the social contract

The book "The Social Contract" by the great philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau is one of the most important intellectual works written during the Renaissance and Enlightenment eras in the West. Following the fall of religious legitimacy as the basis for government in Europe, it became necessary to search for an alternative legitimacy upon which political rule could be based and upon which the responsibilities, duties, and rights of both the ruler and the ruled could be determined. Therefore, many thinkers and philosophers worked to create a new legal charter governing the relationship between the two parties. Among these thinkers who sought to create this charter was Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who, along with a group of other Enlightenment thinkers such as Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, proposed the idea of ​​the social contract.