By Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Penguin, NZ$13.95 | Reviewed by Tom Fitzsimons

IF YOU HAVE a decent-sized coat, then you will probably be able to fit this book into your pocket. And I think that’s an unqualified positive for any book. Admittedly, I’m referring to Penguin’s new, digestable version of The Social Contract, which also comes with a clean little cover and about twenty companion books written by other historical luminaries. So get that version, I guess is what I’m saying – it’s transportable, it leads to other things.

And by now it’s obvious I’m putting off actually reviewing the book – because where on earth to begin? Taken in by the offer of something both new and timeless, I happily accepted the offer of reviewing this famous political tract… only to realise halfway through that there was no way I would have anything useful to say about it. In truth, I only fancy myself as a philosophical talent about 2am on a Sunday morning with a glass of whiskey in my hand. Unfortunately, and this is my second nugget of wisdom for you: this is probably not a book you should read after much whiskey. It’s dense, it’s about how we govern ourselves, and it’s just so ... logical.

Conversely, if you’re awake and alert, then those are exactly the reasons you should give The Social Contract a shake. From its very first, stirring sentence (‘Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains’), Rousseau never shrinks from being bold, grandiloquent and rational – mostly at the same time. Banned for years in his birthplace Geneva as well as in France, the Contract is J-J’s big achievement – variously credited with influencing the French Revolution, the development of socialism and advancing various streams of liberal thought. In other words, almost everyone wants a piece of it. And why not? Written in a volatile time, with Europe splintering and the enlightenment just switching on, the Contract has managed to endure for its unerring logic and patience.

So what is the social contract? Simply put, it’s a way of understanding how human beings organise themselves, that imagines each citizen relinquishing their total freedom (in a lawless state of nature) for a more secure freedom under a government. This wasn’t a particularly original thought of Rousseau’s – people like Tom Hobbes and John Locke had already come up with similar stuff. J-J’s innovation was in his conception of the group to whom each citizen gives their freedom – what he dubbed ‘the sovereign people’. In his own words, the most important part of the contract is:

‘The total alienation by each associate of himself and all his rights to the whole community. Thus, in the first place, as every individual gives himself absolutely, the conditions are the same for all, and precisely because they are the same for all, it is in no one’s interest to make the conditions onerous for others.’

So here are all those strands rolled into one – a communalism suggesting the later direction of Marxism; and yet an emphasis on individual self-interest as a reason for buying into the contract at all. The last bit also sounds to me a whole lot like John Rawls’ ‘veil of ignorance’ gimmick, where he imagines the kind of world people would design if they had no idea what position they would occupy in it – race, religion, disability, gender and so on. The implication of both ideas is that they result in a pretty fair old world.

So Rousseau is the village bicycle of philosophy. And yet, he has an absolutely strict adherence to some core values throughout the Contract. Here you find a stinging rebuke to monarchical government (the strength of monarchy always works to the disadvantage of the state, princes prefer a submissive populace, hereditary monarchies go sour).

And here you find a vigorous defence of the people as lawmakers – with an intense examination of the Romans’ various legislative bodies.

As I understand it, Rousseau basically advocates that all the big laws be passed through a process of direct democracy, where every citizen shows up and a majority is sought. At the same time, he would place ordinary government in the hands of a group of elected officials (what he calls an aristocracy of sorts, and I guess it is). He admits that such a dual system of regular referenda and limited executive government is better suited to a small state. However, it occurs to me that maybe modern communications technology actually makes this sort of idea of governance more possible than ever before.

The form is also telling. Books like this one are themselves arguments for a restless, insatiable rationalism, a seeking of answers, an unwillingness to accept received wisdom for its own sake.

So perhaps this is more synopsis than review, in which case: fine. Certainly, Rousseau is harder to read than Dan Brown, and his ideas skate towards the abstract much of the time – but he’s not inaccessible, and the work still yields plenty for right now. Read it, and then have that whiskey – you’ll sound all the better for it.