prevalence. I also found that reading MacIntyre’s After Virtue helped articulate and guide my ethics towards virtue ethics, which I align the most. MacIntyre has been influential in the discussion of Christian ethics due to its religious undertones. While Rousseau’s works primarily deal within the realm of politics, and MacIntyre’s work primarily within the realm of morality, I believe that having read the two together offers a holistic perspective on how the two influence each other, as it certainly has for me.