While pondering on Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s concept of social contract, I am being reminded by a very intriguing character from JK Rowling’s Harry Potter (2002), who I think resonates with the desire most of the humanity embodies — freedom. Dobby, the house-elf, who has been freed from years of servitude and slavery, represents man being compelled to submit to the general will so as to protect his freedom at the expense of inequality and oppression.
Rousseau, provided by Zeitlin (1968), recognizes man’s freedom as a fundamental ideal that is unattainable if it were to be reverted back to a so-called natural state. Accordingly, in The Social Contact, Rousseau postulates that as physical environment changes, man is compelled to bend to natural conditions and be absorbed to the collective will without generally losing his personal will. By becoming a member of the society, he enters into social contract in order for his freedom and equality be preserved. Say for example, one abiding to the rule of not stealing since everyone has the right to have one’s property and interest be protected. With the enforced social arrangements, man therefore is capable to maintain his limited freedom.
In my view, freedom is a socially constructed idea that operates on privilege of exercising “rights” without restraint; which follows that any man who is capable to buy a pizza has the freedom to eat it. Through the premise of the Rousseau’s Social Contract Theory (social unity founded on social liberty), as a privileged individual, exercising my own freedom in society equates a huge social responsibility. So as to ensure that my active submission to the general will may not be wasted and may not entail casualties, I must therefore be engaged in transforming the society by ways of: (1) offering more sensible relative solutions to issues with the use of my influence and purpose; (2) challenging the system — that is long corrupted by inequality and oppression (knowing who the “Dobbys” are and what ways we can alleviate the situation of the poor) and; (3) adhering to civil laws protecting equal rights.
While it is relatively mind-cracking to think how a constraint freedom be exercised in the same society that chained it, a thorough introspection on Rousseau’s Social Contract provides us a guide on becoming better social beings through information, instinct and purpose that can embody freedom for people who are chained like Dobby.
References:
Zeitlin. I., (1968). Ideology and the Development of Sociological Theory. Seventh Edition. New Jersey. Prentice Hall, 3–23.
Rowling, J. K., (2002) Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. New York Scholastic.
