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Social Contract

1910 New Catholic Dictionary

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Sobieski, John

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1910 New Catholic Dictionary
• Social Contract
Encyclopedias
1911 Encyclopedia Britannica
• Social Contract
The Catholic Encyclopedia
• The Social Contract

The title of a book on the theory of the state written by Jean Jacques Rousseau in 1762. The problem Rousseau is seeking to solve is:

"To find that form of association which should protect and defend, with the whole force of the community, the person and property of each individual; and in which each person, by uniting himself to the rest, shall nevertheless be obedient only to himself, and remain as fully at liberty as before" (Social Contract, Bk. I, Chap. 6).

"We, the contracting parties, do jointly and severally submit our persons and abilities to the supreme direction of the general will of all; and in a col- lective body receive each member into that body all an indivisible part of the whole" (ibid.).