“Whoever refuses to obey the general will shall be compelled to do so by the whole body. This means nothing other than that he will be forced to be free.”

What does it mean?

The usual reading takes the paradox as a claim about freedom as obedience to a law one has prescribed to oneself as a citizen: the person who refuses the general will is being held to their own will as a member of the sovereign, and so is being forced only relative to a particular, rebellious will. A rival reading hears a plain warrant for coercion in freedom's name, and the sentence has been used that way. Chapter 7 is defending the pact against the free rider. The phrase is deliberately shocking, and the shock is not a mistranslation.

Did Jean-Jacques Rousseau really say this?

The library’s label is Paraphrase or translation. A standard English of The Social Contract, book one, chapter 7. Forced to be free is his phrase, and it is one of the most contested in modern political thought. This wording is a translation.

Where it comes from

The Social Contract I.7

Approximate date: 1762.

How to use it

A household in Glasgow agrees a rule about bills, and one adult then refuses the share while keeping the heating. Rousseau's sentence would say the compulsion to pay is not an attack on freedom but its condition, if the rule really is a general will and not a stronger person dressing up a preference. The household is not a republic; The example shows how quickly the phrase can be borrowed by whoever already holds the stick.

A mindset reading

The sentence should not be smoothed. Forced to be free is the claim, and any use that drops either word is a different politics. Defenders say the force is only against the particular will that would enjoy the pact without the burden; Critics say a state that speaks this way has given itself a language in which dissent is always a failure to be one's true self; Both readings are engaging the chapter; Neither is a misprint.

Understand the philosophy

The key term is being forced to be free, the idea that compulsion by the body politic can realise, rather than cancel, civil freedom, because civil freedom is obedience to the general will. Chapter 7 ties this to the social pact's moral life. The French is Rousseau's, in 1762. The English is a standard translation; The phrase is a standing test of whether his freedom is a kind of self-rule or a name for submission.

Related

• “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.”

  Paraphrase or translation

• “Each of us puts his person and all his power in common under the supreme direction of the general will.”

  Paraphrase or translation

• “The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying This is mine, and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society.”

  Paraphrase or translation

Related fallacy. False dilemma. A false dilemma pretends there are only two options when others are available, or treats the options as if you must take one extreme. Sometimes the pair is real. The fallacy is forcing a pair that has not been shown to be complete.

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