The Social Contract

Introduction

Rousseau published the treatise in Amsterdam in 1762, the same year as “Emile”; it was originally intended as part of a larger work on political institutions. Its four books argue that legitimate authority can only arise from an agreement in which each person gives himself wholly to the community and so obeys only the “general will”. Whoever refuses to obey the general will is to be “forced to be free”, one of the most debated phrases in political philosophy. The book also discusses the role of a founding legislator, forms of government and, in its last chapter, a “civil religion”. Geneva had it burned in 1762.

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Connections

Builds on

• Two Treatises of Government1689 · John Locke
• The Spirit of the Laws1748 · Montesquieu

Criticizes

• Leviathan1651 · Thomas Hobbes

Taken up in

• Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals1785 · Immanuel Kant
• Perpetual Peace1795 · Immanuel Kant
• On the New Citizen (Xinmin shuo)1902 · Liang Qichao
• Participation and Democratic Theory1970 · Carole Pateman
• A Theory of Justice1971 · John Rawls

Criticized in

• Elements of the Philosophy of Right1820 · Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
• Two Concepts of Liberty1958 · Isaiah Berlin
• The Sexual Contract1988 · Carole Pateman
• The Racial Contract1997 · Charles W. Mills

More works by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

• 1755Discourse on Inequality
• 1762Emile, or On Education
• 1782Confessions

Appears in

• Journey ‘What Is Just?’ · Stop 5 of 10