Rousseau, Professor Derathé and Natural Law
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1467-9248.1972.tb01071.x |
| Date | 01 June 1972 |
| Author | David Cameron |
| Published date | 01 June 1972 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
ROUSSEAU, PROFESSOR DERATHB
AND NATURAL LAW
DAVID
CAMERON
Dent University
PROFESSOR Robert DerathC published his impressive and justly influential
study1 of Rousseau’s political thought in
1950,
and in the course
of
the two
succeeding decades it has achieved the status of
a
classic in Rousseau scholarship,
and has been instrumental in bringing about a re-evaluation of Rousseau’s
significance and his position in the intellectual currents of the eighteenth century.
To
give just two examples of the influence that
Jean-Jacques Rousseau et la
science politique de
son
temps
has had, both of them from the English-speaking
world, one can point to the work of the late
A.
B. C. Cobban and to that of
Professor
J.
H.
Burns. Cobban in
1964
brought out a completely revised edition
of a work2 on Rousseau that he had published originally thirty years before.
In
the preface to the revised edition, he comments that ‘the need
for
such drastic
alteration has arisen
.
. .
partly as a result
of
more recent contributions to the
study of Rousseau’s political thought, particularly in the writings of Professor
Roger [sic] DerathC.
. .
.’
In the same year Burns presented in this journal an
excellent survey3
of
the state of Rousseau studies in which he described
La
Sciencepolitique
as ‘a book of decisive importance’; he went on to argue that the
influence of the new perspective which DerathBs work opened up for readers was
by no means exhausted yet and noted that ‘the long-term effects will be all the
greater for the book’s moderation and rigorous scholarship’.4
Both Cobban and Bums mention specifically DerathBs natural-law interpreta-
tion as being
of
central importance in ‘the new way of looking at Rousseau’ that
La
Sciencepolitique
offers. Cobban refers to DerathC
as
one ‘who has for the first
time related Rousseau clearly, and
I
believe correctly, to his predecessors in the
tradition of Natural Law’.5 Burns for his part remarks that in
La
Sciencepolitique
‘the notorious rejection of natural law by Rousseau is re-interpreted as a rejection
of certain versions of the theory, not of the concept itself; and ample evidence is
adduced to show that Rousseau,
so
far from claiming
for
the state an absolute
power untrammelled by objective principles with independent authority, insists
on the reality of
a
moral order which is not created by the state.’6
1
Jean-Jacques Rousseau et la science politique de
son
temps,
Paris, Presses Universitaires de
France, 1950 (generally cited in this paper as
La
Science politique).
It has been re-issued by the
Librairie
Philosophique
J.
Vrin, 1970. All translations ofDerathband Rousseau in this paperare
my
own.
2
Rousseau and the
Modern
State,
London, George Allen and Unwin, 1964. See
also
his article,
‘New Light on the Political Thought
of
Rousseau’,
Political Science Quarterly,
Vol.
LXVI,
3
‘Du Cat6 de chez Vaughan: Rousseau Revisited‘,
Political Studies,
Vol. XII, June 1964,
4
Ibid.,
p. 232.
5
Rousseau and the Modern State,
Preface.
6
‘Du Cat6 de chez Vaughan’, p. 232.
1951, pp. 272-84.
pp. 229-34.
Political
Studies,
Vol.
XX,
No.
2
(195-201)
13
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