Reading Rousseau with Žižek. The Contract, the Lawmaker and the Contradictions of the Social Contract

Andreas Beck Holm

Reading Rousseau with Žižek. The Contract, the Lawmaker and the Contradictions of the Social Contract

Andreas Beck Holm

Abstract

Jean-Jacques Rousseau's main work in political philosophy, the Social Contract, contains two beginnings; on the one hand, it commences, quite conventionally, with a social contract between individuals, on the other hand it also states that a lawmaker needs to precede the agreement of such a contract. This curious co-existence of two beginnings in the text has usually been ignored or played down by interpreters. This article, on the other hand, presents a reading of their interplay inspired by Zizek's theory of ideology. It demonstrates how one of the beginnings, if seen from this point of view, may be understood as the truth about the other, and how the figure of the lawmaker specifically reveals the text as torn apart by contradictory internal tendencies.

Keywords

Philosophy; Rousseau; Žižek; Ideology, Lawmaker, Social Contract.

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