A Treatise on the Social Compact: or The Principles of Politic Law.

"The Contrat Social remains Rousseau's greatest work... Rousseau believed passionately in what he wrote, and when in 1789 a similar emotion was released on a national scale, the Contract Social came into its own as the bible of the revolutionaries in building their ideal state. Still in print, translated into every language in cheap editions and paperbacks, it remains a crucial document of egalitarian government" (Printing and the Mind of Man, 270, discussing the 1762 first edition). Written in 1762, Rousseau's seminal work provided a philosophical justification for revolutionary change by promoting the principles of popular sovereignty, the general will, equality, liberty, and political participation. Rousseau argued that legitimate political authority comes from the consent of the governed, rather than from divine right or hereditary monarchy. This idea inspired French revolutionaries to demand a government that represented the will of the people. Upon publication, the distribution of The Social Contract in France was prohibited, and Rousseau fled the country to avoid imprisonment. It was primarily Rousseau's chapter on civil religion, rather than his ideas on liberty and sovereignty, that caused the controversy. Immanuel Kant, one of the most influential moral philosophers in Western philosophy, acknowledged his debt to Rousseau's work in political philosophy, of which The Social Contract is perhaps the closest to a complete statement. Kant wrote, “I myself am a researcher by inclination. I feel the entire thirst for cognition and the eager restlessness to proceed further in it, as well as the satisfaction at every acquisition. There was a time when I believed this alone could constitute the honour of humankind, and I despised the rabble who knows nothing. Rousseau has set me right. This blinding prejudice vanishes, I learn to honour human beings, and I would feel by far less useful than the common labourer if I did not believe that this consideration could impart a value to all others in order to establish the rights of humanity” (Refl. 20:44).