ABSTRACT
Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s principal contribution to political philosophy is through his work Du Contrat Social (Of the Social Contract) in which he introduces and defends the idea that a legitimate state is one whose members are governed by their own general will. In this, he provides a distinct alternative to the social contract theories advanced by Hobbes and Locke: to Hobbes because he rejects the idea that sovereignty can be represented rather than exercised by the people directly, to Locke because the rights citizens enjoy issue from their own choice rather than being prior and independent constraints on the legitimacy of government. Rousseau’s political philosophy is embedded in broader concerns in social theory, history, moral psychology and philosophical anthropology and in his obscure doctrine that human beings are good by nature but corrupted by society. His political philosophy is one of his attempts to show a means by which modern human beings might yet institute a set of relationships conducive to the good of the type of creatures that they are. His work is crucial to modern understandings of democracy, legitimacy, citizenship and public reason and has inspired theorists of direct and participatory democracy, though his own enthusiasm for democratic governance in his native Geneva was somewhat limited.
