Concept
The Social Contract
Overview
The Social Contract, originally published as On the Social Contract; or, Principles of Political Right (French: Du contrat social; ou, Principes du droit politique), is a 1762 French-language book by the Genevan philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The book theorizes about how to establish legitimate authority in a political community, that is, one compatible with individual freedom, in the face of the problems of commercial society, which Rousseau had already identified in his Discourse on Inequality (1755).
The Social Contract helped inspire political reforms or revolutions in Europe, especially in France. The Social Contract argued against the idea that monarchs were divinely empowered to legislate. Rousseau asserts that only the general will of the people has the right to legislate, for only under the general will can the people be said to obey only themselves and hence be free. Although Rousseau's notion of the general will is subject to much interpretive controversy, it seems to involve a legislature consisting of all adult members of the political community who are restricted to legislating general laws for the common good.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
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Therefore the social contract is the foundation of all civil society, and it is in the nature of this contract that we must seek the nature of the society formed by it.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile
States what The Social Contract is; the author is tied to The Social Contract in the knowledge graph.
When these distinctions have once been admitted, it is seen to be so untrue that there is, in the social contract, any real renunciation on the part of the individuals, that the position in which they find themselves as a result of the contract is really preferable to that in which they were before. Instead of a renunciation, they have made an advantageous exchange: instead of an uncertain and precarious way of…
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The social contract & discourses
The book is titled for The Social Contract; the author is tied to The Social Contract in the knowledge graph.
even in the field of Ruetli, they do not forget their common feelings; the party that arrive first indulge in a harmless little ebullition of parish vanity: "_We_ are first here!" they say, "we Unterwaldeners!" They have not charters or written laws to which they can appeal; but they have the traditionary rights of their fathers, and bold hearts and strong arms to make them good.
Thomas Carlyle, The Life of Friedrich Schiller Comprehending an Examination of His Works
The author is tied to The Social Contract in the knowledge graph; names The Social Contract.
Philosophers who discussed The Social Contract
Related ideas
- Executive (government)
- Cognition
- French Revolution
- Geneva
- Gospel
- Thomas Carlyle
- Western philosophy
- City-state
- Index Librorum Prohibitorum
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau
- Samuel von Pufendorf
- Monarchy
- Paris
- Political philosophy
- Maximilien Robespierre
- State of nature
- State (polity)
- Thomas Hobbes
- Voltaire
- Aeneid
- Aristocracy
- Social contract
- Representative democracy
- France
Place in the tradition
Part of French philosophy.