"Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains."
These are the famous opening words of a treatise that has not ceased to stir vigorous debate since its first publication in 1762. Rejecting the view that anyone has a natural right to wield authority over others, Rousseau argues instead for a pact, or ‘social contract’, that should exist between all the citizens of a state and that should be the source of sovereign power. From this fundamental premise, he goes on to consider issues of liberty and law, freedom and justice, arriving at a view of society that has seemed to some a blueprint for totalitarianism, to others a declaration of democratic principles.

让-雅克·卢梭是十八世纪法国杰出的思想家、文学家，十九世纪浪漫主义文学的先驱。本书为其重要代表作之一。这是卢梭与自己心灵的对话，是对心灵的自我解剖。它真实地再现了处于最纯真状态中的卢梭形象——真诚，淳朴，睿智，热爱自然。卢梭以浓厚的笔墨向我们表述了他对孩子的喜爱之情、对敌人的仇恨之情、回忆往事所油然而生的喜悦之情、对虚伪阴险之人的鄙视之情以及对幸福、和谐生活的渴望之情等诸多的真情实感。
这是卢梭与自己心灵的对话，是对心灵的自我解剖。它真实地再现了处于最纯真状态中的卢梭形象——真诚，淳朴，睿智，热爱自然。卢梭以浓厚的笔墨向我们表述了他对孩子的喜爱之情、对敌人的仇恨之情、回忆往事所油然而生的喜悦之情、对虚伪阴险之人的鄙视之情以及对幸福、和谐生活的渴望之情等诸多的真情实感。

Newly translated by Peter Constantine
Edited and with an Introduction by Leo Damrosch

The Essential Writings of Rousseau collects the best and most indispensable work of one of the world’s most influential writers. A towering figure of Enlightenment thought, Jean-Jacques Rousseau was also one of that movement’s most passionate and persuasive critics. His extraordinarily original observations on politics, education, and human nature were provocative in their day and remain resonant more than two hundred years after his death. Rousseau’s 1762 treatise The Social Contract laid intellectual groundwork for both the American and French Revolutions, influencing such figures as Thomas Jefferson. An eloquent writer with profound insight into human psychology, Rousseau also penned one of the most compelling autobiographies ever written—the magisterial Confessions . The entirety of the first three books of that masterpiece along with the complete Social Contract are included in this indispensable volume.

在线阅读本书
When it was first published in 1781, The Confessions scandalised Europe with its emotional honesty and frank treatment of the author's sexual and intellectual development. Since then, it has had a more profound impact on European thought. Rousseau left posterity a model of the reflective life - the solitary, uncompromising individual, the enemy of servitude and habit and the selfish egoist who dedicates his life to a particular ideal. The Confessions recreates the world in which he progressed from incompetent engraver to grand success; his enthusiasm for experience, his love of nature, and his uncompromising character make him an ideal guide to eighteenth-century Europe, and he was the author of some of the most profound work ever written on the relation between the individual and the state.

在线阅读本书
"Man was born free, but everywhere he is in chains." Thus begins Rousseau's influential 1762 work, in which he argues that all government is fundamentally flawed and that modern society is based on a system of inequality. The philosopher proposes an alternative system for the development of self-governing, self-disciplined citizens.

In his Confessions Jean-Jacques Rousseau tells the story of his life, from the formative experience of his humble childhood in Geneva, through the achievement of international fame as novelist and philosopher in Paris, to his wanderings as an exile, persecuted by governments and alienated from
the world of modern civilization. In trying to explain who he was and how he came to be the object of others' admiration and abuse, Rousseau analyses with unique insight the relationship between an elusive but essential inner self and the variety of social identities he was led to adopt. The book
vividly illustrates the mixture of moods and motives that underlie the writing of autobiography: defiance and vulnerability, self-exploration and denial, passion, puzzlement, and detachment. Above all, Confessions is Rousseau's search, through every resource of language, to convey what he despairs
of putting into words: the personal quality of one's own existence.

本书是1753年卢梭应法国第戎科学院的正文而写的论文。

Contains the Social Contract, as well as the first English translation of Rousseau's early Discourse on the Virtue Most Necessary for a Hero, numerous previously untranslated political fragments, and the first draft of the Social Contract (the so-called Geneva Manuscript). By placing Rousseau's famous exposition of "political right" and the "general will" in the context of his preparatory drafts, the editors provide significant insight into the formation of one of the most important and influential works in Western political thought.

La magistrale édition de la Pléiade, dont le premier volume a paru en 1959, a été menée par les meilleurs spécialistes de l’époque. Cette édition 2012, sous la direction de deux rousseauistes parmi les plus éminents, Raymond Trousson et Frédéric S. Eigeldinger, adopte une orthographe modernisée, garantie de plus grande lisibilité. Destinée à la fois à l’honnête homme et aux spécialistes, elle s’articule sur la disposition thématique. Cette disposition a l’avantage d’offrir une lecture cohérente des ensembles, sans pour autant négliger la perspective chronologique, puisque chaque volume contient une chronologie détaillée et exhaustive des œuvres, selon la date de composition, ainsi que la date de première publication. Chaque volume est pourvu d’un index et les références renvoient aux volumes de la nouvelle édition. À côté des œuvres capitales, minutieusement revues sur les manuscrits et les éditions originales, en tenant compte des variantes significatives, une attention particulière a été portée aux minora, pour la première fois éclairées par des analyses approfondies, et à des ouvrages moins fréquentés par la critique, comme divers textes scientifiques ou les travaux de Rousseau sur la botanique, présentés dans leur intégralité, ou encore les importantes Institutions chimiques, sans oublier le Dictionnaire de musique, avec son appareil critique unique en son genre, comportant plus de 2500 notes des spécialistes les plus autorisés, Samuel Baud-Borgt, Amalia Collisani et Brenno Boccadoro.

《社会契约论》是一部政治哲学著作。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。
人类是幸运的，人民是伟大的，在历史发展的紧要关头，总有人指引前进的道路，人民总能及时做出正确的抉择。“在18世纪的法国政治思想领域里，存在着三种改革国家政治制度的学说：孟德斯鸠主张立宪君主制，伏尔泰主张开明的君主制，而卢梭主张民主共和制。