The Social Contract

Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Social Contract (1762) is one of the founding documents of modern democratic political theory and the most influential single book of the French Enlightenment. The book's famous opening line — "Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains" — sets the frame.

Rousseau argues that the only legitimate form of political authority arises from a contract among free individuals who together form a sovereign people; that the will of that sovereign people, properly constituted, is the general will, which aims at the common good; and that laws derive their legitimacy from being the expression of the general will, not from the force of any particular ruler. The book inspired the French Revolution directly and shaped the entire modern democratic and republican tradition.