The Social Contract
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: No dust jacket
Pages: Good
Condition remarks: Condition as shown in image
One of the most electrifying and consequential works in the history of Western political thought, Jean-Jacques Rousseau's The Social Contract opens with a line that still reverberates across centuries: *Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.* Published in 1762, this landmark treatise argues that legitimate political authority rests not on divine right or hereditary power, but on a voluntary compact among citizens — a collective agreement to surrender individual will to the general will of the community. With razor-sharp logic and passionate conviction, Rousseau instructs his readers on the conditions under which true political freedom is possible, presenting a vision of sovereignty that belongs irrevocably to the people. Rousseau's prose carries an urgency that reads as both philosophical manifesto and political blueprint, and its influence on the French Revolution, the American founding, and modern democratic theory is immeasurable. This Penguin Classics edition makes his radical ideas accessible to a new generation of readers, paired with scholarly apparatus that contextualises the text within the turbulent Enlightenment world from which it emerged. Rousseau challenges us to ask whether the society we inhabit truly serves the common good — or merely the interests of the powerful. For anyone who has ever questioned the nature of governance, freedom, or justice, The Social Contract remains an essential and unsettling read.
Author: Rousseau
Format: Paperback
Genre: Philosophy
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: No dust jacket
Pages: Good
Condition remarks: Condition as shown in image
One of the most electrifying and consequential works in the history of Western political thought, Jean-Jacques Rousseau's The Social Contract opens with a line that still reverberates across centuries: *Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.* Published in 1762, this landmark treatise argues that legitimate political authority rests not on divine right or hereditary power, but on a voluntary compact among citizens — a collective agreement to surrender individual will to the general will of the community. With razor-sharp logic and passionate conviction, Rousseau instructs his readers on the conditions under which true political freedom is possible, presenting a vision of sovereignty that belongs irrevocably to the people. Rousseau's prose carries an urgency that reads as both philosophical manifesto and political blueprint, and its influence on the French Revolution, the American founding, and modern democratic theory is immeasurable. This Penguin Classics edition makes his radical ideas accessible to a new generation of readers, paired with scholarly apparatus that contextualises the text within the turbulent Enlightenment world from which it emerged. Rousseau challenges us to ask whether the society we inhabit truly serves the common good — or merely the interests of the powerful. For anyone who has ever questioned the nature of governance, freedom, or justice, The Social Contract remains an essential and unsettling read.