The Social Contract
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1762)
“'Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.' Rousseau's 1762 treatise converts this opening provocation into the most radical and most dangerous contract theory of the Enlightenment — a blueprint for popular sovereignty that the French Revolution would carry in its pocket, and that twentieth-century critics would blame for the Terror.”
Essay Questions & Food for Thought
12questions designed to challenge assumptions and provoke original thinking. These can't be answered from a summary — you need the actual text.
Define the general will and distinguish it from the will of all. What is gained, analytically, by making this distinction?
What does Rousseau mean by 'forced to be free' (Book I.7)? Is the phrase coherent, or does it contain an internal contradiction?
Compare Rousseau's social contract with Hobbes's and Locke's. How do the three theories differ in who covenants with whom, what rights are alienated, and what powers the resulting sovereign holds?
How did the French Revolution — particularly the Jacobin period of 1793-1794 — realize or betray Rousseau? Draw on specific examples.
Assess Berlin's 'positive liberty' critique of Rousseau. Is the 'forced to be free' formulation adequate grounds for Berlin's worry that Rousseau's theory authorizes illiberal coercion?
What is Rousseau's account of the Legislator, and why is this figure necessary to his theory? Can his theory dispense with the Legislator, or is the figure indispensable?
Rousseau argues that representative government is a form of self-alienation: 'The moment a people gives itself representatives, it is no longer free' (III.15). Is direct democracy possible in a state larger than Geneva? If not, what are the implications for his argument?
What does the civil religion chapter (IV.8) reveal about the limits of Rousseau's liberalism? How do you reconcile the proposal's tolerant minimalism with its illiberal capital punishment for apostasy?
Compare the general will with modern concepts of democratic legitimacy. Is Rousseau's general will a useful category for contemporary democratic theory, or is it too abstract and demanding?
Rousseau's opening sentence — 'Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains' — is one of the most-quoted lines in political writing. Analyze the sentence's rhetorical and philosophical construction. Why has it remained so resonant?
Rousseau rejects Montesquieu's mixed government and separation of powers. Is Rousseau's critique of mixed government philosophically compelling, or is it based on a misunderstanding of what Montesquieu proposed?
The Social Contract was condemned and burned in both Paris and Geneva within weeks of its publication. What does this reception reveal about which of Rousseau's claims the 18th-century authorities found most threatening?