The coherence of Rousseau's reflection in Social Contract

Abstract

The article argues the C. E. Vaughan's commentaries on the Social Contract, especially those that take the heading of "Leading ideas of the Contrat Social, as modified by the influence of Montesquieu". According to Vaughan, in the pages of the work at issue, Rousseau is moved away from the "abstract reasoning" that would characterize the first part of the text, to come close more and more of the concern with the "concrete" aspects of the political reality, so that Montesquieu and his "historical method" would have become, then, his essential references. This would have created, once more according to commentator, a contradiction in the internal structure of the Social Contract. Thus, the objective of this article is to question the supposed incoherence that Vaughan accuses, by evaluating the arguments that he presents to support his interpretation