Brad DeLong cited you, which led me to this post. I don't quite read Berlin the same way you do. I read Berlin as viewing negative liberty as hand tools: safe even for klutzes and useful, but of limited effectiveness. Positive liberty, in my view of his view, was more like power tools: very useful if used properly, but dangerous if not. Think chainsaw. Will polities "read the manual before using"? Opinions differ.
>The claim that the interests of the state may justify the unwilling sacrifice of the life of a citizen, Rousseau says
>>The social treaty has for its end the preservation of the contracting parties. He who wills the end wills the means also, and the means must involve some risks, and even some losses. He who wishes to preserve his life at others expense should also, when it is necessary, be ready to give it up for their sake. Furthermore, the citizen is no longer the judge of the dangers to which the law desires him to expose himself; and when the prince says to him: "It is expedient for the State that you should die," he ought to die, because it is only on that condition that he has been living in security up to the present, and because his life is no longer a mere bounty of nature, but a gift made conditionally by the State.
...from The Social Contract, sound quite different. Do you know what happened there?
Rousseau does a less than fantastic job of explaining himself here, but I think "the right of life and death" section you've quoted, despite referring to what is "expedient for the State", is really only talking about threats to the lives of the citizens.
Here's the previous paragraph, which I think makes things a little more clear:
> The question is often asked how individuals, having no right to dispose of their own lives, can transfer to the Sovereign a right which they do not possess. The difficulty of answering this question seems to me to lie in its being wrongly stated. Every man has a right to risk his own life in order to preserve it. Has it ever been said that a man who throws himself out of the window to escape from a fire is guilty of suicide? Has such a crime ever been laid to the charge of him who perishes in a storm because, when he went on board, he knew of the danger?
This reads to me as justifying something like requiring service in a citizen militia, for instance, rather than arbitrary individual sacrifice. "The prince", in particular, is not actually an individual person - Rousseau says shortly afterwards that "every legitimate government is republican" - but the executive function of the government as a whole.
Note also the emphasis on reciprocity: we are talking about "he who wishes to preserve his life at others expense" here. Now compare to the Discourse, where we are instead talking about sacrifice for a separate "state" interest.
> It may be said that it is good that one should perish for all. I am ready to admire such a saying when it comes from the lips of a virtuous and worthy patriot, voluntarily and dutifully sacrificing himself for the good of his country: but if we are to understand by it, that it is lawful for the government to sacrifice an innocent man for the good of the multitude, I look upon it as one of the most execrable rules tyranny ever invented, the greatest falsehood that can be advanced, the most dangerous admission that can be made, and a direct contradiction of the fundamental laws of society. So little is it the case that any one person ought to perish for all, that all have pledged their lives and properties for the defence of each, in order that the weakness of individuals may always be protected by the strength of the public, and each member by the whole State. Suppose we take from the whole people one individual after another, and then press the advocates of this rule to explain more exactly what they mean by the body of the State, and we shall see that it will at length be reduced to a small number of persons, who are not the people, but the officers of the people, and who, having bound themselves by personal oath to perish for the welfare of the people, would thence infer that the people is to perish for their own.
Brad DeLong cited you, which led me to this post. I don't quite read Berlin the same way you do. I read Berlin as viewing negative liberty as hand tools: safe even for klutzes and useful, but of limited effectiveness. Positive liberty, in my view of his view, was more like power tools: very useful if used properly, but dangerous if not. Think chainsaw. Will polities "read the manual before using"? Opinions differ.
>The claim that the interests of the state may justify the unwilling sacrifice of the life of a citizen, Rousseau says
>>The social treaty has for its end the preservation of the contracting parties. He who wills the end wills the means also, and the means must involve some risks, and even some losses. He who wishes to preserve his life at others expense should also, when it is necessary, be ready to give it up for their sake. Furthermore, the citizen is no longer the judge of the dangers to which the law desires him to expose himself; and when the prince says to him: "It is expedient for the State that you should die," he ought to die, because it is only on that condition that he has been living in security up to the present, and because his life is no longer a mere bounty of nature, but a gift made conditionally by the State.
...from The Social Contract, sound quite different. Do you know what happened there?
Rousseau does a less than fantastic job of explaining himself here, but I think "the right of life and death" section you've quoted, despite referring to what is "expedient for the State", is really only talking about threats to the lives of the citizens.
Here's the previous paragraph, which I think makes things a little more clear:
> The question is often asked how individuals, having no right to dispose of their own lives, can transfer to the Sovereign a right which they do not possess. The difficulty of answering this question seems to me to lie in its being wrongly stated. Every man has a right to risk his own life in order to preserve it. Has it ever been said that a man who throws himself out of the window to escape from a fire is guilty of suicide? Has such a crime ever been laid to the charge of him who perishes in a storm because, when he went on board, he knew of the danger?
This reads to me as justifying something like requiring service in a citizen militia, for instance, rather than arbitrary individual sacrifice. "The prince", in particular, is not actually an individual person - Rousseau says shortly afterwards that "every legitimate government is republican" - but the executive function of the government as a whole.
Note also the emphasis on reciprocity: we are talking about "he who wishes to preserve his life at others expense" here. Now compare to the Discourse, where we are instead talking about sacrifice for a separate "state" interest.
> It may be said that it is good that one should perish for all. I am ready to admire such a saying when it comes from the lips of a virtuous and worthy patriot, voluntarily and dutifully sacrificing himself for the good of his country: but if we are to understand by it, that it is lawful for the government to sacrifice an innocent man for the good of the multitude, I look upon it as one of the most execrable rules tyranny ever invented, the greatest falsehood that can be advanced, the most dangerous admission that can be made, and a direct contradiction of the fundamental laws of society. So little is it the case that any one person ought to perish for all, that all have pledged their lives and properties for the defence of each, in order that the weakness of individuals may always be protected by the strength of the public, and each member by the whole State. Suppose we take from the whole people one individual after another, and then press the advocates of this rule to explain more exactly what they mean by the body of the State, and we shall see that it will at length be reduced to a small number of persons, who are not the people, but the officers of the people, and who, having bound themselves by personal oath to perish for the welfare of the people, would thence infer that the people is to perish for their own.