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WorkJean-Jacques Rousseau

The Social Contract and Discourses

Rousseau's answer to the oldest question in politics — what makes a government legitimate? — whose answer, the general will, later became the watchword of the French Revolution.

by Jean-Jacques Rousseau1,160 passages held

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Original title
Du contrat social, ou Principes du droit politique
First published
(aged 50)
Original language
French

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Overview

Every political order Rousseau could see around him rested authority on something he thought could not bear the weight: on force, on conquest, on the supposed right of the strongest, or on God. The Social Contract of 1762 sets out to find the one ground that could make obedience legitimate — an agreement among equals in which each person, giving himself to all, gives himself to no one and receives back a share of a common sovereignty. Rousseau calls this the general will, and it is not the sum of what people happen to want but what they will as members of a whole. From it he draws conclusions that alarmed monarchies: sovereignty belongs to the people and can never be handed off to a king or a parliament. It opens on the line everyone half-remembers, that man is born free and is everywhere in chains, and it carries a notorious idea near its heart — that a people can rightly compel one of its members to be free — read ever since as either the charter of democracy or the germ of its tyranny. France banned the book in 1762, and Geneva burned it alongside Emile. Then it was largely ignored, until the generation of 1789 rediscovered it and the Jacobins made the general will their slogan; in 1794 France carried Rousseau's remains to the Panthéon.

Key concepts

What is the general will?

It is what a people wills as a single body directed at the common good, distinct from the will of all, which is merely the sum of private interests. The general will is always right in aiming at the good, though a people can be deceived about what serves it. Rousseau makes it the true sovereign, the standard by which law is legitimate and the source of a citizen's freedom.

What is the social contract in Rousseau's sense?

It is the founding act by which a scattered multitude becomes a people: each person gives himself and his rights wholly to the whole community, and because everyone gives equally to all, no one is subjected to another. In return each receives a share of the common sovereignty and the protection of the general will. The contract creates legitimate authority where force and conquest never could.

What does 'forced to be free' actually mean?

Rousseau holds that whoever refuses to obey the general will may be compelled to by the whole body, and this compulsion is no more than forcing him to be free — to follow the law he as a citizen truly wills, rather than the private inclination that would enslave him. Critics read it as authorising coercion in freedom's name; defenders read it as the ordinary force any law requires.

Why can't sovereignty be represented?

Because sovereignty is the exercise of the general will, and a will cannot be transferred or handed to a deputy without ceasing to be one's own. The people may appoint government to execute the laws, but the moment they let a king or parliament will for them, they cease to be free and the state loses its legitimacy. Sovereignty stays inalienably with the assembled people.

What are natural, civil, and moral liberty?

Natural liberty is the unlimited right of the state of nature, bounded only by one's strength; entering society, a person exchanges it for civil liberty, limited by the general will, and gains moral liberty — obedience to a law one prescribes to oneself. Rousseau counts the trade a gain: natural freedom is precarious and lonely, while moral freedom under self-made law is what makes a person truly his own master.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

What makes a government legitimate

Man is born free, yet is everywhere in chains — so what could ever make one person's obedience to another rightful rather than merely forced? Rousseau hunts for the one ground that holds.

Every order Rousseau could see rested authority on something he judged unable to bear the weight — force, conquest, the right of the strongest, or God. None turns power into obligation, since might creates no duty. His answer is a covenant among equals in which each, giving himself to all, gives himself to no one, and receives back a share of a common sovereignty. Legitimacy comes not from who rules but from an agreement the ruled could rationally will. It is the question that opens Western political thought, and Rousseau's version reset the terms of every argument after him.

  • authority
  • political legitimacy
  • social contract
  • sovereignty
  • law
  • justice
  • political theory
  • political philosophy
  • political authority

Enter a dialogue

The general will

When a people decides together, is there something it truly wills as a whole, distinct from the sum of private wishes? On this idea Rousseau builds a sovereignty that cannot be handed off — and a famous danger.

The general will is not what people happen to want, nor the tally of individual interests, but what they will as members of one body aimed at the common good. From it Rousseau draws conclusions that alarmed monarchies: sovereignty belongs to the people and can never be transferred to a king or a parliament. And he carries it to the notorious line that a people may rightly compel a member to be free — read ever since as either the charter of democracy or the germ of its tyranny. The concept is his most powerful and his most contested single move.

  • general will
  • sovereignty
  • citizenship
  • political legitimacy
  • equality
  • political theory
  • political philosophy
  • ethics

Enter a dialogue

Freedom under a law you give yourself

How can obeying the law be anything but a loss of liberty? Rousseau claims the right law does not shrink freedom but completes it, exchanging natural independence for something he thinks worth more.

Entering the civil state, a person trades the natural liberty of doing whatever he can for a moral liberty in which he answers only to a law he has helped make. To obey a rule one has prescribed to oneself, Rousseau argues, is freedom, not subjection, and it requires the equality and civic virtue that let citizens will the common good over private advantage. Against the view that freedom is simply the absence of restraint, he makes self-legislation its highest form. This is why the republic he wants demands more of its citizens than any monarchy does of its subjects.

  • liberty
  • virtue
  • civic virtue
  • law
  • morality
  • equality
  • citizenship
  • nature

Enter a dialogue

Within this work

passages held
1,160
distinct concepts
1,338
by passages held, corpus-wide
#18

What this book thinks together

Every arc around the wheel is one concept in this book. A ribbon joins two the text reaches for together, and its width is how many of its passages hold both. Strongest: governance with political theory.
Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 16 pairings. 138 shared passages in all. 84 weaker pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
ConceptPaired conceptShared passages
governancepolitical theory16
general willsovereignty15
lawsovereignty15
social contractsovereignty15
general willsocial contract10
justicesocial contract10
governancesovereignty9
justicelaw9
political legitimacysocial contract9
political theorysovereignty7
political legitimacysovereignty6
general willjustice4
general willlaw4
governancejustice3
governancepolitical legitimacy3
lawsocial contract3

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

  1. 1755 A Discourse Upon the Origin and the Foundation of the Inequality Among Mankind (Discours sur l'origine et les fondements de l'inégalité parmi les hommes)

    Rousseau's second and more ambitious Discourse, written for the Academy of Dijon and published in 1755. It lays the account of natural man and the origin of property on which the Social Contract would later build a politics.

     FREN
  2. 1756 A Lasting Peace through the Federation of Europe and The State of War

    Two short pieces from Rousseau's engagement with the Abbé de Saint-Pierre's peace project: the Abstract of 1761 and the Judgment published only in 1782, with the fragment The State of War. Slight beside his major books, but the seed of his thinking on war between states.

     FREN
  3. 1762 Emile, or Education (Émile, ou De l'éducation)

    Rousseau's longest book and the one he valued most, published in 1762 the same season as the Social Contract and condemned with it. Read now as a founding text of modern child-centred education.

     FREN
  4. 1762 The Social Contract and Discourses (Du contrat social, ou Principes du droit politique) you are here FREN
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