QuestionsWhat is a just society?The social pact: obeying the law and staying free
What is a just society?The contract

The social pact: obeying the law and staying free

Jean-Jacques Rousseau 1712 · 1778Man is born good; society corrupts him.
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What it claims

In a society founded on the social pact, the citizen who obeys the laws remains free.

Why

If laws come from everyone's will and apply to everyone, obeying them means obeying only oneself.

In short

"The social pact: obeying the law and staying free" is an argument by Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Social Contract, I, 6-8) on the question "What is a just society?" (answer: the contract). Its claim: In a society founded on the social pact, the citizen who obeys the laws remains free. According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the conclusion does follow from its 5 premises. AskPhilosophy presents 4 objections, 3 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

Social Contract, I, 6-8
Valid

Rousseau starts from a problem: find an association that protects each person with the force of all, and in which each "may still obey himself alone, and remain as free as before". His solution: a pact in which the whole people makes the laws. He is not telling a real story: he offers a test of whether a society is legitimate.

P1Being free is not following every impulse: it is obeying the law one has given oneself.
P2Through the social pact, each person places himself under the direction of the general will, of which he is part as a citizen: laws are acts of this general will.
P3A true law comes from all and applies to all: each submits to the conditions he imposes on others, so no one has an interest in making it unjust.
P4The general will is the will each person has as a citizen, even when, as an individual, his opinion or interest differs.
P5If laws come from the general will, apply equally to all, and if that will is really mine, then obeying the laws is obeying the law I have given myself.
Therefore, in a society founded on the social pact, the citizen who obeys the laws remains free.

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.
Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
The argument is valid and every premise is essential. There is no hidden premise: P4 is written by Rousseau, right after the pact (I, 7: the general will "which he has as a citizen"), and repeated later (IV, 2: "the general will, which is their will"). But it is the premise almost all critics attack: without it, laws that are general and voted by all may still be the will of others, and I then obey someone else.
Analogy. A team votes its own rules, and the same rules apply to everyone, captain included. If you voted against a rule but truly want what is good for the team, following it is still your choice. The whole question: is what the team wants really what you want?

Objections

4

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

Objection anticipated by Rousseau attacks premise 4

Someone who voted against a law must still obey it. How can he be free while submitting to a will that is not his own?

Rousseau replies
Rousseau
The question is wrongly put. Voting is not saying what I prefer, it is saying what I believe the general will to be. If the opposite view wins, that only proves I was mistaken. Rousseau adds a condition: this assumes the majority still has the marks of the general will; otherwise there is no liberty left.
Hume 1748 · attacks premise 2

The contract is a fiction. Almost all governments arose from conquest or usurpation, and most people never consented to anything. Saying we consent by staying in our country is like saying a man carried on board while asleep consents to the captain because he does not jump into the sea.

Rousseau replies
summary: their text is not yet in our corpus
Rousseau
Rousseau does not answer Hume by name, but he already says his pact is not a historical fact, and that staying in a country counts as consent only in a free State: elsewhere, family, goods, necessity or violence may keep someone there against his will.
Benjamin Constant 1819 · attacks premise 1

Rousseau confuses two liberties. For the Ancients, being free meant sharing in collective power. For the Moderns, it means being protected in one's private life, even against the majority. By giving unlimited power to the general will, Rousseau supplied pretexts for tyranny.

no reply
summary: their text is not yet in our corpus
No reply possible: objection raised in 1819, after the author's death (1778).
I
Isaiah Berlin 1958 · attacks premise 4

If my "true" will is the general will, I can be coerced on the grounds that I really want what is imposed on me. Rousseau's phrase, "he will be forced to be free", shows the danger: freedom becomes a reason to obey.

Rousseau replies
Rousseau What Rousseau writes right after (long before the objection)
Rousseau could not answer Berlin, but the sentence goes on: being forced to obey the common law means being protected from "all personal dependence", that is, from the will of a master. For him, constraint comes from a law equal for all, never from a man.
The debate goes on (our summary) Berlin would reply that this is exactly what every power says when it coerces in the name of the law.