Rousseau Social Contract

To return to the topic of the “happiest and most lasting epoch” (Discourses 167), it now becomes apparent that the allure of the golden age is in the limited activity of amour propre. Before laws were created which allowed for arbitrary powers, there were fewer opportunities for inequality and as a result, amour propre is muted, a “petulant” force instead of a voracious one (Discourses 167).
While The Discourses end on this complete takeover of amour propre, Rousseau does not believes that this end is inevitable. In a later work, The Social Contract, Rousseau describes a society which enjoys all the advantages of being removed from nature but has not been enslaved by its desires. In this society, amour propre is still pervasive among people,

To prevent this, society is created through “a form of association that will defend and protect the person and goods of each associate with the full common force, and by means of which each, uniting with all, nevertheless obey only himself and remain as free before” (Social Contract 49-50). The force created by this association is the general will, which is the “sum of the differences” (Social Contract 60) of particular wills. Partaking in the general will allows each person to submit themselves to the Sovereign will without losing their freedom, since they also partake in the Sovereign will of the society. “Each of us puts his person and his full power in common under the supreme direction of the general will; and in a body we receive each member as an indivisible part of the whole” (Social Contract 50, author’s emphasis). Thus, the society is formed as a Civil

When each individual in the City State looks towards the general will, they cannot feel amour propre against the general will since it is so much greater than theirs. In civil matters, then, each of their relationships with each other is primarily no longer that of competitors, but rather that of a “member of the Sovereign toward private individuals, and as a member of the State towards the Sovereign” (Social Contract 51). If the society is as Rousseau declared in The Social Contract, where the general will prevails over the individual will, then amour propre will not long raise its head when deliberating in manners of civil government, for the interests of the many are not comparable to the interests of one and the force of the State is far greater than the force of an individual. Amour propre will be disinterested for the same reason that people feel no desire to compete with the oak tree in who can grow to be taller; such a feat would be impossible, so the comparison is not even worth making. In each person it will still inspire desire, but no person will attempt to satisfy that desire by acting against the general