Chapter 1 - Book I

Summary

Title Page and “Notice”

The Social Contract was initially issued with two similar, yet distinct, title pages. Each version includes the title, a statement of his Genevan citizenship, a quotation from Virgil’s Aeneid, and a sketch with many of the same symbols. Rousseau had made it clear to his publisher, Marc-Michel Rey, that he wanted to use the same images found on the title page of his Second Discourse. He was mostly happy with that illustration and requested that it be repeated on the title page for the Social Contract, with one important alteration. He feared that the depiction of Lady Liberty in the Second Discourse rendered her chubby and hence “ignoble.” So he requested that she appear more slender in the Social Contract. Rey commissioned Benjamin Samuel Bolomey to draw two images and Charles-Ange Boily to engrave them for the book.

Title Page: The Image(s)

The first title page image includes several symbols, some more obvious than others. At the center is the image of an apparently Roman woman with the scales of justice in her right hand and a pike in her left. Most immediately, the scales evoke associations with Lady Justice, the Roman god of Justice (Justitia), who is always portrayed with the scales, a symbol of justice and equality. As will become evident in reading the text, equality is one of the preeminent values of the Social Contract. The social contract, as Rousseau asserts in his conclusion to Book I, establishes a “moral and legitimate equality” (SC, 1.9.8, 56 [III: 367]), such that “all commit themselves under the same conditions and must enjoy all the same rights” (SC, 2.4.8, 61 [III: 374]).