In so giving each grants the same rights to others over himself that he is in turn granted by them over them. Each member gains the equivalent of everything he loses, and a greater amount of force to protect what he has. Given these conditions, Rousseau is ready to make his argument:
If therefore one eliminates from the social compact whatever is not essential to it, one will find that it is reducible to the following terms. Each of use places his person and all his power in common under the supreme direction of the general will, and as one we receive each member as an indivisible part of the whole."
By locating the binding force of the state in this concept of a general will, Rousseau thinks he has formulated a source for legitimate power. Of course, how he constructs the state comes to be crucial. The devil, as the saying goes, is in the details. But in establishing authority in the general will (with its attendant concept of the common good) Rousseau forms the heart of his argument for legitimate authority.
Then, Rousseau begins to unravel. He argues that a person can be made to obey the general will because he agreed to be bound by it (26). He argues that a sovereign is to be established who will ultimately have absolute and indivisible power, held as it is in a tense relationship with his obligations to seek the general will (30, 34). He argues that a person can be put to death for disobeying the state in its application of the general will (35). And he goes on like that. It seems that, far from disliking the sovereign that Locke, for example, establishes because he is too strong or his power unjust, Rousseau...
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