Rousseau’s political project consists in ensuring that the citizens of the social contract, in uniting with each other, preserve their ability to self-legislate, or be autonomous. For this to work, however, members of the social contract would need to feel intrinsically linked to the political whole. This essay investigates what that feeling might be and how it can be grown. I argue that Rousseau develops a model of the energy or character of the being capable of autonomy, capable of experiencing (...) themselves as part of the whole. That energy is a pathos of vigour, a strong sentiment and way of being that I develop from Rousseau’s educational precepts in Émile, which makes the citizen feel free and robust in dependence and boundedness. Autonomy, then, comes from the active exercise of oneself, physically and mentally, in an environment bounded by things, and this results in a sentiment of vigour, a vitality that produces confidence and poise, which then entices further activity. (shrink)

The international community has struggled to adopt a cohesive response to Islamist terrorism since the late 1990s. Member states of the United Nations have, therefore, been accorded significant discretion in how they react to terror threats. The United Kingdom, for example, has embraced a pro-security agenda in the number of legislative responses it has enacted, together with the breadth of criminalisation these statutes employ. The theory of the social contract is particularly applicable to the difficulties modern countries face in drawing (...) the line between liberty and security. Thomas Hobbes and John Locke traditionally theorise opposing ends of this spectrum. But contemporary security discourse has often overlooked the philosophical contribution of another theorist of the same era as Hobbes and Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Where does Rousseau present on the liberty/security divide? Do his writings represent a theoretical model for the UK’s pro-security response since 9/11? These are the questions this piece seeks to answer. (shrink)