Nour Saliba
Dania Adra
English 203
9th October 2015

Jean-Jacques Rousseau once said: “Man was born free and everywhere he is in chains” (Rousseau 114).

In his text The Social Contract, the Swiss writer/philosopher is trying to persuade the world that freedom is not doing whatever one wants whenever one wants. He wants to convince us that freedom is being bounded by the right civil rules. Freedom is having a legitimate and correct order to follow. And for that just and fair order to be established, all the citizens must agree upon it. The author adds: “But the social order isn’t to be understood in terms of force . . . it doesn’t come from nature, so it must be based on agreements” (Rousseau 114). I agree with Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Freedom is not doing what one’s like but doing what one has the right to do. A slave can have more freedom than his master ever will. For the slave will more likely be able to accept and comply to correct orders, whereas the master will always think himself above the social order and therefore will never have true freedom. As Rousseau states: “Here’s one who thinks he is the master of others, yet he is more enslaved than they are” (Rousseau 114). In this picture, we see a non-smoking sign. In other words, we observe an ethical and legitimate rule that the society established. It is fair because it did not remove the right to smoke, but only gave it some conditions. Therefore, the smokers are still free to do as they please yet within the fixed norms. We can see here that this rule improved the society because now the smoker does not bother the other citizens or endanger their health. Thanks to the social etiquette, he can smoke without a guilty conscience. As Rousseau said: “the man who has until now considered only himself finds himself forced to act on different principles and to consult his reason before listening to his inclinations” (Rousseau 114). Without the social contract, the man was able to smoke and satisfy his want, need… yet he was not fully free. However, within the social contract, the man was able to smoke and respect his brothers ‘rights, he is therefore free.

Work Cited

 Sinno Z., R., Bioghlu-Karkanawi L., Fleszar D., N. Jarkas, Moughabghab E., Nish J. M., Rantisi

R., Ward A. (Eds.). Shifting Narratives: A Reader for Academic Writing. Educart (Middle                   East)

Publishing: Beirut, 2015