more on this theme | more from this thinker | more from this text
Full Idea
If you take away all freedom of the will, you strip a man's actions of all moral significance.
Gist of Idea
Without freedom of will actions lack moral significance
Source
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], I.4)
Book Ref
Rousseau,Jean-Jacques: 'The Social Contract', ed/tr. Cranston,Maurice [Penguin 1972], p.55
A Reaction
Rousseau is (in the context) guilty of the basic error of confusing freedom of action with freedom of the will. If the will has scope to act, it has freedom of action; if the will is not contrained in its decision by prior causes, it has freedom of will.