Rousseau's Social Contract Explained

The Social Contract (Du contrat social, 1762) is Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s most important work of political philosophy. It is also one of the most difficult and most controversial works in the history of modern thought. The book’s central concepts — the social contract, the general will, popular sovereignty, the citizen — have shaped the development of modern democratic thought, and they have provoked intense debate ever since their first articulation. This article explains the central ideas of the Social Contract and examines their political significance.

The Opening Question

The Social Contract opens with one of the most famous sentences in the history of political thought: “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.” This paradoxical statement sets the agenda for the book. Rousseau accepts the traditional natural-rights claim that human beings are naturally free, but he also recognizes that, in fact, human beings are subject to a variety of social, political, and economic dependencies. The question that the Social Contract is meant to answer is: how can human beings remain free despite being embedded in a network of social and political relationships?

Rousseau’s answer is that freedom is possible only in a properly constituted political community, in which each individual is subject to a law that he has prescribed for himself. The freedom of the citizen, for Rousseau, is not the natural freedom of the isolated individual; it is the moral and political freedom of the member of a self-governing community.

The Contract

The social contract, for Rousseau, is the agreement by which individuals come together to form a political community. Each individual, in the contract, alienates all of his rights to the community as a whole, and he receives them back as a member of the community. The result is not a loss of freedom but a transformation of freedom: the natural freedom of the individual is replaced by the moral and civic freedom of the citizen.

The contract is not, for Rousseau, a historical event. It is a philosophical idea that explains the legitimacy of political authority. The proper political community is one in which the people have, in effect, agreed to be governed by laws that they have prescribed for themselves. The people are both the authors and the subjects of the law.

The General Will

The most famous and most controversial concept of the Social Contract is the general will (volonté générale). The general will, for Rousseau, is the will of the citizenry as a whole directed at the common good. It is distinct from the “will of all” (volonté de tous), which is the sum of the private interests of the individuals.

The general will is, for Rousseau, a property of the collective body, not of any individual. It is the will that the citizens would have if they were properly informed, if they were not subject to the influence of partial interests, and if they were considering the matter from the perspective of the common good. The general will is always directed at the common good, and it is always right; but it requires that the citizens be properly informed and that they consider matters from the proper perspective.

The general will is expressed, for Rousseau, in the laws. The proper laws of a political community are those that express the general will, and the proper political life is one in which the citizens come together to consider the laws under which they will live.

Popular Sovereignty

The general will implies the principle of popular sovereignty, examined in detail in Rousseau’s General Will Explained. The people are the ultimate source of political authority. The sovereign, in the Social Contract, is not the king or the government; the sovereign is the people themselves.

This principle had revolutionary implications. If the people are the sovereign, then kings, priests, and aristocrats have no independent right to rule. The proper political system is one in which the people govern themselves, either directly or through representatives. The people can change their form of government, alter their laws, and replace their rulers as they see fit.

Rousseau’s principle of popular sovereignty had a profound influence on the French Revolution and on the development of modern democratic thought. The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of 1789, with its proclamation of the principle of popular sovereignty, was a direct descendant of Rousseau’s theory.

The Citizen and the Subject

The contrast between the citizen and the subject is central to Rousseau’s political thought. The subject of a king obeys the laws of another; the citizen of a republic obeys the laws that he has prescribed for himself. The proper political life is one in which all members of the community are citizens, not subjects.

The transformation of subjects into citizens is, for Rousseau, the proper work of the political community. This requires the development of civic virtue — the capacity of individuals to consider the common good rather than their private interests — and it requires a system of civic education that will develop this capacity in the members of the community.

The Controversies

The Social Contract has been read in many different ways, and the controversies about its proper interpretation have been intense. The book has been claimed as an inspiration by revolutionaries, democrats, and republicans; it has been condemned as a source of totalitarianism by conservatives, liberals, and pluralists.

The most important controversies concern the proper interpretation of the general will. Some readers have seen in it a noble conception of democratic citizenship, in which the citizens come together to consider the common good and to express their collective will in the laws. Other readers have seen in it a dangerous doctrine that can be used to justify the suppression of individual dissent in the name of the collective.

Rousseau's Social Contract Explained: Sovereignty, the General Will, and the Citizen