The Social Contract
Jean-Jacques Rousseau 1762
This political treatise examines how societies form and what gives governments the right to rule. The Social Contract opens with the claim that people are born free but live in chains.
202 pages 3h 55m reading time
- One of the most influential works of modern political thought.
- Argues that a government's right to rule comes only from the people it governs, who agree together to form a society.
- Introduces the idea of the "general will," the shared will of the people aimed at the common good, which Rousseau says all laws should express.
- Shaped the ideas behind the French Revolution, whose leaders quoted it and built on its idea that power belongs to the people.
- Helped lay the groundwork for modern democracy and the belief that ordinary citizens, not kings, are the true source of political power.
Burned in his hometown
Geneva, the city where Rousseau was born, burned the book and ordered his arrest, so he fled.
Part of a bigger plan
Rousseau said The Social Contract was taken from a much larger book on politics that he never finished.
Translated from French by G. D. H. Cole