《社会契约论》读后小摘

遇到这本书也算一个巧合：去年去图书馆借《社会契约论》时，发现二楼社科区的《社会契约论》都是相当老旧的；而搜索结果显示三楼英语教材区却有一本。为了不空手而归，于是就去楼上借了这本。

曾经听朋友说某高校政治学夏令营的英文面试题有翻译一段经典著作（英文），而那位朋友当时抽到的似乎就是《社会契约论》。虽然英文的《社会契约论》译自法文，但对绝大多数政治学本科生而言具备阅读法文或其他语种的经典著作选段的能力显然是非常不现实的。因此，简单整理了一些社会契约论的名句，主要以前三卷为主，因为第四卷更多关注人类社会的具体建构问题，而前三章更多是对理念的概括和强调。

Book 1

1.SUBJECT OF THE FIRST BOOK

①Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains. One thinks himself the master of others, and still remains a greater slave than they.

3.THE RIGHT OF THE STRONGEST

①The strongest is never strong enough to be always the master, unless he transforms strength into right, and obedience into duty.…… Force is a physical power, and I fail to see what moral effect it can have. To yield to force is an act of necessity, not of will-at the most, an act of prudence. In what sense can it be a duty?

②Clearly, the word “right” adds nothing to force: in the connection, it means absolutely nothing.

6.THE SOCIAL COMPACT

①"The problem is to find a form of association which will defend and protect with the whole common force the person and goods of each associate, and in which each, while uniting himself with all, may still obey himself alone, and remain as free as before." This is the fundamental problem of which the social contract provides the solution.

②These clauses, properly understood, may be reduced to one—the total alination 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.

③Each of us puts his person and all his power in common under the supreme direction of the general will, and, in our corporate capacity, we receive each member as an indivisible part of the whole.

7.THE SOVEREIGN

①In order then that the social compact may not be an empty formula, it tacitly includes the undertaking—which alone can give force to the rest—that whoever refuses to obey the general will shall be compelled to do so by the whole body. This means nothing less than that he will be forced to be free; for this is the condition which, by giving each citizen to his country, secures him against all personal dependence.

Book 2

5.THE RIGHT OF LIFE AND DEATH

①We may add that the frequent punishments are always a sign of weakness or remissness on the part of the governement. There is not a single ill-doer who could not be turned to some good.

②In a well-governed State, there are few punishments, not because there are many pardons, but because criminals are rare; it is when a State is in decay that the multitude of crimes is a guarantee of impunity.

7.THE LEGISLATOR

①He who dares to undertake the making of a people's institution sought to feel himself capable, so to speak, of changing human nature, of transforming each individual, who is by himself a complete and solitary whole, into part of a greater whole from which he in a manner receives his life and being;

Book 3

1.GOVERNMENT IN GENERAL

①What then is government? An intermediate bodyset up between the subjects and the Sovereign, to secure their mutual correspndence, charged with the execution of the laws and the maintenance of liberty, both civil and political; of altering man's constitution for the purpose of strengthening it; and of substituting a partialand moral existence for the physical and independent existence nature has conferred on us all. He must, in a word, take away from man his own resources and give him instead new ones alien to him,and incapable of being made use of without the help of other men. The more completely these natural resources are annihilated, the greater and the more lasting are those which he acquires, and the more stable and perfect the new institutions; so that if each citizenis nothing and can do nothing without the rest, and the resources acquired by the whole are equal or superior to the aggregate of the resources of all the individuals, it may be said that legislationis at the highest possible point of perfection.

7. MIXED GOVERNMENTS

①…for the maxima of both strength and weakness are found in simple governments, while the mixed forms result in a mean strength.