Jean-Jacques Rousseau's The social contract

¶ … life is revealed in this selection? I chose Book I of Rousseau's treatise "The Social Contract or Principles of Political Right"

as my selection. Rousseau therein seeks to inquire whether it is possible to have any "sure and legitimate rule of administration" that allows people to be "taken as they are and laws as they might be" (see foreword to Book I). Rousseau formulates the task, which he places himself with the treatise in Book I Chapter VI, in the following terms: "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 main question to Rousseau and he believes that the answer to this question is in the "Social Contract." By revealing the many obstacles of living together in a society that is based on the "state of nature" Rousseau seeks to point out what has to be done in order to achieve an equitable form of government that has its legal foundation in the will of the people rather than a King. The whole treatise was written in the time of the French Revolution. Rousseau's ideas therefore have to be seen against the background of the then French society that was governed by the will of an absolute monarch, the King. Citizens in that society had no right to vote and thus had no opportunity to participate in the political. They were mere subjects of the will of the King. Rousseau points out that all citizens should be granted the right to participate in government. Slavery is inacceptable. "To renounce liberty is to renounce being a man, to surrender the rights of humanity and even its duties" (Chapter 4 Para 6). Rousseau believes that people have unalienable rights that each form of government will have to guarantee these rights in order to survive. He finds it of paramount importance that people are able to obtain a status of personal freedom that enables them to express their own political will and to elect a government that will respect the will of the people. This form of government did not exist when the treatise was published in 1762. Rousseau disapproves of the then form of French societal order. He tries to develop a social and political concept that solves the tension between balancing the individual rights of people against the restrictions they had to endure. Rousseau asks for a form of government that will defend and protect the individual person and its property on the one hand and will guarantee on the other hand that each person, while "uniting himself with other citizens of society, still can obey to himself alone and remains as free as before" (Book I Chapter 6 Para 4). It is Rousseau's vision that people have equal rights under a government that exercises control over people in a democratic way allowing citizens to take influence in the formation of the political will. In his opinion, the concept of personal freedom of people is eventually rooted in the nature of mankind (see Chapter 1 Para 2). Each human being by nature has both a free will, and a strong instinct of self- preservation. Whereas the common will is the best for the general public, the will of the individual is the best for the individual. Rousseau cites