The Social Contract: Book 2, Chapter 5 Summary & Analysis

Rousseau seems to contradict his previous chapter when he argues that the sovereign can send people to death, but the crucial difference is that in the last chapter he was talking about arbitrary or unequal uses of force—for instance, it would be illegitimate for the sovereign to send certain people rather than others to war because of some personal conflict among citizens. Here, Rousseau is talking about the sovereign passing laws that would apply to everyone, which means that everyone is agreeing to put themselves on the line for the sake of the community. While it might seem that this constitutes undermining one’s own freedom, which Rousseau has argued is incoherent and impossible for human beings, it does not, because people’s sacrifice actually serves the greater cause of expanding their overall freedom by preserving the state. While Rousseau does not specify when he thinks it is legitimate for the state to go to war, it is clear that he would accept it only in a very narrow range of cases: namely, for self-defense. If the war is not necessary for the survival of the state (like a war of conquest), it is not necessary “to preserve” citizens’ lives, and so it is not worth risking those same lives over. Similarly, punishment is only justified when absolutely necessary, and states that abuse their power to punish undermine their own legitimacy. So Rousseau is not arguing that states should use the death penalty, but rather that it can be a legitimate tool, if and when the people agree to it.