【编辑推荐】
1.*好的英文译本。 2.作者卢梭是法国启蒙运动的代表人物，对当代世界思潮产生了巨大的影响。
3.在中国近代思想启蒙史上，《民约论》（*初译名）具有举足轻重的影响。
4.依据剑桥英文版排印。
【内容简介】
《社会契约论》（全英文原版）西方政治思想史中用契约关系解释社会和国家起源的政治哲学理论。它通过把社会和国家看作人们之间订立契约的结果，来说明政治权威、政治权利和政治义务的来源、范围和条件等问题。它探讨的是政治权利的原理，它的主旨是为人民民主主权的建立奠定理论基础。它的问世，是时代的需要，是人类社会向前进步的产物；它正确回答了历史进程提出的问题：法国命运的航船驶向何方。
古人有云：朝闻道，夕死可矣。人是社会动物，都有窥探社会组织架构、了解社会组织形态的好奇心和冲动。而现代社会更多脱胎于始于欧洲的资产阶级革命，要想做这方面的探究，和伟人直接对话是一条捷径。这就是这套原版的社科经典丛书的编辑初衷。不管你是学哲学的学生，还是从事社会科学研究的学者，不读几部经典原著，不在书架上摆上一套经典原著，应该是人生的一大憾事。
【作者简介】
卢梭（Jean-Jacques Rousseau）18世纪法国启蒙思想家、哲学家、教育家、文学家、音乐家，法国大革命的思想先驱，启蒙运动*卓越的代表人物之一，被誉为“现代民主政体之父”。卢梭坚持社会契约论，主张建立资产阶级的“理性王国”；强调自由平等，反对压迫；提出“天赋人权”，反对专制、暴政。其代表作有：《论人类不平等的起源和基础》《社会契约论》《爱弥儿》《忏悔录》等。
【目录】
BOOK I………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….001
BOOK II…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………021
BOOK III…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………052
BOOK IV…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………099
【免费在线读】
THE SOCIAL CONTRACT & DISCOURSES
By JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU
Translated by G.D.H. Cole
BOOK I
I mean to inquire if, in the civil order, there can be any sure and legitimate rule of administration, men being taken as they are and laws as they might be. In this inquiry I shall endeavor always to unite what right sanctions with what is prescribed by interest, in order that justice and utility may in no case be divided.
I enter upon my task without proving the importance of the subject I shall be asked if I am a prince or a legislator, to write on politics. I answer that I am neither, and that is why I do so. If I were a prince or a legislator, I should not waste time in saying what wants doing; I should do it, or hold my peace.
As I was born a citizen of a free State, and a member of the Sovereign, I feel that, however feeble the influence my voice can have on public affairs, the right of voting on them makes it my duty to study them: and I am happy, when I reflect upon governments, to find my inquiries always furnish me with new reasons for loving that of my own country.
CHAPTER I
SUBJECT OF THE FIRST BOOK
Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains. One thinks himself the master of others, and still remains a greater slave than they. How did this change come about? I do not know. What can make it legitimate? That question I think I can answer.
If I took into account only force, and the effects derived from it, I should say: "As long as a people is compelled to obey, and obeys, it does well; as soon as it can shake off the yoke, and shakes it off, it does still better; for, regaining its liberty by the same right as took it away, either it is justified in resuming it, or there was no justification for those who took it away." But the social order is a sacred right which is the basis of all other rights. Nevertheless, this right does not come from nature, and must therefore be founded on conventions. Before coming to that, I have to prove what I have just asserted.
CHAPTER II
THE FIRST SOCIETIES
The most ancient of all societies, and the only one that is natural is the family: and even so the children remain attached to the father only so long as they need him for their preservation. As soon as this need ceases, the natural bond is dissolved. The children, released from the obedience they owed to the father, and the father, released from the care he owed his children, return equally to independence. If they remain united, they continue so no longer naturally, but voluntarily; and the family itself is then maintained only by convention.
This common liberty results from the nature of man. His first law is to provide for his own preservation, his first cares are those which he owes to himself; and, as soon as he reaches years of discretion, he is the sole judge of the proper means of preserving himself, and consequently becomes his own master.
The family then may be called the first model of political societies: the ruler corresponds to the father, and the people to the children; and all, being born free and equal, alienate their liberty only for their own advantage. The whole difference is that, in the family, the love of the father for his children repays him for the care he takes of them, while, in the State, the pleasure of commanding takes the place of the love which the chief cannot have for the peoples under him. Grotius denies that all human power is established in favour of the governed, and quotes slavery as an example. His usual method of reasoning is constantly to establish right by fact. [1] It would be possible to employ a more logical method, but none could be more favourable to tyrants. It is then, according to Grotius, doubtful whether the human race belongs to a hundred men, or that hundred men to the human race: and, throughout his book, he seems to incline to the former alternative, which is also the view of Hobbes. On this showing, the human species is divided into so many herds of cattle, each with its ruler, who keeps guard over them for the purpose of devouring them.
As a shepherd is of a nature superior to that of his flock, the shepherds of men, _i.e._ their rulers, are of a nature superior to that of the peoples under them. Thus, Philo tells us, the Emperor Caligula reasoned, concluding equally well either that kings were gods, or that men were beasts.
The reasoning of Caligula agrees with that of Hobbes and Grotius. Aristotle, before any of them, had said that men are by no means equal naturally, but that some are born for slavery, and others for dominion.
Aristotle was right; but he took the effect for the cause. Nothing can be more certain than that every man born in slavery is born for slavery. Slaves lose everything in their chains, even the desire of escaping from them: they love their servitude, as the comrades of Ulysses loved their brutish condition.[2] If then there are slaves by nature, it is because there have been slaves against nature. Force made the first slaves, and their cowardice perpetuated the condition.
I have said nothing of King Adam, or Emperor Noah, father of the three great monarchs who shared out the universe, like the children of Saturn, whom some scholars have recognised in them. I trust to getting due thanks for my moderation; for, being a direct descendant of one of these princes, perhaps of the eldest branch, how do I know that a verification of titles might not leave me the legitimate king of the human race? In any case, there can be no doubt that Adam was sovereign of the world, as Robinson Crusoe was of his island, as long as he was its only inhabitant; and this empire had the advantage that the monarch, safe on his throne, had no rebellions, wars, or conspirators to fear.
[1] "Learned inquiries into public right are often only the history of past abuses; and troubling to study them too deeply is a profitless infatuation" (_Essay on the Interests of France in Relation to its Neighbours, by the Marquis d'Argenson). This is exactly what Grotius has done.
[2] See a short treatise of Plutarch's entitled "That Animals Reason."
【书摘与插画】
