Jean Jaques Rousseau's Concept of Society and Government: A Study of the Social Contract

Andrea Becker, Maren Reyelt

• Publisher: GRIN Verlag
• Year: 2004
• eBook ISBN: 9783638292009
• Edition: 0
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political History & Theory
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Seminar paper from the year 2001 in the subject Politics - Political Theory and the History of Ideas Journal, grade: 1 - (A-), University of Wyoming (Department of Political Science), course: Recent Political Thought, language: English, abstract: "Man is born free and, and everywhere he is in chains. One believes himself the other's master, and yet is more a slave than they. How did this change come about? I do not know. What can itmake legitimate? I believe I can solve this."1Regarding this quoted statement, Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Of the Social Contract or Principlesof Political Right (in the following referred to as the Social Contract) of 1762 tries toexplain and solve the problems of the society Rousseau lived in with the idea of a somewhatdirect democracy and a radical popular sovereignty. Accordingly, the author's theoryis the counterpart to the early liberal Montesquieuian model of a state with a binding constitution, but also to the later classical liberal theories of democracy of John Stuart Mill. Ingeneral, Rousseau is known as a representative of the concept of direct democracy and asan intercessor of the identity of governors and the governed. Moreover, he pledged for theinseparability of popular sovereignty. 2Taking this into consideration, Rousseau's Social Contract – although censored andprohibited in his own time – remains a key source of democratic belief and is one of theclassics of political theory. His theories were viewed so controversially that they were evenpublicly burned. So, the Social Contract and Emile or on Education (1762) became victimsof the flames.3 This was, because basically, the Social Contract argues, that"the first and the most important consequences of the principles established so far is that thegeneral will [volonté générale] alone can direct the forces of the state according to the end of itsinstitution, which is the common good."41 Jean-Jacques Rousseau: The Social Contract and Other Later Political Writings, edited and translated byVictor Gourevitch, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (Cambridge Texts in the History of PoliticalThought), 1997, Book I, p. 41.2 Manfred G. Schmidt: Demokratietheorien. Eine Einführung, 2. Auflage, Opladen: Leske + Budrich, 1997, pp. 23-24.3 Merle L. Perkins: Jean-Jacques Rousseau on the Individual and Society, Lexington: University Press ofKentucky, 1974, p. 239.4 Rousseau: The Social Contract, Book II, p. 57.