Jean-Jacques Rousseau's On The Social Contract

When a group of individuals come together to live and work together for their own self-preservation, they sign intangible contracts know as social contracts which, in a sense, are agreements they make to live as a society. Jean-Jacques Rousseau talks about these ideas in Book II of On the Social Contract. These aren't so much simple things such as how food is attained or who will provide a certain service to the community. They are agreements that are at the root of their ability to cooperate and work with each other. While this branches to show a rather in-depth look at how groups organize into societies a focus will be leant to law and a person's role in society. In the mind or Rousseau, the type of society one enters through social contract
Chapter 6 talks about the role of law in this society however, at the end of chapter 5 Rousseau in reference to the tough moral decisions to made, "Let us leave these questions to be discussed by a just man who has not done wrong and who himself never needed pardon" (Rousseau 2011, 178). This seems to imply that God will ultimately play a role in law. Then in Chapter 6, Rousseau does just that saying, "All justice comes from God; he alone is its source" (Rousseau 2011, 178). This tells the reader that God will be the basis of law and therefore one can draw that basic religious ideas in regards to law such as not killing will be enforced by law. Rousseau later says that laws are acts of the general will (Rousseau 2011, 179). Laws will be made for the good of the society, not an individual. Which could lead to the problem of self-interest or general unknowing of what is right by the public, which is why by the end of the chapter Rousseau is calling for a legislature to deal with the law (Rousseau 2011, 180). In chapter 5 and above the ability to live as granted by the society was mentioned. In this sense, then one owes their ability to survive in society to the society or in
The very root of this is founded in a give-take relationship between the needs and wants of the individual and the needs and wants of the society in its entirety. The foundation of this idea is the society's granting an individual the right to live there and as a result, some things are expected in return, such as a willingness to defend it and to not fight against it. Punishment in the society should really be saved for bad acts and because the common good of people is the root of rules and law, no petty crimes should, in theory, exist. Bringing all this together is the notion that an individual is a subject of society, but society is formulated around the desired and necessary freedoms of the public good, and therefore, an individual can be free and subject. All of these relations to keep the society happy and running well rely on an individual giving up something of theirs in order to get the benefit of living in a