College of Behavioral & Social Sciences
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Item Reluctant Realist: Jean-Jacques Rousseau on International Relations(2010) Paddags, Rene; Butterworth, Charles E.; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Jean-Jacques Rousseau's best known political work, the Social Contract, begins and ends by pointing to its incompleteness. Rousseau indicates that the Social Contract's completion would require an elaboration of the principles of international relations. However, Rousseau neither completes the Social Contract nor explicitly sets forth a theory of international relations. The contradiction between pointing to the necessary completion and its simultaneous absence can be solved by arguing that the principles of international relations contradicted those of the Social Contract. A close textual analysis of the pertinent works, Rousseau's Social Contract, the Discourse on Inequality, the Geneva Manuscript, the State of War, and the Abstract and Judgment of the Abbé de Saint-Pierre's Plan for Perpetual Peace, demonstrates this thesis. The argument begins by showing the presence of two diverging principles in the Social Contract and their implications for international relations. The dominant set of principles of political self-rule necessarily leads to an international state of war. A secondary set of principles of security leads to the demand of international peace. Rousseau rejects the international implications of the latter set of principles, which can take the form of the Roman Catholic Church, balance of power, empire, and commerce as sources of international order. Instead, Rousseau strongly suggests natural law and confederations as solutions consistent with political self-rule. Yet, even these solutions fail ultimately to overcome the state of war. Rousseau's intention in suggesting possible solutions to the international state of war was to moderate the potentially deleterious effects of democratic self-rule. The incompleteness of the Social Contract is therefore due to the structure of international relations, whose principles are at the same time constituted by political societies and contradicted by them. This implies that the pursuits of security and freedom are mutually exclusive, contradicting in particular Immanuel Kant's claim of their compatibility and contradicting those contemporary theories of international relations derived from Kant.Item The Role of Religion in Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America(2004-11-17) Tishman, Primrose Pratt; Butterworth, Charles E; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)ABSTRACT Title of Dissertation: THE ROLE OF RELIGION IN ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE'S DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA Primrose Pratt Tishman, Doctor of Philosophy, 2004 Dissertation directed by: Professor Charles E. Butterworth Department of Government and Politics This study explores the influence of Montesquieu, Rousseau and Pascal on Tocqueville's religious teaching to show that it has two components: (a) to provide for order in the disordered democratic state and (b) to satisfy a primordial human need for the eternal. The analysis follows Tocqueville's own method of contrast and analogy to show how the harmonious combination of the teaching of the enlightenment with religion in America on the one hand and their discordant linking in France on the other produced opposite consequences for liberty. The study examines why Tocqueville insists that the mutual dependence of religion and liberty is more necessary in democracy than in aristocracy. Second, it demonstrates how Montesquieu's teaching helps Tocqueville to explain the American religious phenomenon, which combines an equal fervor for material well-being with systematic piety. Third, it explores how Tocqueville modifies Rousseau's teaching on opinion to promote religion as the appropriate source of moral authority in democracy. Fourth, it uncovers how Tocqueville combines selected elements of Rousseau's natural religion with Montesquieu's concept of virtue as enlightened interest and the moralistic language of Pascal to encourage religious habits that conform to the inclinations of the democratic intellect and sentiment. Finally, it explores how Tocqueville's teaching can help thoughtful Americans deliberate about the moral issues that confront the U.S. today. Tocqueville's teaching draws attention to the precarious position of liberty in egalitarian societies where the instinct for individual independence causes human beings to become amoral and apolitical. Equality induces them to become totally absorbed with the pursuit of material well-being and thus to direct all personal intellectual resources toward that goal, making common opinion the sole guide of reason in all other matters. Moreover, since laws usually reflect changing opinions Tocqueville affirms that religion-- the only fixed point around which human beings can orient themselvesmust be used to sustain liberty by making it the foundation of public opinion.