1. The problem of political philosophy and some wrong answers to it

"Man is born free and is everywhere in chains", that is:

• in its natural state (the state of nature) man is naturally free (this is, in part, the argument of the Discourse on Inequality).  Man is in a state in which:
• he's moved by amour de soi-meme (self-esteem) to see to his own preservation.  It follows that no one has the right to dispose of one's own life (II, 5)

NOTES:
• amour de soi-meme is different from amour propre (self-love), which is only possible in society and involves vanity.  In particular, the former, but not the latter, is moderated by natural compassion.
• Compare with Hobbes and Locke
• he's not legitimately (or even in fact) subordinate to anyone else (there are no natural subordinates or slaves).
• society robs us of our natural freedom

• Political power is the result of parental power and is legitimized by it (I, 2)

Problems:
• parental power ends once the children don't need their parents to survive.
• the idea that today's sovereigns trace their lineage to Adam or Noah is preposterous.

NOTE: compare with Locke.
• Political power is the result of force (I, 3)

Problem: one cannot move from might to right because one cannot move from prudence (obey the mighty) to duty (you have a duty to obey the mighty).
NOTE: compare with Spinoza
• Political power is the result of an agreement whereby a people alienates its whole liberty to a sovereign (I, 4).  They do so to gain:
• security from other men

Problems:
1. When X alienates G to Y, A does so in expectation of a good from Y.  However:
• security is not enough to justify the alienation of freedom.
• "To renounce one's liberty is to renounce one's humanity", and no compensation is adequate
• Even if such alienation were justified, it wouldn't extend to the next generation.
2. Stripping a man of all freedom entails stripping his actions of all morality.  Hence, the subject would have no duty to obey.
• the keeping of life in the case of conquest

Problems:
• Wars are among states, not individual men.  Hence, citizen of an enemy state are enemies only as soldiers; once vanquished, they cease to be enemies.
• Even assuming the right to kill the vanquished people, they wouldn't have a duty to obey after alienating their liberty in exchange for their lives because they would have been effectively killed as human beings (to renounce one's liberty is to renounce one's humanity).  Therefore the victor would not have fulfilled his part of the agreement, and so they would still be in a state of war with the victor.

NOTE: compare with Hobbes.

The basis of political philosophy is to understand how a multitude of individuals becomes a people, i.e., not a community of merely self-interested individuals, but one in which each strives for the common good.  This transformation occurs when each individual puts his person and all his power  (this includes all the goods one has (II, 9)) under the control of the general will of the community, i.e., when each alienates his person and all his rights to the community (I, 6).  Those who don't enter the compact remain "foreigners among citizens" (IV, 2)
NOTES:

• The contract is one of association, not one of submission
• Such contract needn't be formally enunciated, as long as individuals abide by it.
• The alienation of rights is 1) total and 2) to the community as a whole.  Giving oneself entirely to the community guarantees that the condition is equal for all, and consequently:
• no one has interest in making the condition burdensome.
• nobody can be one's own judge
• each loses only as much rights towards another as he gains
• The result is a "collective artificial" body politic which is called "state" when passive and "sovereign" when active.  The associates together are a "people", and each individually is a "citizen"  as participating in the sovereign authority, and a "subject' as  subjected to the laws.
• Once the body politic is created, the majority rules (IV, 2)

3. The sovereign general will and its rights

The will of the the people is the general will, whose exercise constitutes sovereignty.  For R.,  a will is general because of

• its form: its commands have the form of general laws rather than particular edicts

NOTE: so, the application of the laws to individual cases is made by the government, which operates under mandate of the general will (II, 4; 6; III, 1).  R. clearly think that if the sovereign (the legislative) as such also had executive power, the doors to tyranny would be open (IV, 16).
• its matter: it aims at the general good.

NOTES:
• As any will, the general will cannot but aim at the good of its subject (in this case, the people): as such, the general will cannot err.  R. distinguishes between the general will and the people's actual decisions. If the latter were reached by a citizenry not influenced by special interests and lobbies, then the two would coincide.  However, since this precondition is often not satisfied, the people's actual decisions (even if unanimous) are often wrong and fail to conform to the general will (II, 3).
• It's hard to know the applicable criteria that allow one to distinguish the two cases; in practice, for R. the decisions of the majority are both legally and morally binding.  Because of this, some see a strong anti-liberal strain in R.

• The sovereign may compel those who refuse to obey its commands by charging the government to do so (I,7; II, 5).  This extend to the application of the death penalty

NOTES:
• Although we have no right to suicide, since 1) we want to enter society to safeguard our lives, 2) the deterrent effect of the death penalty is necessary  to society, and 3) who wants the end also wants the means, we may give society the power to execute us so that we may be protected by it. (II, 5)
• In compelling the recalcitrant to obey, society "forces them to be free", in the sense that it makes them pursue the goals they ought (and ultimately, by agreeing to be in the body politic, do want) to pursue (II, 7; IV, 2).
• The sovereign may change every domestic law because it doesn't contract with anyone in society (things are different with respect to international treatises) (I, 7)
• Sovereignty is inalienable because no will can consent to what's bad for the being A which wills, and a promise to will what another shall will may lead to willing what's bad for A (II, 1).
• Sovereignty is indivisible (II, 2).  Hence, ultimately the power resides with the people (the legislative), not the executive.
• The sovereign alone decides what powers are necessary to attain the general good (II, 4).

NOTE: Since in practice the general will is the will of the majority, the majority decides what is necessary to obtain the general good.  This can have illiberal consequences, although R. does claim that since the condition of citizen/subject is equal for all, no one has interest in making the it burdensome.  The problem is that the majority may have a very limited view of what's burdensome: cf. Mill's On Liberty.
• The sovereign determines which "civil profession of faith" (the religion of the citizen) should be compulsory, although, for R, it has no business in  determining the inner religion one has (the religion of man), at least as long as the latter is compatible with the former (IV, 8).

NOTE: compare with Hobbes.

• security
• the actual ownership (vs. mere possession) of what one has.
• the development of one's capacities and ideas.
• civil liberty, i.e., the right to do all that is not forbidden by the general will.
• moral liberty, i.e., the freedom to make and follow one's own universal rules manifested through the general will; that is, the freedom that comes about when one's own will coincides with the general will.

NOTE: compare with Kant, who admired R.