To this end, Rousseau favors direct-democratic lawmaking, and emphasizes the importance of strong communal solidarities. With institutions that advance the common good and secure each citizen's self-worth, people may acquire the requisite motivations. At the heart of the argument is the idea that human beings are naturally good but corrupted by bad institutions. He answers the second by showing that human beings can, appearances notwithstanding, live together in a free community of equals, motivated by the general will, and by describing how a free community of equals might work institutionally, as a form of democracy. But how could it be that we accept a common authority and yet remain fully autonomous and is such a society genuinely possible for human beings? Rousseau answers the first question by filling out the ideal of a free community of equals, regulated by the general will. His solution to this problem, specified by a social contract, is the society of the general will: a free community of equals, whose members share a commitment to the common good, and in which each gives the law to him or herself. The fundamental problem of Rousseau's political philosophy is to find a form of association that protects the person and goods of each person without demanding from them a morally unacceptable sacrifice of autonomy. The book also features a special extended appendix dedicated to outlining his famous conception of the general will, which has been the object of controversy since the Social Contract's publication in 1762. The conclusion connects Rousseau's text both to his important influences and those who took inspiration and sometimes exception to his arguments. David Lay Williams offers readers a chapter-by-chapter reading of the Social Contract, squarely confronting these interpretive obstacles, leaving no stones unturned. Rousseau's “Social Contract”: An Introduction offers a thorough and systematic tour of this notoriously paradoxical and challenging text. The Social Contract has never ceased to be read in the 250 years since it was written. At the same time, many of his contemporaries, such as Kant, considered Rousseau to be “the Newton of the moral world,” as he was the first philosopher to draw attention to the basic dignity of human nature. Soon thereafter, Rousseau fled to Geneva, where he saw the book burned in public. Within a week of its publication in 1762 it was banished from France. If the greatness of a philosophical work can be measured by the volume and vehemence of the public response, there is little question that Rousseau's Social Contract stands out as a masterpiece.
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