루소의 자유론

Abstract

Liberty is one of the most important thoughts of Rousseau. How can we catch the way Rousseau use the liberty? Rousseau classified the concept of liberty into four sorts such as natural, civil, moral and/or political liberty. Natural liberty is a conjectured liberty that is assured by idealized natural state. Civil liberty is the production made from the agreement of original social contract and the performance of people’s sovereign. Moral and/or political liberty is the one achieved by people’s autonomous decision-making. In general many scholars accept the prescription of Isaiah Berlin to Rousseau’s recognition on liberty. He claimed that Rousseau’s liberty is not a negative but a positive one. However, his thought also implicates the characteristic of negative liberty which is reflected in the presupposition; that is, peoples should be ‘forced to be free’ by laws. Rousseau comprehended the positive law, which is enacted by realization of people’s general wil, as an instrument to assure civil liberty. In fact the arguments of Rousseau on liberty are very complex. Thus the two concepts of liberty classified by Berlin can not be properly applied to Rousseau’s thought. Rather Rousseau’s notion crosses and traverses the Berlin’s two concepts of liberty. By this point I believe that Rousseau’s thought serves as a means of searching for the third concept of liberty for present day society.