Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Second Discourse (1755) & On the Social Contract (1762)

Posted: Mon, Feb 16, 2026

Today

Wrap up discussion of two other ideas from Rousseau:
- Establishment of society vs. government [10 min]
- Freedom in submission? § 2.7 [10 min]
Get into a metaphilosophical issue: What story is this? [15 min]
Rousseau’s story:
- The separation of society and government [10 min]
- Corrupting effects of society [10 min]
- “Forced to be free”: Sovereign vs. master [10 min]
- Particular will vs. general will vs. will of all [10 min]
Save slavery, colonialism, and racism for Wednesday

State of nature = war of every man against every man.
Every self-interested man [freely?] contracts with every self-interested man to transfer their natural rights to one man (or one group of men). § 17.13
No backsies: Sorry but not really.

	Actual contract	Hypothetical contract
Descriptive story	The social contract as it occurred in real history. (Mills on the racial contract)	Pateman: “Conjectural” history which uncovers both the internal logic of patriarchy and the social contract tradition’s ideological role in underpinning it.
Normative story	Hobbesian-Lockean contractarianism: The social contract, to which self-interest directs us to consent, is not a squishy-squashy metaphor.	Rousseauean-Kantian contractualism: The social contract is the agreement we would reasonably adopt on the basis of moral principles that are justfiable to each other as free and equal persons.

Descriptive story of hypothetical contract (p. 287).
Men in the state of nature are animalistic “savages,” not “civil” gentlemen helicoptered in (p. 291).
The wild savage is strong, independent, brave, whereas the “domesticated,” “soft,” and “effeminate” civil man is “weak, fearful, and groveling” (p. 291).
“The only good things he knows in the universe are food, a female, and rest. The only evils he fears are pain and hunger” (p. 293).
We can’t assume language (p. 294).
Our moral psychology:
- Amour de soi-même: Self-love, natural animalistic inclination for self-preservation.
- Pitié: Compassion or “pity,” which “prompts us without reflection to help those we see suffering and which, in the state of nature, takes the place of laws, morals, and virtue” (p. 299).
- Amour propre: Love of self, “pride,” a need for love/recognition by others, mediated and exacerbated by society.
Human communities, including inequality of possession, organically develop before an explicit social contract is established.
The rich man’s con (pp. 308–9). Two transformations (Social Contract, § 1.8):
- Natural liberty ⇒ civil liberty.
- Possession ⇒ property.
We are in a state of war, far worse suffering than the state of nature (p. 309).
But we can’t put the clock back.

If the actual historical social contract, if there can be said to be one, originated in forced consent, it is illegitimate (§ 1.4, p. 331).
The “essence” of the social contract is the constitution of a collective body from individual persons (§ 1.6).
Every person is both his own person and a constitutive part of the sovereign (§ 1.6); he has no master except himself (§ 1.7).
- General will: Will of the collective body, who has only common interest.
- Particular will: Will of an individual qua individual, who has only his self-interest.
- Will of all: Conjunction of all particular wills.
Voting = “estimate of the general will”: “what is being asked of them is not precisely whether they approve the proposal or reject it, but whether or not it conforms to the general will” (§ 4.2).
The collective body/sovereign is not itself a government.
- Government officials can “pass for expressions of the general will” if the sovereign can but does not object (§ 2.1).
- Other than some technical positions that require specific expertise, who holds offices truly does not matter, is pure burden, and should be decided by lot (§ 4.3).