764 JEAN-JACQUESROUSSEAU
of anarchy. The “fundamental problem” as Rousseau sees it, is to find an associa-
tion that both defends the “person and property of every associate” and yet still
allows for freedom.
The solution, claims Rousseau, is to be found in the social contract. But such a
contract is not a Hobbesian exchange of rights for peace. As Rousseau points out,
in our selection (translated by Maurice Cranston), tranquility is not really the goal:
“Men live tranquilly also in dungeons; is that enough to make them contented
there?” Instead of submitting to some tyrant in exchange for peace, Rousseau saw
the social contract as an agreement among free individuals to give up their rights to
the “general will.” Such an agreement creates a sovereign, but not the sovereignty
of a king. Instead, the sovereign is the expression of the general will, which alone
is sacred and absolute.
But such an understanding of the social contract does not make Rousseau a
democrat. In the first place, the general will is not necessarily the will of the
majority. A few farsighted individuals may understand the general will better than
the majority. Furthermore, what is to be done if a given individual does not
properly understand the general will, or if that individual’s own will is in conflict
with the general will? According to Rousseau, “whoever refuses to obey the general
will shall be constrained to do so by the whole body.” In short, that person “shall
be forced to be free.”
It is not difficult to see how both the glories and horrors of the French
Revolution found resources in Rousseau’s work. The early revolutionary call to
move past the divine right of kings to liberty, fraternity, and equality has its intel-
lectual roots in The Social Contract.So too does the bloody suppression of
dissent in the later years of the Terror as Robespierre and others claimed to be
promoting the general will while they “forced [the people] to be free.”
The best general introduction to Rousseau is still Ronald Grimsley, The
Philosophy of Rousseau (London: Oxford University Press, 1973). Other
general studies include Harald Høffding,Jean Jacques Rousseau and His
Philosophy,translated by William Richards and Leo E. Saidla (New Haven, CT:
Yale University Press, 1930); Charles William Hendel,Jean-Jacques Rousseau,
Moralist(Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs Merrill, 1934); Nicholas Dent Rousseau
(London: Routledge, 2005); and Matthew Simpson,Rousseau: A Guide for
the Perplexed (London: Continuum, 2007). Irving Babbitt, Rousseau and
Romanticism(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1919) is the classic work on Rousseau’s
historical context while N.J.H. Dent, Rousseau: An Introduction to His
Psychological, Social and Political Theory(Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988) is a
more recent study. For biographies, see Frederick Charles Green,Jean-Jacques
Rousseau: A Critical Study of His Life and Writings(Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1955); Jean Guéhenno,Jean-Jacques Rousseau,translated by
John and Doreen Weightman (London: Routledge and Keegan Paul, 1966); and
J. H. Huizinga,Rousseau: The Self-Made Saint(New York: Grossman, 1976).
For general studies of Rousseau’s political philosophy, see John C. Hall,
Rousseau: An Introduction to His Political Philosophy(Cambridge, MA:
Schenkman 1973); Merle L. Perkins,Jean-Jacques Rousseau on the Individual
and Society(Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 1974); Ramon M.
