Jean-jacques rousseau social contract sparknotes

The Social Contract is a political treatise published in 1762 by the Genevan philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

Jean-jacques rousseau social contract sparknotes

Rousseau argues about the best ways to establish and maintain political authority without unduly sacrificing personal liberty. He builds off 17th-century philosopher Thomas Hobbes’s idea of the “social contract” between the people and sovereign authority, departing from Hobbes in his views on monarchy and the natural state of humankind.

The Social Contract was enormously influential on political thought before and during the French Revolution; notorious Jacobin statesman and Reign of Terror leader Maximilien Robespierre was one of the treatise’s fiercest adherents.

The book’s controversial views on Christianity also led it to be banned in Geneva and Paris.

This study guide refers to The Social Contract and Discourses published in 1968 by Devoted Publishing.

In the first of four books, Rousseau poses the fundamental proble