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 explains that the social contract creates “a reciprocal commitment between society and the individual.” This means that a member of society is two things at the same time: a citizen “of the sovereign body” who is partially responsible for making laws and “a member of the state” who is a subject to the sovereign’s laws. Because the sovereign only makes laws, it is not fundamentally subject to any laws—including “the social contract itself,” which is not a law but an agreement. Of course, the sovereign also cannot violate the social contract, because the social contract “has given it existence” in the first place. Consequently, injuring any citizen is actually “attacking the whole” body politic, and so it is both citizens’ “duty” and in their “self-interest” to help the attacked member of society.
Here, Rousseau explicitly points out how joining society gives people a kind of split self, and therefore a split commitment between their own interests and the interests of their whole society. If this is confusing, self-control is a good analogy: someone can both control and be controlled by themselves. Society works in the same way, but Rousseau calls the controlling part the “sovereign” (and its members “citizens”) and the controlled part the “state” (and its members “subjects”). When society as a whole wants to control itself in order to advance itself, it passes a law as the sovereign, and then is charged with following that law as the state. But because laws must apply to the whole community, people must put the interests of society as a whole first when they choose those laws (although their personal interests do make up a small part of society’s overall interests).
Themes
While the sovereign is just made up of individuals and so cannot legitimately injure them, individuals often renege on their commitment to the common good when their private desires conflict with the public good. For instance, people might see having to pay taxes as a form of injury and “seek to enjoy the rights of a citizen without doing the duties of a subject.” This is why laws can force individuals to hold up their side of the bargain and “be forced to be free.” Society would not work without this process.
People’s dual character as citizens and subjects also explains why they can be forced to follow the law—for instance, by a police force and legal system—even when they do not necessarily want to in the moment. In fact, they have already agreed to the law by participating in the sovereign, so the force that makes them follow the law is promoting their freedom by helping them fulfill their promise as a member of the collective. However, readers might disagree with Rousseau and ask whether people might legitimately be able to disagree with the community’s decision and protest it by refusing to follow the general will. Rousseau’s answer might not be satisfying—he would likely say that it depends who is really doing what is in the best interests of the community as a whole, and that if the majority is not doing so, then it is not a legitimate sovereign.
Themes
