Sovereignty in Rousseau: from Instinctive Freedom to Conscious Freedom

Abstract

The text is a reading piece about Rousseau’s concept of sovereignty, as a maximal expression of men’s free willing in the civil society, in a direct relation with the instinct of liberty – will – of men in the natural society. Rousseau was deeply worried about inequality among men, since its consequence is freedom and utmost good inhibition. So, in the transition between wild to political stage, man has preserved and changed his particularity as a free Being. One can affirm that Rousseau started a new moment over sovereignty in which people are the collective being of this supreme will. This is to say that Civil State is a being of reason and, only rational Will can create it. The state appears as a real entity, not an abstract one.