A review by seawitch77
The Social Contract: Man Was Born Free, and He Is Everywhere in Chains by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

3.0

I found this to be a lot more ideologically consistent than Hobbes and Locke until the final chapter. A lot of really good ideas and observations which I don’t think are idealistic. For one he is both optimistic about humanity’s potential to pursue equality and also realistic about individual inclinations that deviate from this goal. The separation of executive and legislative was well defined but if he wanted to make civic religion the glue to it all it should have been given a similarly nuanced conversation that shows how its tyrannical inclinations will be subdued. Maybe he outlines this further in another text but he could have discussed the Roman empire less and fleshed out that last argument. Also a 4 line conclusion for a 100 page book is SO REAL he’s just like me fr. Also, the paradox of forcing someone to be free is crazy and interesting and I will be thinking that over.