Jean-Jacques Rousseau: The Social
Contract (1763)
Excerpts Origin and Terms of the Social
Contract Man was born free, but everywhere he is in chains. This man believes
that he is the master of others, and still he is more of a slave than they
are. How did that transformation take place? I don't know. How may the
restraints on man become legitimate? I do believe I can answer that
question.... At a point in the state of nature when the obstacles to human
preservation have become greater than each individual with his own strength
can cope with . . ., an adequate combination of
forces must be the result of men coming together. Still, each man's power and
freedom are his main means of selfpreservation.
How is he to put them under the control of others without damaging himself .
. . ? This question might be rephrased: "How is a method of
associating to be found which will defend and protect-using the power of
all-the person and property of each member and still enable each member of
the group to obey only himself and to remain as free as before?" This is
the fundamental problem; the social contract offers a solution to it. The very scope of the action dictates the terms of this contract and
renders the least modification of them inadmissible, something making them
null and void. Thus, although perhaps they have never been stated in so man)
words, they are the same everywhere and tacitly conceded and recognized
everywhere. And so it follows that each individual immediately recovers hi
primitive rights and natural liberties whenever any violation of the social
contract occurs and thereby loses the contractual freedom for which he
renounced them. The social contract's terms, when they are well understood, can be
reduced to a single stipulation: the individual member alienates himself
totally to the whole community together with all his rights. This is first
because conditions will be the same for everyone when each individual gives
himself totally, and secondly, because no one will be tempted to make that
condition of shared equality worse for other men.... Once this multitude is united this way into a body, an offense
against one of its members is an offense against the body politic. It would
be even less possible to injure the body without its members feeling it. Duty
and interest thus equally require the two contracting parties to aid each
other mutually. The individual people should be motivated from their double
roles as individuals and members of the body, to combine all the advantages
which mutual aid offers them.... Individual Wills and the General
Will In reality, each individual may have one particular will as a man
that is different from-or contrary to-the general will which he has as a
citizen. His own particular interest may suggest other things to him than the
common interest does. His separate, naturally independent existence may make
him imagine that what he owes to the common cause is an incidental
contribution - a contribution which will cost him
more to give than their failure to receive it would harm the others. He may
also regard the moral person of the State as an imaginary being since it is
not a man, and wish to enjoy the rights of a citizen without performing the
duties of a subject. This unjust attitude could cause the ruin of the body
politic if it became widespread enough. So that the social pact will not become meaningless words, it tacitly
includes this commitment, which alone gives power to the others: Whoever
refuses to obey the general will shall be forced to obey it by the whole body
politic, which means nothing else but that he will be forced to be free. This
condition is indeed the one which by dedicating each
citizen to the fatherland gives him a guarantee against being personally
dependent on other individuals. It is the condition which all political
machinery depends on and which alone makes political undertakings legitimate.
Without it, political actions become absurd, tyrannical, and subject to the
most outrageous abuses. Whatever benefits he had in the state of nature but lost in the civil
state, a man gains more than enough new ones to make up for them. His
capabilities are put to good use and developed; his ideas are enriched, his
sentiments made more noble, and his soul elevated to the extent that-if the
abuses in this new condition did not often degrade him to a condition lower
than the one he left behind-he would have to keep blessing this happy moment
which snatched him away from his previous state and which made an intelligent
being and a man out of a stupid and very limited animal.... |