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.”
Similar Books
Thematic connections across eras and genres — books that talk to each other.
Leviathan
Thomas Hobbes
The predecessor contract theory; Rousseau's general will replaces Hobbes's sovereign as the repository of collective authority, producing radically different political conclusions from a similar starting point
The Prince
Niccolò Machiavelli
Earlier realist political analysis; Machiavelli addresses the conduct of princes while Rousseau addresses the foundations of legitimate authority — complementary rather than directly opposed
The Communist Manifesto
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
Later revolutionary political text that Rousseau's general will helped make thinkable; Marx engages Rousseau critically in 'On the Jewish Question' (1843), finding in Rousseau the 'political emancipation' that requires transcendence
Democracy in America
Alexis de Tocqueville
Later (1835, 1840) analysis of a democratic society informed by Rousseauian concerns about popular sovereignty's relationship to individual liberty, without being a straightforward Rousseauian text
Second Treatise of Government
John Locke
The intermediate contract theory between Hobbes and Rousseau; Locke's emphasis on individual natural rights and limited government differs sharply from Rousseau's emphasis on collective general will
A Theory of Justice
John Rawls
Contemporary (1971) contract theory that locates itself in the Locke-Rousseau-Kant tradition; Rawls's 'original position' is the most influential modern reworking of the contract device Rousseau deploys