Siyasal Gövde

by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Rousseau’nun dört bölümden oluşan Toplum Sözleşmesi adlı eseri 1762’de yayımlandığında halk egemenliği ve genel irade ilkelerini gündeme getirerek yeni bir çığır açtı. Filozof, insanın özgür ve akıllı bir varlık olarak varoluşunu güvence altına alacak koşulları, onu türdeşlerinin zorbalığından koruyacak, bireyin doğal özgürlük kaybını daha yüksek bir özgürlük türüyle telafi edecek tedbirleri ünlü toplum sözleşmesi ve genel irade teorisiyle ortaya koydu.

Siyasal Gövde yazarın bu ünlü eserinin, toplumun bir sözleşme yoluyla doğduğundan bahseden ilk bölümünü ve yürütme gücü olarak çeşitli yönetim biçimlerini ele alan üçüncü bölümünü kapsıyor. Rousseau’nun kuramı yazılmasının üzerinden iki yüz elli yıl geçmiş olmasına rağmen, güncel siyasal tartışmalarımıza ışık tutmaya devam ediyor.

Genres: Philosophy, Classics, Nonfiction, Politics, French Literature

96 pages, Paperback

Published December 1, 2020

About the author

Genevan philosopher and writer Jean Jacques Rousseau held that society usually corrupts the essentially good individual; his works include The Social Contract and Émile (both 1762).

This important figure in the history contributed to political and moral psychology and influenced later thinkers. Own firmly negative view saw the post-hoc rationalizers of self-interest, apologists for various forms of tyranny, as playing a role in the modern alienation from natural impulse of humanity to compassion. The concern to find a way of preserving human freedom in a world of increasingly dependence for the satisfaction of their needs dominates work. This concerns a material dimension and a more important psychological dimensions. Rousseau a fact that in the modern world, humans come to derive their very sense of self from the opinions as corrosive of freedom and destructive of authenticity. In maturity, he principally explores the first political route, aimed at constructing institutions that allow for the co-existence of equal sovereign citizens in a community; the second route to achieving and protecting freedom, a project for child development and education, fosters autonomy and avoids the development of the most destructive forms of self-interest. Rousseau thinks or the possible co-existence of humans in relations of equality and freedom despite his consistent and overwhelming pessimism that humanity will escape from a dystopia of alienation, oppression, and unfreedom. In addition to contributions, Rousseau acted as a composer, a music theorist, the pioneer of modern autobiography, a novelist, and a botanist. Appreciation of the wonders of nature and his stress on the importance of emotion made Rousseau an influence on and anticipator of the romantic movement. To a very large extent, the interests and concerns that mark his work also inform these other activities, and contributions of Rousseau in ostensibly other fields often serve to illuminate his commitments and arguments.

Reviews

[JK · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wouldn’t exactly call myself a political person, but the work which inspired the French Revolution isn’t really something I could pass over.

My first observation, very early into Rousseau’s work, was how difficult it was to read. Although eloquent, the writing is long and winding, repetitive in places, and he seemed to take a long time to make his point. Upon reaching the point, I was enthralled, but getting there required a good few sentence re-reads to ensure I was following along properly. Whether the work itself is at fault, or my own intelligence, I have no idea and would prefer to keep it that way.

The second observation I had was how relevant this commentary still is today. Written in the late 1700s, Rosseau speaks of people thinking they are free, when in fact, they are enslaved by their government. He describes the lack of true democracy, and speaks of power and greed. This work details factually how his vision of a government could survive and flourish, yet there is high optimism here that we could eradicate the bad seeds.

A fascinating essay if you can stick at it – perhaps I’d have fared better had I been more politically minded.

[Peter · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book that inspired the french revolution; will it be a dry read? NO! This is a beautifully written piece of work on who rules and who is subserviant.
This is a work that is still important today:

Page 101: The English people thinks it is free, but it is quite mistaken: it is free only during the election of members of parliament; as soon as these are elected, it is enslaved, it is nothing.

And this was written in 1762. This is as relevent today as then.

Highly recommended.

[Lilly Luna · Rating 3 out of 5]

'No true Democracy has ever existed, nor ever will exist.'

Rousseau argues that a state's only moral, political authority comes from its people in "The Social Contract" selection.

This piece of literature, in no doubt, is essential for our history essay on human society, especially when we are talking about monarchy and democracy. I enjoy reading about historical text and reading about history; in general. I thought that this piece of wood was quite inspiring; Sometimes internally contradictory with superior regimes and the will of the people but a good and highly applicable read for the most part. The piece about how outlandish evil and immoral leaders will be elected is. While it is a slight pain right now, there is much to say about his logic around the common good versus personal interest. The best sign of a well-functioning government is involved and knowledgeable citizenship. However, I had to read a few passages from it at the end of the school. Sadly, they did not stick with me since I could remember them before reading this book. Nevertheless, I do think that if you are interested in history and politics, you should definitely if this book a try.

[Marjolein (UrlPhantomhive) · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is one of these editions that are mostly interesting for the historical importance, in this instance the French revolution. As such, I thought it was interesting to read some of it (just like most of the more political works in the Little Black Classics collection - but I would not pick up a more complete work of Rousseau because I thought the writing was very dry and not that pleasant to read.

~Little Black Classics #82~

Find this and other reviews on my blog https://www.urlphantomhive.com

[Josh · Rating 4 out of 5]

stop sucking off the civilisations of antiquity bro i am a free man up until i vote mary k foy yet henceforth i am her slave

[Thea · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don’t know what possessed me to read this on a rainy Tuesday afternoon; perhaps it’s the accelerated decay of democracy in my country. I’ll preface this review by saying I stopped reading this book at the very start, because I didn’t like how they discussed slavery (which really shows, because they concluded that topic beautifully, I’m lowkey ashamed at being a judgy dick to this book.)

This book is one of the foundations of political theory, which I absolutely adore. This book read like my favorite social sciences professor discussing the concept of justice. I personally like how he writes; I feel like it’s a curve ball, where the premise sounds terrible, but the succeeding analysis and conclusion wrap it up neatly and incontestably. I’ve recently picked up the habit of highlighting lines I liked with pencil, I even bookmarked a chapter on how to identify good governments (the bar is really low for me in the Philippines, and somehow no one quite fulfills).

Satisfying read. Let’s overthrow shitty governments consumed with private interests and wealth accumulation!

[Mary · Rating 5 out of 5]

This work played an influential role in the French Revolution. In here, Rousseau argued that a state’s political power should lie with its people, next thing we know, the monarchs were overthrown… and replaced by….uh……

Book I: Of The Social Contract

Rousseau affirms that family is the first model of political societies; with the father as the ruler and children as people. Once the children reach the age of reason, they become their own masters- they alienate their liberty when either necessary or useful to them. The difference is that in a family setting, ruling is derived from love while in the State, ruling is derived from the pleasure of commanding.
If you have to obey by force, you do not obey by duty, and if you do not obey by duty, you do not need to obey at all. Strength does not spawn right to command, even though it seems like it. Yielding to force is an act of necessity and, at times, even prudence, not of will. You are obliged to obey only legitimate powers, but who holds the legitimate power?
Grotius asks: “If an individual can alienate his liberty and sell himself to a master, why could not a whole people alienate its own and subject itself to a king?” To alienate is to renounce your character, your liberty, your morality. There is no, or at least there should be no, compensation equivalent to a human being. Absolute authority of one and boundless obedience of another is a contradictory and pointless convention. A slave has no right against his master, since all that he has belongs to his master. A slave’s right is not his but his master’s. When a man alienates himself, he does not give himself, he sells himself, for subsistence. For what, then, do the people sell itself? For subsistence? A king provides subsistence for his subjects the same way his subjects provide his own, might I add, extravagant subsistence. For fear of being robbed of property? The people have no property. For peace? King’s wars, caused by insatiable greed and personal ambitions, inflicted more misery than harmony. Do the people sell themselves freely then? The Sovereign or the body politic neither has nor can have any interest contrary to theirs. Thus, duty and interest enable two parties to help each other out.
“No man was born free, and everywhere he is in chains.”

Book III: Of The Social Contract

Rousseau starts by introducing two causes of every free action; moral will that determines the act and physical will that executes it. If you want to piss, you would naturally want to go to the comfort room, to do this, you would also naturally have to use your feet and move. Should a differently abled man wish to run or Usain Bolt wish to sit, both will remain where they are. This is pretty much how the Legislative and Executive branches of the government work. The Legislature acts as an agent of the general will of the people and the Executive, well, executes said will.
There’s this really interesting experiment in the book. First, we know that the Sovereign can only be considered collectively (eg: Sovereign Filipino people), but each individual is called a citizen. Now, the Philippines has a hundred million citizens. The sovereign is to citizen as 100 million is to one. Ergo, each citizen has only one over one hundred millionth part (0.00000001%) of the sovereign authority. I’m really bad at explaining maths but I hope that made sense. Rousseau goes further and explains that the larger the state, the more strength the government must have in order to contain its subjects, the more temptations and tendency to abuse power, and the more the sovereignty citizens must have to contain the government. In short, there must be parity between the government and the citizens. This only means that no two governments are alike, that there can be as many types of government as states differ in size.
Rousseau identifies three different wills of the government; personal will directed for private gain, corporate will of the members for their common advantage, and general will of the people. In a perfect government, the first must be nonexistent, the second subordinate to the last, and the last the dominating will. However, wills are more active when they are more concentrated, when it involves less members. Thus, the opposite of the perfect government happens, the general will is always the weakest. “The government slackens to the extent that magistrates multiply” Is this to say that the best government is that of a single ruler? hmmmmmmM
Each form of government has its inadequacies. Democracy with its vagueness and tendency to be abused and corrupted. Democracy degenerates into Ochlocracy. Rousseau even points out that “no true democracy has existed, nor ever will exist.” It is against the nature of man to submit himself willfully to a government comprised of a small number of men.. Aristocracy with its institutional inequality that puts the wealthy on the pedestal. Aristocracy degenerates into Oligarchy. The wealthy, deliberating affairs by themselves and for themselves, is the government. Monarchy with all its powers concentrated to a single Monarch. The whole state is ridden by personal will. Monarchy degenerates into Tyranny. Everything moves towards the same end, whether it is good or bad for the general will, is wholly to the Monarch’s decision. The consistency of the royal government depends on the character of the ruling monarch. The whole state can either be under the rule of a wise king, a child, a monster, or an idiot, depending on the succession…
Chapter 15: Of Deputies or Representatives left quite a mark on me. Here, Rousseau elucidates the role of money in any State. Okay, sure, everybody knows about how money makes the world go round, what’s new? What’s new is that things shouldn’t work like that, or at least wholly. Must we really go to war? We pay the military and stay home for that. Must we really enter politics? We elect and pay officials and stay home for that. We pay to exempt ourselves from duties. We pay for comfort. Sure, you can say “I worked hard for my money, I get to decide what do with it”, except you don’t. Let me remind you of Marx’s words (okay, not exact words), you don’t acquire money or any property through your labor, what you acquire exploits you. When people serve with money rather than with persons, public services cease to be the main objective, the State is a mockery. “In a truly free state, citizens do everything with their own hands and nothing with money.”
Rousseau also has a very interesting take on modern system of representation aka elections. In ancient republics and monarchies, the people never had representatives. The word as we know it now didn’t exist until the 16th century. Republican states like to boast freedom, but as soon as the people elect representatives, it ceases to be free.
“It would be absurd if the citizens united could not do what each of them can do separately.”

[Alejandro Paulovitch · Rating 4 out of 5]

From a purely "romanticist" point of view. This book is excellent, it really recovers that old mentality European Republicans had which has nowadays been contaminated due to "liberalism".
Rousseau doesn't advocate for equality, he recognizes the benefits in having said inequality, and he's right, a virtous republic can only thrive under a non egalitarian state. He's no man who's been bought off by this democratisation of the west.
Equality is contrary to western values and Rousseau is not really a man of the enlightenment, if anything, he belongs to that set of philosophers who never wholeheartedly embraced rationalism. Rousseau, with his utopian ideas, walked so that romanticism could run (and going far enough, Rousseau is a foundational basis for fascism and the more romantic ideology, National Socialism).

[Rabia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Siyaset Bilimi hakkında çok bilgim olmadığı için detay kısmına girmeyeceğim ama, 259 sene önce yazılmış bir kitabın bu kadar doğru, tutarlı, mantıklı ve anlamlı yazılmış olması gerçekten hayret verici.

Kitap yalnızca 90 sayfada hem kafamda oluşturduğum ve doğru kabul ettiğim ideolojiyi daha çok destekledi hem de kafamdaki soru işaretlerine cevap oldu. Herkes böyle mi düşünüyor diye kitabı okuyan azınlığın yorumlarını okudum, fakat herkes anlamak istediği gibi anlamış sanırım...

Genel bir yorumda bulunmak gerekirse, 259 sene öncesinden bugüne ithaf edilmiş bir şaheser diyebilirim. Jean-Jacques Rousseau'nun fikirlerine katılan/katılmayan herkesin okuması gereken bir kitap.

[Tülay · Rating 3 out of 5]

3/5
Siyasete giriş 101 gibi bir kitap. Tüm yönetim şekillerini, onların artı ve eksi yönlerini, hangi ülke tiplerine uygun olduğunu ele alan yönetim, egemenlik, devlet, hükümet ve benzeri pek çok kavramı açıklayan anlatımı fazlaca didaktik bir eser. Bu konuya dair tam bir el kitabı diyebilirim.

[alicia · Rating 3 out of 5]

3,25|5 - non-fiction, classic, selection from “The Social Contract”, 18th century political philosophy/social critique, idea-driven prose, french literature/original language: french

[Djaimon Alferez · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rating: 4.50 Stars

Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s The Social Contract: Body Politic is not merely a philosophical treatise — it is a radical critique of political and social structures, one that has not only shaped political theory but continues to offer profound insights into the workings of government. As a future Political Science student, this book challenged me to rethink the relationship between the citizen and the state, and the very notion of political authority itself.

Book I: The Foundations of Sovereignty, Slavery, and the Origin of Administration

Rousseau opens The Social Contract by positing that man is born free, yet everywhere he is in chains. This tension between freedom and authority forms the crux of Rousseau’s argument. He suggests that sovereignty, or the will of the people, is inalienable and indivisible — you cannot divide it without destroying its integrity. This contrasts sharply with the idea of representative government, which Rousseau critiqued for its tendency to dilute the general will by delegating power.

A major theme in Book I is slavery. Rousseau presents slavery as the loss of self-governance, where individuals submit to external authority in exchange for security or convenience. This submission leads to the erosion of true freedom, as individuals surrender their autonomy in favor of the state. The most striking point here is that slavery isn’t just physical subjugation; it is also a form of moral subjugation when individuals delegate their power to representatives, thus giving up their liberty and enslaving themselves to convenience.

Another core aspect of Book I is the origin of administration. Rousseau posits that the government’s primary function is to execute the general will of the people, not to create laws or exert independent power. The government is not the sovereign; it is merely the executive, a tool through which the general will is realized. The government serves as the “brain” of the state, carrying out the directives of the sovereign, which is the collective will of the people (the “heart”). This idea becomes the foundation of his political model, emphasizing the separation between sovereignty and executive power.

⸻

Book III: Sovereignty, Executive Power, and the Three Branches

Book III brings Rousseau’s vision closer to practical application, discussing how the sovereign interacts with the government. He develops a theory where sovereignty is the heart, and the executive is the brain. The sovereign must not be confused with the government, which only implements the will of the sovereign. In this framework, the government is divided into three branches: the executive, the legislative, and the judiciary, with each playing a critical role in ensuring that sovereignty is respected and upheld.

Rousseau highlights the complexity of the three branches of government, noting that each branch must act within its bounds while remaining a servant of the sovereign. However, the tension between these branches, and the desire to maintain sovereignty while ensuring practical governance, is a source of constant conflict. Rousseau is adamant that no single branch should dominate the others, as this would lead to tyranny. He envisions a delicate balance where each branch checks and balances the others, keeping the general will intact and preventing one branch from overriding the will of the people.

In this context, the executive branch serves as the mechanism for enforcing the laws created by the sovereign will of the people, but it does so with the understanding that it is simply a tool, not the source of authority itself. The legislative power, which reflects the will of the people, remains supreme. But as the Body Politic grows in complexity, Rousseau sees the need for continual vigilance in preserving the integrity of the sovereign will.

⸻

Personal Reflections & Key Insights:
• Sovereignty and Freedom: One of the book’s most profound ideas is that true freedom is found in obedience to the laws one prescribes to oneself. This notion of “self-imposed” law is fundamental to Rousseau’s conception of liberty. The general will represents the collective expression of the people’s common interest, and to align oneself with that is to be truly free.
• The Slavery of Representation: Rousseau critiques representation as a form of voluntary slavery. When you delegate your power, you give up the freedom to determine your own will. The very act of paying someone to represent your interests is seen as a form of greed and moral surrender. In Rousseau’s framework, a legitimate democracy does not delegate power to representatives; it requires direct participation. The general will is not something that can be mediated — it must be directly expressed by the people.
• The Role of the Assembly: Rousseau believes that the people must constantly assemble to ensure that the sovereignty remains intact. Only when the people are physically and actively present can the government be legitimately exercised. This assembly must happen periodically, not just in moments of crisis, as the continuous expression of the general will is the lifeblood of the body politic.
• Complexity of Governance: Rousseau’s analysis of the three branches of government speaks to the complexity of governance in large states. He imagines a system of checks and balances, where no one branch or individual could dominate the others. The executive is the brain, the sovereign is the heart, and the other branches (judiciary, legislative) act as necessary mediators of the general will. This framework, though idealized, emphasizes the importance of the people’s active role in ensuring that the government reflects their collective will.
• The Need for Virtue: Rousseau does not view democracy as inherently good or effective; rather, he stresses that virtue is what makes democracy work. A society of virtuous citizens will be able to sustain a government that reflects the collective will. A government based on convenience, greed, and individualism will fail — no matter how democratic it claims to be.

⸻

Critiques:
1. Agrarian Bias: Rousseau’s framework is based on small agrarian societies, which makes it less applicable to modern, industrialized, and post-industrial states. He doesn’t sufficiently account for the complexities of large-scale urbanization or the intricacies of global capitalism.
2. Simplified Class Structure: Rousseau’s reduction of society to just three classes (poor, middle, and rich) does not account for the diversity of modern social stratifications. The modern world’s complexity of class, including new working-class structures, middle-class divisions, and the professional elite, challenges his simplistic view.
3. Monarchy and Population Size: His assumption that monarchical systems are only suited to large populations is no longer applicable. Modern political systems, even in large countries, don’t necessarily require a monarchy or centralized power structure, and Rousseau’s model of direct democracy may seem less feasible in highly complex, globalized societies.

⸻

Final Thoughts:

The Social Contract: Body Politic is a book that pushes you to rethink not just how government should work, but how society should work. Rousseau’s ideas on freedom, sovereignty, and representation offer a critique of modern democracy that feels as relevant today as it did in the 18th century. His exploration of how power and freedom interact, his dissection of the relationship between the individual and the state, and his vision of a morally virtuous society are ideas that continue to inspire, disturb, and provoke.

While Rousseau’s idealism may seem impractical in the modern age, the themes of direct democracy, civic virtue, and the sacredness of the general will remain critical for understanding the underpinnings of political authority. This is a work that any student of Political Science must engage with, as it forces us to question the legitimacy of our institutions and the nature of freedom itself.

[Vendela · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating read. Sharp thoughts, clearly had quite a lot of impact. Sometimes internally contradictory wrt ideal governments and the will of the people, but for the most part a both good and highly applicable read, even if the part about how unlikely it is that bad and corrupt leaders will be elected (as opposed to chosen in a dictatorship) is, while true, a little depressing right now. But there is a lot to be said for his reasoning around the common good vs the personal good and how the best sign of a well functioning government is an engaged and knowledgeable citizenry.

[Nathasjja Takanashi · Rating 4 out of 5]

In The Social Contract, the body politic appears as an act of secular alchemy, many bodies transmuted into one moral being, flesh dissolved into will. Sovereignty declared, no longer descends from heaven or lineage but rises from below, generated by the people themselves. Here Rousseau performs the incantation of freedom, but hesitates at its consequences.

His initial rupture was electric. Society for Rousseau is not an inheritance but an agreement; not a throne sanctified by time or a manipulatively powerful man from Solo, but a pact among equals. This is enough to haunt the political present. Indonesia’s "democracy" recites the language of popular sovereignty all while quietly kneeling before oligarchs, party brokers, and extractive capital. The ritual continues, but the substance has thinned. The insistence that law is only law when the people recognize themselves as its authors slices through this choreography. It reveals representation as a ventriloquism act: the mouth moves, the voice claims universality, and the people are instructed to hear themselves speaking.

But the spell breaks where we insist on unity. The general will, so pure in abstraction, demands a body to inhabit. Rousseau gives it one, the state. What begins as a refusal of domination returns as its most refined expression. The body politic becomes a single moral organism, and difference is tolerated only insofar as it dissolves into harmony. The question of who speaks the general will is never truly answered, because the answer is always power. Once the will is personified, it requires guardians, interpreters, enforcers. Coercion re-enters, cleansed by the language of "collective reason." (But who is the collective, really?)

This logic is painfully familiar in Indonesia. Unity has long been our most dangerous word. From Guided Democracy to the New Order (1990s), the invocation of harmony and national destiny functioned as a sacrament of obedience. To dissent was not merely to disagree, but to betray the body itself. Even now, "kepentingan bersama" floats through policy documents and court rulings like incense, sanctifying land theft, ecological ruin, and the slow erasure of indigenous worlds. Rousseau assumes a civic virtue untouched by hunger, hierarchy, or fear. He imagines equality as a moral posture rather than a material condition and in doing so, he mistakes aspiration for ground.

A general will cannot emerge among bodies unevenly weighted by scarcity and dependence. Where survival is negotiated through wages, rent, and debt, consent becomes choreography. In Indonesia’s cities and contested rural lands, political agreement is often indistinguishable from submission. Freedom, when built atop property, becomes an aesthetic rather than a lived condition.

There is, too, the problem of sameness. Rousseau’s body politic presumes a shared civic soul, a people sufficiently unified to recognize themselves in a single will. Indonesia resists this fantasy by its very geography. An archipelago does not cohere the way a continent does; it drifts, collides, speaks in many tongues. The state’s attempt to compress this multiplicity into a singular national body has always required force; administrative, cultural, sometimes nakedly violent, or divisive even. Solidarity, unlike sovereignty, cannot be decreed. It emerges sideways, through cooperation, friction, and refusal.

This is not to say Rousseau should be read as a failure. He is better understood as a threshold. His most subversive intuition, that obedience should feel like obedience to oneself, cracks the architecture of domination wide open. If self-rule is the measure of legitimacy, why halt at the state? Why not extend this logic into production, care, land, and time itself? In Indonesia, these extensions already flicker into existence: gotong royong practiced without slogans, mutual aid that moves faster than bureaucracy in moments of disaster, indigenous governance that remembers a world before sovereignty demanded paperwork. These are not relics. They are counter-myths, stubborn and alive.

Rousseau feared factions, feared the splintering of the social body. The general will, once embalmed in institutions, speaks with borrowed breath. Those who question it are accused not of disagreement but of heresy (Munir, for example)
Read from this place and this time, the body politic resembles an unfinished rite of passage. He tears down the idols of kings and priests, only to cast a new figure in their shadow: the sovereign collective, abstract and untouchable. Power must explain itself to those it binds.

No structure that monopolizes force can ever complete that explanation. If the body politic is to live, it must cease pretending to be one body at all. It must return to bodies. Plural, unruly, arguing, caring, and finding their way together without mistaking unity for truth, or freedom for something that requires a throne.

[Nur Huda · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Social Contract is a work that is more philosophically constructive than Rousseau's previous discourses. The language used is not crafted in such a way as to make them appealing to the public, the tone of the Social Contract is not as eloquent and romantic. It is quite systematic and outlines how a government could exist in such a way that it protects the equality and character of its citizens. It would be a mistake to say that there is no philosophical connection between them. For the earlier works discuss the problems in civil society as well as the historical progression that has led to them. Chapter one begins with one of Rousseau’s most famous quotes, which echoes the claims of his earlier works: “Man was/is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.” It looks forward, and explores the potential for moving from the specious social contract to a legitimate one.

[Thomas Russell · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting read. Sometimes Rousseau can waffle on a bit- the sentences (characteristic of the time of writing) can be so long and winding in places that you have to give them a couple of goes over to properly get the point he's making. That being said, the points he WAS making were fascinating. A lot of it is in the realms of 'well that's just common sense but now I've seen it written down I've really stopped to think about it' kinds of philosophy. It was especially interesting to see how much of what Rousseau wrote, which was revolutionary at the time, is common knowledge today (like that a society cannot flourish without liberty, for example).

If you're into political history I would say that Rousseau is up there with Marx in terms of essential reading. I'm definitely going to delve deeper into his works.

[Kermit the Frog · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Good laws cause better ones to be made, bad laws bring worse. As soon as anyone says of State affairs: what do I care?, you must reckon that the State is lost. Cooling of love for the fatherland, the activity of private interest, the immensity of States, conquests, and abuse of Government - all these have led people to devise the procedure of Deputies or Representatives of the people in the Nation's assemblies. This is what in certain countries they dare to call the Third Estate, which means that the particular interest of two orders is ranked first and second, while the public interest is only third."

[Nadirah · Rating 4 out of 5]

This felt like an apt read after The Communist Manifesto; much of what Rousseau has written in this can be a bit long-winded at times and it does merit careful (or even repeated) reading. There are a lot of interesting philosophical postulations in here which are still relevant to the current century's state of politics, so this is definitely one of those 'classics' that is worth poring over.

[Aquarius_Archives · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is one I would highly recommend if you intend to go through political science. This is an opening, aside from the Greeks philosophers, on the truths of democracy. Rousseau is known to be one of the creators of the Social Contract Theory and you wouldn't know what his version entails until you read this book. The Body Politics is basically him supporting his POV of what democracy should entail. If you want to explore democracy and democratization, this is a must read.

[gwen · Rating 5 out of 5]

eeeehh but in general people are corrupt naturally and morally (not all but obviously we have a bit of sense to it). theres no problem w power or administration it just really depends on who has it and how long they have it. but yeaaa democracy is a good option but "rights" is very paradoxical bcs i remmeber bu retno mentioned it once.

[Carlo Mazzanti · Rating 4 out of 5]

Love little books. Found it interesting but I don't remember what my precise thoughts were. All I can remember is that some of his explanations seemed contradictory to me. I must've misunderstood. I don't think I really understood man's state of nature.

[Black Cat · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well put together, but very dense to read. If you are really interested in politics or democracy, types of governments and all that stuff you can read it carefully and get more out of it I'm sure.
I don't really care though, but the bits that I did read I quite liked.

[Sarah Tenuta · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Your harsher climes add to your needs, for six months in the year the market-place is uninhabitable, your flat tongues cannot make themselves heard in the open, you care more for your profit than for your liberty, and you fear slavery far less than destitution.”

[Vivien · Rating 4 out of 5]

„madness does not create right.”

A very important book, even though I have to admit I didn’t fully comprehend everything. But that doesn’t even necessarily seem to be mandatory. It was still very good and informative.

[good1102 · Rating 2 out of 5]

Good

[Gabor Hernadi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Excrepts from Rousseau`s The Social Contract. Not the easiest read but thought-provoking although I didn`t agree with everything said.

[Angelito · Rating 4 out of 5]

As soon as anyone says of State affairs: what do I care?, you must reckon that the State is lost.

[Razvan Popa · Rating 5 out of 5]

a very refreshin interesting point of view that the author provides on politics and managing a society ie ruling a country

[Andrea Diljá · Rating 4 out of 5]

Unaðsleg stjórnsýsluveisla. Enn jafn relevant og fyrir tæpum 300 árum.

[Rosario Diaz · Rating 3 out of 5]

nice