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Summary
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
The title page to The Social Contract, or, Principles of Political Right is signed “J.-J. Rousseau, Citizen of Geneva.” Then, it includes an epigraph from the Aeneid, “foderis aequas / Dicanus leges,” which in English translates roughly to “Let us set equal terms for the truce.”
By signing his work “Citizen of Geneva,” Rousseau not only shows how citizenship can be a politically salient identity, but also foreshadows his praise for Geneva’s political structure and implies that he is specifically writing in his capacity as a citizen and that his analysis of politics is part of his civic duty. Rousseau’s other epigraph foreshadows the conditions he considers necessary for a legitimate society to form: people must agree to a social contract that creates peace and rule of law—or a “truce”—and establishes them all as members of society on “equal terms.”
Themes
In his brief Foreword, Rousseau explains that The Social Contract was originally part of a larger project that he has “long since abandoned” and mostly destroyed. Of that project’s parts, this text is the “most considerable” and “least unworthy of being offered to the public.”
While Rousseau’s humility is designed to throw the reader off guard, by noting his abandoned plan to undertake a systematic, wide-ranging project, he also reveals his great ambition as a philosopher and his belief that different fields of philosophy are fundamentally interconnected. By emphasizing the “public” nature of his audience, Rousseau again suggests that the publication of this Book 1s a political act with political consequences, which reflects his deeper underlying belief that moral and philosophical values are the cornerstone of a society and the key to creating healthy political communities.
Themes
