The Social Contract

The Social Contract by Jean-Jacques Rousseau is one of the most influential and contentious political texts ever written — the 1762 work whose opening declaration that ‘man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains’ became the rallying cry of revolutionary politics across Europe and the Americas. Rousseau argues that legitimate political authority derives from the collective will of the people — the ‘general will’ — rather than from monarchs or inherited privilege, and that a just society is one where each citizen’s freedom is protected through participation in making the laws by which they are governed. Published by Wordsworth Classics in an accessible edition, this is essential reading for students of political philosophy, history, and anyone who wants to understand the intellectual foundations of democratic theory.