Hello and welcome to the eighth episode of Theory of the Week, a weekly show from A Student’s Note where we explore a theory‑esque concept each week.

This week I would like to introduce another important contractualist—besides Locke and Hobbes, who we covered in the fifth episode. Today I would like to talk about Jean-Jacques Rousseau, one of the most influential but also controversial figures in modern political philosophy.

He was born in Geneva in 1712 and was markedly an intellectual outsider among his contemporary Enlightenment thinkers, because he was deeply sceptical of the progress and rationalism that figures like Voltaire celebrated. You may know him from the famous line “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.”

Interestingly, while the diagnosis was condemned during his life, with both personal and intellectual consequences, it is the solution that became the subject of a later controversy.

But let us start from the beginning.

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