Key Arguments

• Rousseau explicitly introduces an additional gain of the civil state: "We might, over and above all this, add, to what man acquires in the civil state, moral liberty, which alone makes him truly master of himself;" asserting that this kind of liberty is distinct from and superior to the merely juridical civil liberty previously mentioned.
• He defines the contrast between appetite and self‑legislation in terms of slavery and freedom: "for the mere impulse of appetite is slavery, while obedience to a law which we prescribe to ourselves is liberty." This indicates that acting under unreflective desire is heteronomous, whereas acting under self‑imposed law is autonomous.
• By saying moral liberty "alone makes him truly master of himself," Rousseau implies that natural liberty (license to follow impulse) is in fact a kind of internal bondage, and that only the rational will operating through laws of one’s own making constitutes true self‑mastery.
• This definition of liberty as obedience to self‑prescribed law anticipates Rousseau’s broader doctrine of the general will as the expression of our rational, common will, and foreshadows later claims that in obeying the law we have prescribed to ourselves as citizens, we are free rather than constrained.
• Rousseau’s remark "But I have already said too much on this head, and the philosophical meaning" signals that this notion of moral liberty carries deeper philosophical implications that reach beyond the immediate political exposition.

Source Quotes

If we are to avoid mistake in weighing one against the other, we must clearly distinguish natural liberty, which is bounded only by the strength of the individual, from civil liberty, which is limited by the general will; and possession, which is merely the effect of force or the right of the first occupier, from property, which can be founded only on a positive title. We might, over and above all this, add, to what man acquires in the civil state, moral liberty, which alone makes him truly master of himself; for the mere impulse of appetite is slavery, while obedience to a law which we prescribe to ourselves is liberty. But I have already said too much on this head, and the philosophical meaning

We might, over and above all this, add, to what man acquires in the civil state, moral liberty, which alone makes him truly master of himself; for the mere impulse of appetite is slavery, while obedience to a law which we prescribe to ourselves is liberty. But I have already said too much on this head, and the philosophical meaning

Key Concepts

• We might, over and above all this, add, to what man acquires in the civil state, moral liberty, which alone makes him truly master of himself;
• for the mere impulse of appetite is slavery, while obedience to a law which we prescribe to ourselves is liberty.
• But I have already said too much on this head, and the philosophical meaning

Context

Closing sentences of Book I, Chapter VIII, where Rousseau introduces 'moral liberty' as a further, distinctly philosophical benefit of the civil state, and gives his famous definition of liberty as obedience to self‑imposed law.