Season 2, Episode 5, The Social Contract and The Question of Freedom, Is a life without liberty worth living? Is “Give me liberty or give me death” really the best choice?
Description
In this first episode on Rousseau's Social Contract, I explore two versions of the social contract that still influence contemporary liberalism.
I begin with a consideration of the word slavery in the context of the American Revolution. Surprisingly, rather than actual slavery, the revolutionaries thought that living under any government that violated their natural rights was akin to being enslaved. In turn, they claimed they would rather die than live without their individual liberty.
Distinctly, Jean Jacques Rousseau argued that liberty is only possible when the individual subsumes their private interests to the general will. An inspiration to the French Revolutionaries, he then offered a very different version of the modern state and the social contract.
United States
