Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Social Contract, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Human Freedom and Society
Sovereignty, Citizenship, and Direct Democracy
Government and the Separation of Powers
National Longevity and Moral Virtue
Summary
Analysis
Rousseau declares that, at a certain point in human development, the “state of nature” becomes harder to maintain than to transform, and humans decide to work together “by uniting their separate powers in a combination strong enough to overcome any resistance.” All people must actively choose to enter this union, without losing their own power or freedom or putting themselves in danger. So this union must “defend the person and goods of each member with the collective force of all,” but also ensure that each of these members “remains as free as before.” In other words, people trade “natural freedom” for “civil freedom.” Everyone gives up “all [their] rights to the whole community,” entrusting the “general will” with their own interests and becoming “an indivisible part” of the political community.
By explaining the formation of society through a social contract, Rousseau resolves the paradox he posed at the beginning of Book 1: first, how can a state be legitimate if people are “everywhere in chains,” and secondly, if people naturally and inevitably seek to advance their own well-being and multiply their own freedom, how can they agree to be ruled by a society that limits what they can do? Under the social contract, a state is legitimate because people consent to give it authority, and while this state limits some kinds of freedom—namely the freedom to injure other people and take their things—it gives people the far more valuable freedom of knowing that they will not be injured or have their things taken away. In this sense, by agreeing to put limits on themselves, people actually gain far more than they lose: they can focus on intellectual, emotional, and moral pursuits rather than simply staying alive. Notably, Rousseau argues that nature gives way to society during periods of pressure and upheaval, when people are no longer able to survive without banding together. They form a kind of composite whole when they transfer their “rights to the whole community” and start to exercise their will to self-preservation together as a collective, rather than separately as individuals.
Themes
Rousseau emphasizes that there are various, slightly different terms for this community and its members: depending on the context, it can be called a body politic, nation, or republic (which are synonyms); a state (as a “passive” institution that is governed by laws); a sovereign (as a body that “active[ly]” makes laws); or a power (when compared with other nations). Its members are “a people” made of individual “citizens” who are also “subjects” to their collective sovereign power.
In this passage, Rousseau clarifies a lot of very important and delicate terminology very quickly. The terms “nation,” “republic,” and “body politic” all refer to the same thing, even though they have different connotations and origins. The most important distinction is between the sovereign, which is the core of the nation’s power and can essentially be pictured as a legislature, and the state, which is like the sum of people, things, property, institutions, and territory that makes up a country. In short, the sovereign creates laws that apply to the state. Both these words are very different from “government,” a term that Rousseau uses in an entirely different sense. (He uses “government” to refer to the administration or executive branch, not the state as a whole.) Finally, members of the state also take on a kind of dual personality: they are both individuals with personal rights who have to follow the law (or “subjects” of the state) and members of “the people” and the people’s government who set the law (they are “citizens” of the sovereign). Having explained how people are now capable of occupying all of these different categories at once—individual and collective, lawmaker and law-follower—Rousseau is now able to more coherently show what it means for a community to govern itself.
Themes
