Jean-Jacques Rousseau claims that in order to ensure the legitimacy of civil commitments and to prevent them from becoming meaningless, tyrannical, and abusive, one can be "forced to be free." It is unclear, however, how forcing citizens to conform to the general will leads to a society which is any...

Rousseau's "State of Nature" What was man like in his earliest form? When left to his own devices, how did he comport himself? For centuries scholars have pondered man's true "state of nature," which can be defined as the condition of mankind in the "ab...