Resolved Text Commentary Rousseau
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ScribdTranslationsResolved Text Commentary Rousseau
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ScribdTranslationsText commentary 'The Social Contract'
Nature
The text is informational in nature as it is an excerpt from an essay, 'The contract'
social"; therefore, this fragment is revealing the thought of
Rousseau in relation to national sovereignty and what the French author calls 'contract'
social
The content of the text is mainly political, as it refers to the fact that
both the legislative power (the Parliaments) and the executive (the 'government' referred to
Rousseau) are legitimized by the people.
The text is of primary origin since, as I mentioned in the previous paragraph, it is a
original fragment from the work "The Social Contract", published in 1762.
2. Author and historical moment
The author of this text is Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), an Enlightenment thinker interested in
various fields of knowledge but particularly stood out for his works of a character
philosophical and political in which he defends freedom, equality, and education as paths to
human progress and overcoming the class-based society.
The historical moment in which this text is set is Enlightenment France.
mid-eighteenth century (specifically, the year 1762), a cultural movement that goes
defend political, social, and economic ideas contrary to absolute monarchy, the
mercantilism and the estates society.
3. Internal analysis
The main idea of the text is that it is the popular will, which can also be called here
national sovereignty, which gives legitimacy or validity to political institutions. The ideas
secondary are that, therefore, the legislative power and its action (e.g. drafting laws)
as the government (representative of the people) are legitimized by national sovereignty, without
they do not have the legitimacy to act.
4. External analysis
The particular text, and the work 'The Social Contract' in general, is situated in the mid-
18th century in France, in an environment where the Enlightenment is spreading its
quickly ideology. On a political level, one of the foundations of the Enlightenment will be the defense
of national sovereignty as an expression of the power of the people through the election of their
representatives through voting ('the legislative power belongs to the people and only to them
can emerge”). This idea has a very clear precursor in the English author John Locke and
his defense of the social contract, as well as the separation of powers.
As a system based on reason, the Enlightenment considers that absolutism is not
reasonable because it is a system of government based on the divine election of the monarch; therefore
Thus, Rousseau will oppose this idea by confronting it with the fact that 'the government
is merely the representative of the sovereign people.” In the same way, “any law that does not
has been ratified by the people (usually through their representatives in the
Parliament) is null,” so we can assume that absolutist laws,
approved by the only real will, for Rousseau they have no validity.
Another key idea of Enlightenment political thought will be the separation of powers.
in executive, legislative, and judicial (idea of Montesquieu and, in turn, influence of the English
John Locke); in the text, the reference to the "legislative power" (an organ that
approves and validates the laws) and to the "government" (responsible for ensuring that the laws are upheld, or
they are fulfilled, in other words) in separate areas.
5. Synthesis
This text by Rousseau implicitly carries the idea of a new political system that works to
based on national sovereignty and the division of powers (executive, legislative, and judicial).
This new political system would replace the absolutist monarchy, irrational for the...
Illustration because the king is the only figure that possesses sovereignty and concentrates all the
powers.
The work of Rousseau's 'Social Contract' will be a fundamental reference for the
liberal thinkers of the late 18th century and the 19th century, and therefore it is going to be a
very important theoretical base both in the US War of Independence (1776-
1783) as in the French Revolution and in the various liberal revolutions of the 19th century.
