No music tonight :(
Summary: Rousseau writes a long essay (this is only an excerpt!) about how man's natural and highest virtue is liberty, but only in the exact way he describes it.
Commentary: Much like Mezzini's "I'm going to tell you exactly how to tell you exactly how to be an individual," Rousseau writes at length about exactly how to be at liberty. He makes a long list of assertions with no evidence (and even sometimes say that things are so obvious that it would be ridiculous for him to offer any).
Not to beat a dead horse, but the invitation to respectfully disagree is one of the big appeals of the whole project. Ending the first paragraph with an out of nowhere assertion and saying disagreement would be, "a supposition too ridiculous to deserve I should seriously refute it," isn't living up to that ideal. The same thing happens over and over throughout the essay. This really contrasts with "Federalist 1." While I think that Rousseau and Hamilton would probably agree on a lot of things (they use similar logic to reach similar conclusions in some places), Hamilton's style is much more open to actually discussion policy.
Rousseau also ping pongs a lot on what people can and can't want. All governments apparently begin voluntarily (the idea that someone could want a tyrannical government for any reason is apparently literally impossible) , but eventually become oppressive without the oppressed really knowing it. The idea that a government could be formed involuntarily (say by threats or conquest) is apparently impossible. Equally, people can't decide that they dislike their government and try to change it. If you somehow wind up with an oppressive government you clearly just don't know any better. It's like an extra shitty just world fallacy.
I think my favorite bit of dis-logic is his assertion that," property I cede to another becomes...foreign to me, and the abuse of which can no way affect me." So, if I sell you something, I can't in any way be affected by your misuse of it. If I sell you a gun and you shoot me. Not abuse. If I sell you a car I love and you crash it, I can't be upset. It makes no sense.
He spends the first 3/4 or so of the essay arguing that all government is started consensually, and then finally mentions, "that everything returns to the sole law of the strongest," near the end. It seems to ruin the entire (misguided) thesis of the rest of the essay.
All in all, a very poorly constructed argument that doesn't really seem to even know what it wants to argue. Maybe better in a different translation, but I don't see myself going to find it.
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