The Social Contract

Citation

Rousseau, J.-J. (1762). The Social Contract, or Principles of Political Right (G. D. H. Cole, Trans.). Free official edition: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/46333

Chapter Summary

Context and Argument

Rousseau presents the treatise as a fragment of a longer work on political institutions that he abandoned. Its question is stated in the opening paragraph of Book I: whether, in the civil order, there can be a legitimate and reliable rule of administration, "men being taken as they are and laws as they might be", with justice and utility kept together. Chapter 1 opens with the claim that man is born free and is everywhere in chains, and asks not how this came about but what could make it legitimate.

The answer is a compact in which each person gives himself entirely to the community and so, obeying the general will, obeys himself alone. Book I builds the compact, Book II treats the sovereign and its laws, Book III separates the sovereign from the government that executes its decisions, and Book IV covers the institutions that keep the state alive. The last chapter leaves external relations (the law of nations, war, treaties) for another work.

Book I, Chapters 1–5: Why Force and Family Do Not Found Right

Rousseau rejects the family, the right of the strongest and slavery as foundations of legitimate authority. The family is natural only while children need their father, and force creates necessity, not right. Political right must therefore rest on convention, and Chapter 5 adds that any people's submission to a ruler presupposes an earlier agreement by which they became a people.

Book I, Chapters 6–9: The Compact, the Sovereign and the Civil State

Chapter 6 states the problem: to find a form of association that protects each member while leaving each as free as before. The solution is the total alienation of each associate to the community, with the formula that each puts his person and power under the supreme direction of the general will. The sovereign, the people acting as lawgiver, cannot injure its members, but individuals may have particular wills opposed to the general will, so anyone who refuses to obey it will be "forced to be free". Chapter 8 contrasts natural liberty with civil and moral liberty. Chapter 9 explains how the community's claim over goods turns possession into property, and ends by saying that the compact replaces natural inequality with moral and legal equality.

Book II, Chapters 1–4: Sovereignty and the General Will

Sovereignty is the exercise of the general will, so it cannot be alienated (Chapter 1) or divided (Chapter 2). Chapter 3 holds that the general will is always right, though the people can be deceived, and separates it from the will of all, the sum of private interests. Factions distort it, so partial associations should be avoided or multiplied. Chapter 4 sets the limits of sovereign power: it can impose only burdens that are common and in the common interest, and its acts must be general in both source and object.

Book II, Chapters 5–7: Life and Death, Law and the Legislator

Chapter 5 defends the state's right to demand a citizen's life and to execute criminals, on the ground that the compact aims at preservation and the offender has broken it. Chapter 6 defines law as an act of the general will on a general subject, which makes the city a republic whatever its form of administration. Chapter 7 introduces the legislator, an extraordinary figure who drafts laws without holding sovereign power and persuades without commanding.

Book II, Chapters 8–12: The People and the Kinds of Law

Laws must fit the people who receive them. Chapters 8–10 discuss when a people is ready for laws and how size, territory and population should be proportioned. Chapter 11 names liberty and equality as the ends of all legislation, and Chapter 12 divides laws into political, civil and criminal, plus a fourth kind, custom and opinion, that gives the others their force.

Book III, Chapters 1–9: Government and Its Forms

Government is an intermediary body between sovereign and subjects, which executes the laws. Chapters 2–3 divide it by the number of magistrates into democracy, aristocracy and monarchy, and Chapters 4–7 consider each form and their mixtures. Rousseau holds that no form suits every country (Chapter 8) and that the surest mark of good government is that its citizens increase in number (Chapter 9).

Book III, Chapters 10–14: Degeneration and the Sovereign's Assemblies

Government tends to usurp the sovereign's power, and the body politic eventually dies (Chapters 10–11). The sovereign acts only when the people is assembled, so Chapters 12–14 call for fixed periodic assemblies.

Book III, Chapters 15–18: Representatives and the Institution of Government

Chapter 15 rejects deputies as representatives of the sovereign: will cannot be represented, and a people that hires others to serve it for money is not far from its fall. Chapters 16–18 argue that setting up a government is a law, not a contract, so rulers are officers who can be appointed and removed, and they close with ways to check the government's usurpations.

Book IV, Chapters 1–4: The General Will, Voting, Elections and the Comitia

The general will is indestructible: it survives as long as citizens see themselves as one body, even when corruption obscures it. Chapter 2 reads near-unanimity as a sign of political health and says that only the compact itself requires unanimous consent. Chapter 3 compares election by lot and by choice, and Chapter 4 turns to the Roman assemblies.

Book IV, Chapters 5–9: Tribunate, Dictatorship, Censorship, Civil Religion and Conclusion

The tribunate preserves balance between government and people, the dictatorship lets the state act in a crisis, and the censorship expresses and guides public opinion. Chapter 8 traces the relation of religion to political society and proposes a civil profession of faith: the sovereign fixes a few articles, such as a beneficent providence, the life to come, and the sanctity of the contract and laws, and can banish anyone who does not hold them. Intolerance is the one negative dogma. The last chapter closes the treatise.

Key Concepts

Book I

• Social compact: the act of association by which individuals unite into a moral body, giving all they have to the whole.
• Natural, civil and moral liberty: freedom limited only by strength, freedom limited by the general will, and mastery of oneself through self-given law.

Book II

• General will versus will of all: the common interest as against the sum of private wills.
• Inalienable and indivisible sovereignty: will cannot be transferred or cut into parts.
• Legislator: the outsider who frames laws without exercising sovereignty.

Book III

• Government as agent: the executive is distinct from the sovereign and answerable to it.
• Representation: the claim that deputies cannot hold the people's legislative will.

Book IV

• Indestructible general will: it persists in the plain conduct of an upright people.
• Civil religion: a minimum public creed that supports civic duty.

Critical Analysis

Strengths

• A compact argument. The treatise is short and moves in a clear sequence from the problem in Chapter 6 to legislation, government, and the practices that sustain the state. Key terms (sovereign, government, general will) are defined early and used consistently.
• Careful distinctions. The separation of sovereign from government, of the general will from the will of all, and of law from decree supplies a vocabulary that later writers on democracy and legitimacy still use.
• Concrete institutions. Book IV turns the principles to Roman assemblies, the tribunate and the censorship.

Limitations

• Contested terms. Phrases such as "total alienation" and "forced to be free" are contested, and the book offers no procedure for deciding what the general will requires, apart from voting and avoiding faction.
• Tension between sovereignty and rights. The sovereign is "absolute, sacred and inviolable", and Chapter 4 leaves it as sole judge of what it needs to control, while also limiting it to general acts. How a citizen would protect himself against a majority is not settled.
• Small-state assumptions. The rejection of representatives and the emphasis on assemblies and on state size fit a small city-state. The civil religion's provision for exile, and death for those who profess the creed and then act against it, is severe by liberal standards.
• Period-bound examples. Many cases come from Rome, Sparta and eighteenth-century Europe and need notes or a commentary to follow.

Where It Fits in the Course

In this course on classics of political thought, The Social Contract belongs with the contract theorists: Hobbes's Leviathan and Locke's Second Treatise of Government. Rousseau makes the sovereign people itself the source of law, and he denies (Book III, Chapter 16) that government rests on a contract. It leads naturally to Mill's On Liberty and Tocqueville's Democracy in America, which examine what majorities may do to individuals. Plato's Republic and Aristotle's Politics are the ancient background for the interest in small republics, the legislator and civic virtue (Rousseau refers to Plato's Statesman in Book II), and Machiavelli, whom Rousseau cites, is a counterpoint.

How to Use This Book

The book is short and needs no prerequisites, but it is dense. A good first pass is Book I in full, then Book II, Chapters 1–7, then Book III, Chapters 1, 4 and 15–18, and finally Book IV, Chapters 1–2 and 8. Chapters on population, climate and Roman institutions can be skimmed on a first reading.

Make a glossary of the key terms as you go (sovereign, state, government, people, general will, will of all, law, decree) and write down each definition at the place where Rousseau gives it. For coursework citations, check page references against the Cambridge edition (Gourevitch) listed on this page. Reading Hobbes and Locke first makes Rousseau's departures easier to see.

Edition and Sources

This guide covers G. D. H. Cole's English translation with his introduction, published by Project Gutenberg as part of The Social Contract & Discourses (eBook #46333, https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/46333). The foreword and all four books were read. The Cambridge University Press volume named in the metadata, edited and translated by Victor Gourevitch, was not consulted. The guide revises and corrects the site's earlier notes on the work.