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The Social Contract: HOW TO READ THE TEXT

The Social Contract
HOW TO READ THE TEXT
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table of contents
  1. COPYRIGHT
  2. HOW TO READ THE TEXT
  3. Glossary
  4. BOOK 1
    1. 1. The subject of the first book
    2. 2. The first societies
    3. 3. The right of the strongest
    4. 4. Slavery
    5. 5. We must always go back to a first agreement
    6. 6. The social compact
    7. 7. The sovereign
    8. 8. The civil state
    9. 9. Real estate
  5. BOOK 2
    1. 1. Sovereignty is inalienable
    2. 2. Sovereignty is indivisible
    3. 3. Can the general will be wrong?
    4. 4. The limits of the sovereign power
    5. 5. The right of life and death
    6. 6. The law
    7. 7. The law-maker
    8. 8. The people
    9. 9. The people (continued)
    10. 10. The people (further continued)
    11. 11. Differences among systems of legislation
    12. 12. Classifying laws
  6. BOOK 3
    1. 1. Government in general
    2. 2. The source of the variety among forms of government
    3. 3. Classifying governments
    4. 4. Democracy
    5. 5. Aristocracy
    6. 6. Monarchy
    7. 7. Mixed governments
    8. 8. No one form of government suits all countries
    9. 9. The signs of a good government
    10. 10. How government is abused. Its tendency to degenerate
    11. 11. The death of the body politic
    12. 12. How the sovereign authority is maintained
    13. 13. How the sovereign authority is maintained (continued)
    14. 14. How the sovereign authority is maintained (continued)
    15. 15. Deputies or representatives
    16. 16. What establishes government isn’t a contract
    17. 17. What does establish government
    18. 18. How to protect the government from being taken over
  7. BOOK 4
    1. 1. The general will is indestructible
    2. 2. Voting
    3. 3. Elections
    4. 4. The comitia in ancient Rome
    5. 5. Tribunes
    6. 6. Dictatorship
    7. 7. Censorship
    8. 8. Civic religion
    9. 9. Conclusion

HOW TO READ THE TEXT

[Brackets] enclose editorial explanations. Small ·dots· enclose material that has been added, but can be read as though it were part of the original text. Occasional •bullets, and also indenting of passages that are not quotations, are meant as aids to grasping the structure of a sentence or a thought. Every four-point ellipsis . . . . indicates the omission of a brief passage that seems to present more difficulty than it is worth. Longer omissions are reported between brackets in normal-sized type.

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