Social Contract (Barnes & Noble Library of Essential Reading)

"Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains." With those words, quite possibly the most famous in all political thought, Jean-Jacques Rousseau launches The Social Contract. It is a work that loomed over the French Revolution, haunted subsequent generations, and stalks the twenty-first century. Composed in the autumn of the Old Regime, The Social Contract presents a radical new form of politi...