Key Arguments

• Rousseau asks how obligations could arise without a prior pact: "Indeed, if there were no prior convention, where, unless the election were unanimous, would be the obligation on the minority to submit to the choice of the majority?" highlighting that majority rule cannot be taken as self-justifying.
• He sharpens the problem by querying the representative claim of a majority: "How have a hundred men who wish for a master the right to vote on behalf of ten who do not?" suggesting that, absent an agreed rule, numerical superiority alone does not generate authority over dissenters.
• He concludes by noting that the principle of majority rule is itself conventional: "The law of majority voting is itself something established," explicitly stating that this decision rule derives its force from a foundational agreement rather than from nature or mere number.

Source Quotes

It would be better, before examining the act by which a people gives itself to a king, to examine that by which it has become a people; for this act, being necessarily prior to the other, is the true foundation of society. Indeed, if there were no prior convention, where, unless the election were unanimous, would be the obligation on the minority to submit to the choice of the majority? How have a hundred men who wish for a master the right to vote on behalf of ten who do not?

Indeed, if there were no prior convention, where, unless the election were unanimous, would be the obligation on the minority to submit to the choice of the majority? How have a hundred men who wish for a master the right to vote on behalf of ten who do not? The law of majority voting is itself something established

How have a hundred men who wish for a master the right to vote on behalf of ten who do not? The law of majority voting is itself something established

Key Concepts

• Indeed, if there were no prior convention, where, unless the election were unanimous, would be the obligation on the minority to submit to the choice of the majority?
• How have a hundred men who wish for a master the right to vote on behalf of ten who do not?
• The law of majority voting is itself something established

Context

Closing sentences of the passage in Chapter V, where Rousseau uses the problem of majority rule over a dissenting minority to argue that a prior, foundational convention is necessary to create binding collective decision procedures.