Vom Gesellschaftsvertrag oder Prinzipien des Staatsrechts

Jean-Jacques Rousseau's treatise "On the Social Contract", published in 1762, is one of the basic texts of modern political philosophy. With his ideas of freedom, political self-determination and the legitimacy of political orders, he not only inspired the masterminds of the French Revolution of 1789, but also provided the core concepts with which we still think about democracy today. In Rousseau, the people are transformed from subjects to bearers of inalienable sovereignty, subject to no one but their own "general will". At the same time, his work constantly challenges new interpretations and continues to be controversially discussed, opposed and revered to this day: starting with freedom, which can only exist in the commonwealth, and ending with the enigmatic concept of civil religion, which seeks to impose a religious confession on every citizen in the name of tolerance. In the age of extremes, his liberal critics discovered supposedly pernicious totalitarian tendencies in Rousseau's work, while it is currently being used as an occasion to illuminate as yet unexploited scope for (sometimes radical) democratisation. "If there were a nation of gods," Rousseau says, "it would govern itself democratically. Such perfect government is not fit for human beings".