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Rousseau's Influence On Abbe Sieyes

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Rousseau, one of the most leading philosophers during the Enlightenment, had indeed left many of legendries behind. Not only his writings had caused many of the reactions at that time, but also influenced many writers’ aspects of the French Revolution and the overall understanding of inequality and the General Will. As one of the chief political theorists during the French Revolution who was also influenced by Rousseau’s ideas, Abbe Sieyes, published the pamphlet, “What is the Third Estate?” in 1789. This pamphlet was one of the documents that changed the world and lit the flame toward the French Revolution, as characterized by Joe Janes, a University of Washington professor (Janes). It derived many of its ideas from Rousseau’s “The Social …show more content…

If examine this statement closer, one could find the core values of Rousseau’s utopian version of the General Will. The first core value of the General Will Rousseau had suggested was that it was a collective will from everyone. Indeed, Rousseau believed that “Each of us puts his person and all his power in common under the supreme direction of the general will” (Rousseau 8). In other words, the General Will Rousseau was advocating was the will that “both come from all and apply to all.” Correspondingly, Sieyes applied this idea and indicated that the law was at the center of the nation and the will of the Nation is the result of individual will (Lualdi 116), which both suggested that the General Will should come from all. The second value of the General Will in Rousseau’s belief was that everyone under it should gain the same rights (Rousseau 15). Similarly, in Sieyes’ excerpt, he argued that the citizens should stand in the equal distance from the General Will, and occupy equal places. This argument could be translated into the belief that “Legal rights are identical for every person, whether his property happens to be great or small” (Sieyes …show more content…

The first difference is who should the General Will be determined to. In Rousseau’ opinion, the social contract would not exclude anyone, and would “receive each member as an indivisible part of the whole” (Rousseau 8). However, in contrast to Rousseau’s “whole society,” Sieyes indicated that the Third Estate in France represented everything. The first reason why Sieyes stated so was that the First and the Second Estate were “like ravenous wolves,” who could not think of anything “but subduing and enslaving their neighbors” (Rousseau 107) while the Third Estate was the ones who carried out the work that sustained society (Lualdi 113). The second reason was that the nobles had all kinds of privileges and exemptions, “and even rights that are distinct from the rights of the great body of citizens” (Lualdi 115); therefore, they should be excluded from the common law. Moreover, Sieyes also claimed that the nobility was a foreigner “in our midst” because they were not defending the general interest, but a private one (Sieyes 3), which contradicted the core value of the General Will. Thence, unlike Rousseau, who would include everyone, Sieyes stated that the Third Estate should be everything. The second difference occurred when Sieyes suggested the “Extraordinary Representative Body.” Rousseau

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According to Rousseau in The Social Contract, laws are an abstract expression of the general will, deal with the people collectively and help to ensure that all people remain loyal to the sovereign. Rousseau points out that, because people will always chose to promote their individuals interests, one man must serve as a lawgiver who has no command over the people and has no place in the constitution. Although Rousseau recognizes the importance of a lawgiver, he fails to offer a practical solution to the problem that, no man with civil authority can also embody the divine characteristics necessary to be a perfect and unbiased lawgiver. Throughout the text, Rousseau demonstrates the importance of the general will, but suggests that the general

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He writes, ‘… the claimant occupies no more than he needs for subsistence … he takes possession … by actually working and cultivating the soil – the only sign of ownership…’ This takes us back to Rousseau’s aim of creating equality between people by allowing them to take only what is theirs from the common good once they have entered the social pact. This deep egalitarian tendency can be seen in the case of ‘the right of the first occupancy’ here: equality is being created by each man receiving only what he needs from the common good, nothing more and nothing less. This would not have been possible in a democracy; had there been a democracy, people would have been greedily taking whatever they could get their hands on. Rousseau’s society has a very controlling government with a lot of power and holds back its individuals from acquiring what is not

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