Key Arguments

• Rousseau asserts that the terms of the social contract are not arbitrary but determined by what the act itself is: "The clauses of this contract are so determined by the nature of the act that the slightest modification would make them vain and ineffective;" indicating that altering them would destroy their efficacy.
• He notes that, though rarely articulated, these clauses are universal and implicit: "so that, although they have perhaps never been formally set forth, they are everywhere the same and everywhere tacitly admitted and recognised," suggesting a trans-historical, structural character to the social pact.
• He specifies the consequence of breach: "until, on the violation of the social compact, each regains his original rights and resumes his natural liberty, while losing the conventional liberty in favour of which he renounced it." Thus, legitimacy is conditional; when the compact fails, natural liberty and original rights return, but the specifically civil or 'conventional' liberty is forfeited.
• This description clarifies that political obligation is not irrevocable: its binding force depends on the ongoing observance of the tacit but determinate clauses inherent in the social act.

Source Quotes

This is the fundamental problem of which the Social Contract provides the solution. The clauses of this contract are so determined by the nature of the act that the slightest modification would make them vain and ineffective; so that, although they have perhaps never been formally set forth, they are everywhere the same and everywhere tacitly admitted and recognised, until, on the violation of the social compact, each regains his original rights and resumes his natural liberty, while losing the conventional liberty in favour of which he renounced it. These clauses, properly understood, may be reduced to one—the total alienation of each associate, together with all his rights, to the whole community; for, in the first place, as each gives himself absolutely, the conditions are the same for all; and, this being so, no one has any interest in making them burdensome to others.

Key Concepts

• The clauses of this contract are so determined by the nature of the act that the slightest modification would make them vain and ineffective;
• although they have perhaps never been formally set forth, they are everywhere the same and everywhere tacitly admitted and recognised,
• until, on the violation of the social compact, each regains his original rights and resumes his natural liberty, while losing the conventional liberty in favour of which he renounced it.

Context

Middle of Chapter VI, where Rousseau characterizes the universality and implicit status of the social contract’s terms and describes what happens when the compact is broken.