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Summary Of Rousseau's The Social Contract

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Summary Of Rousseau's The Social Contract
When one thinks about the major historical documents that have shaped a country or a religion throughout history such as The United States Constitution or The Ten Commandments, an impersonal image of (In this case) words on paper or words on a stone tablet pops into mind. The reader rarely takes the time to analyze the rigorous process behind the creation of the laws and rules that encompass their everyday lives, be it in the United States or in any other country in the world. The creation and execution of laws are two individual processes that ultimately come together as they are being indoctrinated into a singular society, country or state. In Rousseau’s The Social Contract, he contrasts both aspects of law-making and law-executing, more …show more content…
Chapter seven explains the qualifications needed to be an exemplar legislator. Rousseau states that in order for a society to be run successfully, the legislator should not have any power over man and the lawgiver should not have any power over the law: “the legislator is the engineer who invents the machine, the prince merely the mechanic who sets it up and makes it go.” Furthermore, a legislator should be one that can express man’s passions and needs in the laws without actually experiencing any of them because man does not really know what is best for him until he is told, through this the society will continue to grow …show more content…
In the section of sovereignty and law, Rousseau states that though there exists a separation between these two concepts, they are bound together by the community as a whole; that one is needed to reinforce the other, this argument takes the reader back to the legislator/lawgiver argument that even though the legislator is the drafter, the founding father of the laws the lawgiver is ultimately the one that will lead the state to success or to failure. He makes note that even if the legislator is given the power to be the creator, he must answer to his political office in order to prevent the inception of extreme ideologies and measures such as dictatorship and tyranny tendencies within the
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