{153} On the Social Contract

{154} Rousseau described his Social Contract as an extract from a larger work, Political Institutions, which he had begun in 1751 (and the idea of which, he says, dated back to his time in Venice).¹ An incomplete first draft (“the Geneva manuscript”) exists and was first published in 1887. This, in all likelihood, is a surviving remnant of the draft Rousseau sent to his publisher, Marc-Michel Rey, on December 23, 1760. On August 9, 1761, Rousseau declared that his book was finished and ready to be published. In 1758 Rousseau was still working on his Political Institutions, and it seems likely that On the Social Contract took on its present form only after he abandoned that undertaking, although in the published texts Rousseau occasionally repeats entire passages from the Discourse on Political Economy of 1755. In any event, a crucial source for his argument was Diderot’s article “Natural Right,” published in November 1755. The argument of the Social Contract can only have taken on its final form after Rousseau read this article (presumably only shortly prior to its publication in the Encyclopédie). Conceived in 1743, begun in 1751, rethought in 1755, reconstructed in 1758, largely completed by the end of 1760, the Social Contract was published alongside Émile. Rousseau was even afraid that in France it would be thought of as an appendix to his treatise on education.² But the two books were intended to have different audiences: Émile was to be published in France for a French audience; the Social Contract was to be published in Holland and, Rousseau said, “was certainly not intended for the French.”³ Rey received the manuscript on December 4, 1761 and had copies on sale by the middle of April 1762. In the space of a few months he printed 5,000 copies in two editions—the first an octavo and the second a duodecimo, which appeared a month after the first. These were swiftly followed by pirated editions. But in France the book was banned immediately upon being submitted for approval. There was no prospect of its being approved, it was made clear, even if revised. Pirated copies were soon being smuggled in, but they found few readers. In Geneva, however, the book was widely distributed in the fortnight before it was banned. Rousseau claimed in 1764 that “everybody” had a copy. The book had found its intended audience; its banning provoked a crisis in Geneva while it passed virtually unremarked in France.

D.W.

{155} ON THE
SOCIAL CONTRACT,

OR

PRINCIPLES
OF
POLITICAL RIGHT

By J.-J. Rousseau,
Citizen of Geneva

“Let us propose fair terms for the peace settlement.”
—Aeneid, XI⁴

{156} FOREWORD

This little treatise is part of a longer work I undertook some time ago without taking stock of my abilities, and have long since abandoned. Of the various selections that could have been drawn from what had been completed, this is the most considerable, and, it appears to me, the one least unworthy of being offered to the public. The rest no longer exists.