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Book 3, Chapter 11
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Social Contract, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Human Freedom and Society
Sovereignty, Citizenship, and Direct Democracy
Government and the Separation of Powers
National Longevity and Moral Virtue
Summary
Analysis
The sovereign’s power resides in the legislature, which acts through laws that express the general will. Of course, in order to truly express this general will, all “the people” would need to assemble together, which happened in the past, even if it seems unfathomable today: Rousseau cites the example of the Roman Republic, which managed to assemble virtually weekly despite having hundreds of thousands of citizens. In fact, “the majority of ancient governments […] had similar assemblies.”
Rousseau’s proposal encompasses what is now known as direct democracy: he believes that all the citizens must physically gather in one place to vote collectively on the laws. Of course, when Rousseau wrote that direct democracy was unfathomable, he could have only imagined how much larger and more centralized states would become over the next several centuries: now, the prospect of citizens actually voting on laws seems more than just far-fetched; it seems archaic and laughable to many. However, on the level of local government, it is still conceivable, and Rousseau views involvement in such local government as the backbone of the far larger institutions that purport to speak for the community as a whole.
Themes
