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 contends that there is an inevitable tension between the government and the sovereign (just like the tension between the particular and general wills of citizens and magistrates). Ultimately, he says, the government will always defeat the sovereign, “just as old age and death destroy the body of a man.” And “a government degenerates” when the government itself shrinks—after it starts losing power and activity, it consolidates into fewer people’s hands—or when the state dissolves because either the government (as a body) or its members (as individuals) “usurps the sovereign power.” This dissolves the social contract and creates anarchy, or more specifically ochlocracy, oligarchy, or tyranny (if the government started out as a democracy, aristocracy, or monarchy, respectively). “Tyrant,” Rousseau clarifies, is often used to mean any powerful king who ignores justice, but it specifically means someone who illegitimately usurps power.
The government and the sovereign complement one another by balancing power, but this balance of power is really like a tug-of-war: both inevitably seek to increase their power at the expense of the other. Namely, magistrates in the government will constantly try to seize and consolidate power, because of what they stand to gain through corruption. Ultimately, their goal is to “usurp” power—which means to prevent the people from acting as the sovereign and instead make laws in the people’s place. (Ochlocracy, oligarchy, and tyranny are respective terms for what democracy, aristocracy, or monarchy become when the government takes over the sovereign’s role.) Meanwhile, the people must constantly withstand these attempts to usurp power, and their capacity to do so relies on their civic culture and sense of moral fortitude. The people fundamentally make a nation legitimate or illegitimate by fulfilling the role of the sovereign, which means that when their power is usurped, the nation ceases to be legitimate.
Themes
