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Book 1, Chapter 1
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Social Contract, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Human Freedom and Society
Sovereignty, Citizenship, and Direct Democracy
Government and the Separation of Powers
National Longevity and Moral Virtue
Summary
Analysis
Rousseau contends that “the oldest of all societies […] is that of the family,” but once children grow up, they become naturally independent of parents. If they choose to “remain united” with their parents, it is “only by agreement,” and not by nature. This is because self-preservation is humans’ deepest drive, and people know what is best for themselves once they get to “the age of reason.” In society, people can choose to “surrender their freedom” when it ultimately benefits them.
By using the family and education as an analogy for society, Rousseau implies that the workings of human freedom are universal across different contexts: people are only morally bound to others if they choose to be, although in practice they can be forced into social arrangements like slavery against their will. Once people grow up, he implies, they are free to take or leave society, just as they are free to disown their families. But most people don’t do this, which shows that they actually stand to gain from society, rather than just giving up freedom to it.
Themes
Some thinkers, like Grotius and Hobbes, wrongly think that the powerful govern for the own benefit, ruling over the masses without their consent like a shepherd rules over their animals. Indeed, other thinkers take this further, arguing that rulers are inherently superior to the people they rule—the philosopher Aristotle even thinks some people are “born for slavery and others [are] born to be masters.” But Rousseau thinks that slavery is unnatural, and people only accept it because they are forced to. Rousseau jokes that, if rulers really deserved their power by nature, he might even be “the legitimate king of the human race,” since he is descended from “the King Adam” and “the Emperor Noah.” Rather, the Biblical “Adam was the king of the world” simply because nobody else was around, and he had no rivals for power.
Again, Rousseau’s argument relies on the distinction between how societies actually work, in which the powerful do oppress the weak, and the way societies should work, in which nobody would participate except by their own free consent. Rousseau indirectly acknowledges his debt to Hobbes’s work, which first introduced the idea that people would agree on a social contract in order to avoid the dangers of the state of nature. However, Hobbes thought that people gave away all their rights and freedoms to the state, but Rousseau thinks doing that would be fundamentally arbitrary, since stronger people (like the “king of the human race”) have no real basis for claiming their power. Plus, Hobbes’s idea would violate Rousseau’s basic moral principle that people can never give up their own freedom.
Themes
