The “body politic” is a longstanding metaphor for the state or nation that extends back to ancient Sanskrit and Greek philosophy. (“Body” is the noun and “politic” is the adjective, so “body politic”—or “corps politique” in French—simply means “political body.”) This term compares a state to the human body, suggesting that a nation is made of different people and institutions who serve different functions, just like different body parts work in harmony to make up a human being. Rousseau uses this same metaphor throughout The Social Contract: for instance, he says that nations are like humans because they all eventually die, although the strongest ones live the longest, and he compares the legislative branch (or sovereign) to the heart (because it has to function “in perpetuity” for the whole “body” to remain alive). For Rousseau, then, the “body politic” metaphor is firstly a way of clearly explaining what a state is—it is a corporation or “artificial person” made up of a large number of citizens working together, under the equal conditions they established in the social contract. But Rousseau also uses this metaphor to cite his philosophical predecessors and, most importantly, to highlight his differences from them. Different philosophers have used this metaphor differently: for example, Thomas Hobbes, who put a drawing of the body politic metaphor on the cover of his book Leviathan, famously thought that a king should have absolute power as the sovereign (which he compared to the head, not the heart). But Rousseau, in contrast, thinks the people are sovereign, so his different use of the body politic symbol expresses his different philosophy. Indeed, Rousseau imagines a body politic made up of consenting, equal citizens in order to suggest that a society can be unified, coherent, and governed by and for the people.
The Human Body and the Body Politic Quotes in The Social Contract
Born as I was the citizen of a free state and a member of its sovereign body, the very right to vote imposes on me the duty to instruct myself in public affairs, however little influence my voice may have in them. And whenever I reflect upon governments, I am happy to find that my studies always give me fresh reasons for admiring that of my own country.
The act of association consists of a reciprocal commitment between society and the individual, so that each person, in making a contract, as it were, with himself, finds himself doubly committed, first, as a member of the sovereign body in relation to individuals, and secondly as a member of the state in relation to the sovereign. Here there can be no invoking the principle of civil law which says that no man is bound by a contract with himself, for there is a great difference between having an obligation to oneself and having an obligation to something of which one is a member.
Hence, in order that the social pact shall not be an empty formula, it is tacitly implied in that commitment—which alone can give force to all others—that whoever refuses to obey the general will shall be constrained to do so by the whole body, which means nothing other than that he shall be forced to be free; for this is the necessary condition which, by giving each citizen to the nation, secures him against all personal dependence, it is the condition which shapes both the design and the working of the political machine, and which alone bestows justice on civil contracts—without it, such contracts would be absurd, tyrannical and liable to the grossest abuse.
The public force thus needs its own agent to call it together and put it into action in accordance with the instructions of the general will, to serve also as a means of communication between the state and the sovereign, and in a sense to do for the public person what is done for the individual by the union of soul and body. This is the reason why the state needs a government, something often unhappily confused with the sovereign, but of which it is really only the minister.
What, then, is the government? An intermediary body established between the subjects and the sovereign for their mutual communication, a body charged with the execution of the laws and the maintenance of freedom, both civil and political.
Such is the natural and inevitable tendency of the best constituted governments. If Sparta and Rome perished, what state can hope to last for ever? If we wish, then, to set up a lasting constitution, let us not dream of making it eternal. We can succeed only if we avoid attempting the impossible and flattering ourselves that we can give to the work of man a durability that does not belong to human things.
The Human Body and the Body Politic Symbol Timeline in The Social Contract
