Jean Jacques Rousseau and the Development of Modern Idea of Citizenship

The mainstream approach in interpreting the Rousseau's political philosophy is one that stipulates the understanding of Rousseau to the understanding of his "essential distinction" from Hobbes and Lock. Therefore in this approach, the understanding of the modern idea of citizenship which underwent a fundamental evolution through Rousseau's philosophy is dependent on the understanding of that "essential distinction". But we should not ignore the tight relationship between the Rousseau's political philosophy and Hobbes's new political design, in spite of its complexity and multilayered character. In fact Rousseau just like his modern predecessors confirms that human being in naturally apolitical and that for analyzing human condition we must begin with the idea of "individual". In this article, our purpose is to show that the understanding of Rousseau's political philosophy and thereby understanding of the idea of citizenship in Rousseau's thought is comprehensible more through the development and the radicalization of Hobbes's idea of the individual than through the "essential distinction". According to our reasoning the idea of "the individual possessed unconditional right in the state of nature" as the foundation of the new approach to politics is just the same idea hinders us to take this "distinction" into account as an "essential" one. Therefore what distinguishes Rousseauian citizenship from Hobbesian citizenship is the development and the radicalization of Hobbesian premises and leading to the conception of citizenship turned into second nature of the modern man.