DOCUMENTE I
“Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains... The problem is to find a form of
association which will defend and protect with the whole common force the person and goods
of each associate, and in which each, while uniting himself with all, may still obey himself
alone, and remain as free as before." This is the fundamental problem of which the Social
Contract provides the solution. The clauses of this contract...properly understood, may be
reduced to one - the total alienation of each associate, together with all his rights, to the
whole community; for... "each of us puts his person and all his power in common under the
supreme direction of the general will, and, in our corporate capacity, we receive each
member as an indivisible part of the whole..." In order then that the social compact may not
be an empty formula, it tacitly includes the undertaking, which alone can give force to the
rest, that whoever refuses to obey the general will shall be compelled to do so by the whole
body... the general will alone can direct the State according to the object for which it was
instituted, i. e., the common good"
Jean Jacques Rousseau, "The Social Contract" (1762) Marvin Perry, et al, Eds. Sources of
the Western Tradition, 3rd Ed.. Vol. II: From the Renaissance to the Present. Boston:
Houghton Mifflin Co. 1995.
5. What does Rousseau mean by the "general will"? Why would some
consider Rousseau a "champion of democracy” while others as a precursor
to totalitarianism (dictatorship)?