The Social Contract: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

The Social Contract, credited to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, is available as a LibriVox volunteer audiobook. This guide identifies the recording, its source summary and its audio tracks.

About the work

The LibriVox catalogue summary, preserved with the recording, reads:

LibriVox recording of The Social Contract, by Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The Social Contract outlines Rousseau's views on political justice, explaining how a just and legitimate state is to be founded, organized and administered. Rousseau sets forth, in his characteristically brazen and iconoclastic manner, the case for direct democracy, while simultaneously casting every other form of government as illegitimate and tantamount to slavery. Often hailed as a revolutionary document which sparked the French Revolution, The Social Contract serves both to inculcate dissatisfaction with actually-existing governments and to allow its readers to envision and desire a radically different form of political and social organization. (Summary by Eric Jonas)

Recording facts

• Recording title: The Social Contract
• Author credits: Jean-Jacques Rousseau
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 48
• Listed recording duration: 4:46:47

Catalogue topics

• philosophy
• politics
• rousseau
• contract

Opening tracks: first 24 of 48

1. 1-01 - Subject of the First Book — 1:41
2. 1-02 - Primitive Societies — 4:34
3. 1-03 - The Right of the Strongest — 2:44
4. 1-04 - Slavery — 10:28
5. 1-05 - That It Is Always Necessary To Go Back To A First Convention — 2:34
6. 1-06 - The Social Pact — 5:24
7. 1-07 - The Sovereign — 5:50
8. 1-08 - The Civil State — 3:15
9. 1-09 - Real Property — 7:37
10. 2-01 - That Sovereignty is inalienable — 3:09
11. 2-02 - That Soverignty is indivisible — 4:43
12. 2-03 - Whether the General Will can err — 2:59
13. 2-04 - The limits of the sovereign power — 8:49
14. 2-05 - The Right of Life and Death — 5:16
15. 2-06 - The Law — 7:51
16. 2-07 - The Legislator — 8:32
17. 2-08 - The People — 5:33
18. 2-09 - The People (continued) — 6:12
19. 2-10 - The People (continued) — 7:23
20. 2-11 - The Different Systems of legislation — 4:09
21. 2-12 - Division of the Laws — 3:11
22. 3-01 - Government in General — 15:21
23. 3-02 - The Principle Which Constitutes the Different Forms of Government — 7:35
24. 3-03 - Classification of Governments — 3:22

Listen to this recording

Open the complete recording and player on Internet Archive. The player includes the full track list and available download formats.

Source and rights

This is a record from LibriVox's official Internet Archive collection, with a public-domain licence recorded in its metadata. LibriVox's policy includes its catalogue summaries as well as its recordings. Its public-domain assessment follows United States law; copyright status can differ elsewhere. The summary and track facts are reproduced and reformatted from that record. Dates attached to the archive upload are not treated as original book publication dates.