[Du contract social;] Principes du droit politique…
| Author | ROUSSEAU, Jean Jacques (1712-1778) |
| Typographer | Marc Michel Rey |
| Place and date of printing | Amsterdam, 1762 |
| Price | 12800 € |
8vo (cm 20); contemporary marbled calf, spine with 5 raised bands, morocco label and gilt title, marbled endpapers and edges; (4), VIII, 323, (1) pp. Engraved vignette on title-page. A very good, genuine copy.
FIRST EDITION, second issue. Compared to the first issue, the typographer M.M. Rey, following the author’s will, moved the upper part of the title (Du contract social;) to the half-title; changed the central vignette; and replaced the last two leaves, containing a discourse on marriage, with the Catalogue de livres imprimez chez Rey, Libraire à Amsterdam.
The work was immediately prohibited in France and very soon, that same year, appeared an official 12mo edition and many counterfeit edition in 12mo as well (cf. R.A. Leigh, Rousseau, his publishers and the Contrat social, in: "Bulletin of the John Rylands University", v. 66, no. 2, spring 1984, pp. 204-227).
«Furthermore, The Social Contract also appears to concur with the argument in Political Economy that the proper politicization of passions is their salvation. While Rousseau offers many criticisms of citizens’ private desires, he has none to offer of the general will, the expression of the citizens’ public desires. The general will, he contends, is “always right and always tends toward the public utility”. The only problem is that the citizens do not always discern the public good, and “only then does it appear to want what is bad”. Elaborating on this argument a few pages later, Rousseau contrasts private desire with public desire: “Private individuals see the good they reject; the public wants the good it does not see”. In other words, whereas individuals may purposely hold on to desires for bad things, the public only desires such things out of ignorance. Rousseau concludes this argument by asserting the need for a legislator who will enlighten the public, but the point here is the distinction he has drawn between private and public passion. Apparently, in the move from “I desire” to “we desire”, desire itself is redeemed from any harmful intentions. The “dangerous disposition from which all our vices arise” is “transform[ed] into a sublime virtue”. Although one might argue that Rousseau does not fully explain why the general will is by definition virtuous, it is clear that the key to its virtue is its generality, its link to the common interest. The private will, he says, “tends by its nature toward preferences, and the general will toward equality”. The general will is also, of course, the guarantee of the citizens’ freedom. Since equality and freedom are among the supreme virtues in Rousseau’s thought, we can begin to see why he praises the citizens’ public passion» (C. Hall, Reason, Passion and Politics in Rousseau, in: “Polity”, vol. 34, 2001, p. 69 and foll.).
«It had the most profound influence on the political thinking of the generation following its publication. It was, after all, the first great “emotional” plea for the equality of all men in the state: others had argued the same theoretically, but had themselves tolerated a very different government. Rousseau believed passionately in what he wrote, and when in 1789 a similiar emotion was released on a national scale, the Contract Social came into its own as the bible of the revolutionaries in building their ideal state… [Rousseau’s] fundamental thesis that the government depends absolutely on the mandate of the people, and his genuine creative insight into the political and economic problems of society gives his work an indisputable cogency» (Printing and the Mind of Man, nr. 207).
A. Tchemerzine, Bibliographie d’éditions originales et rares d’auteurs français des XVe, XVIe, XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles, Paris, 1977, V, p. 543. J. Sénelier, Bibliographie générale des oeuvres de J.J. Rousseau, Paris, 1950, nr. 554. OCLC, 5798807. T.A. Dufour, Recherches bibliographiques sur les oeuvres imprimées de J.-J. Rousseau, Paris, 1925, nr. 133.
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