The Social Contract

Rousseau’s central dilemma is how to build an ordered political community that is answerable to civil authority, without sacrificing an undue amount of humankind’s natural liberty. His love of natural liberty distinguishes him from political theorists like Hobbes, who believes that natural unfettered human freedom leads to a state of total war and lives that are “solitary, nasty, brutish, and short” (Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan. Baltimore: Penguin Books. 1968.). It follows, then, that humankind should give up its freedoms in return for protection from a sovereign authority, ideally a king who can act decisively and forcefully to preserve the state.

By contrast, one of the cornerstones of Rousseau’s philosophy is that people are naturally compassionate, but society corrupts this impulse. As humankind proliferated, competition for resources required humanity to cooperate if it expected to survive. This cooperation required individuals to form associations in which each member complied with the dictates of some authority. Theorists like Machiavelli argue that authority is rooted in brute force; the individual strong enough to seize power is entitled to wield it. But Rousseau rejects this doctrine as being wholly incompatible with natural rights and liberties, concluding, “To yield to force is an act of necessity, not of will—at the most, an act of prudence.