Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Republican Theory of Freedom

This paper argues that Jean-Jacques Rousseau should be read as a republican political theorist whose theory of freedom has distinct advantages over that of contemporaries such as Richard Price. Rousseau, I argue, started from a theory of freedom as nondomination. This places him, contrary to what Philip Pettit and Quentin Skinner have argued, in the republican tradition also exemplified by Richard Price. However, unlike Price, Rousseau was very much concerned with the question of how nondomination was to be achieved in the context of a republic based on majority rule. In addressing this question, Rousseau gave a new twist to the republican theory of freedom, which, as I argue, has distinct advantages over Price’s views.