ABSTRACT
In this and the following two chapters I approach Rousseau’s political theory through a detailed reading of the Social Contract. The text entitled Du contract social ou principes du droit politique, published in 1762, is a fragment. Rousseau says of it that it was an ‘extract from a longer work, entitled the Institutions politiques, abandoned as soon as it left the pen. It was an enterprise which was anyway beyond my capabilities’ (Letter to Moultou, 18 January 1762, CC 10#1641, pp. 41-2). He tells us that he formed the ‘first idea’ of the Institutions politiques when he was diplomatic attaché in Venice in 1743-4, by ‘observing the defects of that Republic’s highly vaunted constitution’ (Conf IX.404/340). Work on it was probably resumed in 1750-1, and its plan was ‘digested’ in 1754 (Conf VIII.394/331). But he had ‘still hardly made any progress on it’ by 1756. It was not until 1761 that Rousseau was to produce the first draft of the Social Contract (the Geneva Manuscript), and by 9 August 1761 he could report to his publisher, Rey: ‘I now have a clean copy of my treatise on political right, ready for publication’.1 If we are to believe the author, then, the gestation period of the Social Contract was over twenty years, from the formation of the ‘first idea’ to the delivery of the manuscript to the publisher.
