The Social Contract

'Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.' With that opening line Rousseau asks what could make political authority legitimate, and answers that it can only rest on an agreement among free and equal citizens, who together form a sovereign people guided by the general will.

Published in 1762 and banned at once in Geneva and Paris, The Social Contract became one of the texts of the French Revolution, and its ideas of popular sovereignty still shape modern democracies. It is short but demanding; read it alongside Hobbes's Leviathan, which reaches very different conclusions from a similar starting point.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) was born in Geneva, lost his mother days after his birth, ran away from an apprenticeship at fifteen and lived for years as a wanderer, a music copyist and the protégé of Madame de Warens. In 1750 an essay arguing that civilisation had corrupted humanity won a prize and made him famous overnight.

In 1762 he published both The Social Contract and Emile; both were condemned, and he had to flee. His Confessions, one of the first modern autobiographies, admits among other things that he placed his own five children in a foundling hospital. Few writers have influenced politics, education and the romantic idea of the self so deeply.