Rousseau Publishes Du Contrat Social
Rousseau published The Social Contract in 1762 and it was burned in Geneva and Paris within weeks. Its opening sentence is the most quoted in political philosophy: that man is born free and is everywhere in chains. The book's problem is how legitimate authority is possible at all, given that no one is naturally subject to anyone else. Its answer is an association in which each person gives himself entirely to the whole and, receiving the same from everyone else, obeys only himself and remains as free as before. Sovereignty then belongs to the people, is inalienable, cannot be represented, and expresses itself in the general will — which is not the sum of individual preferences but what the community wills as a community, and which a majority may get wrong. The consequences are stated without embarrassment. Anyone who refuses to obey it will be forced to be free; a civil religion is required; and representative government is a form of slavery, which is why he thought the English free only during elections. He also held that the arrangement suited small states and that his own examples were Sparta, Rome and Geneva. Both the Republic of Geneva and the parlement of Paris condemned it, and he spent years moving between countries. The book was little read before 1789 and enormously read after. Robespierre and Saint-Just used its vocabulary constantly, and the argument about whether it authorises the Terror or is merely quoted by it has run ever since. The other book he published in the same year was Émile, on education, which contained a chapter on natural religion that offended the church far more than the politics did. Both were condemned, and he spent the following years in Switzerland, England and hiding.
- Year: 1762 CE
- Category: Intellectual
