ABSTRACT
The conception according to which the social contract would not be compatible with the refusal of natural right is widely hegemonic in the reception of the Rousseaunian political thought, from its beginnings to the present day exegesis. The common contention of these interpreters, inherited from the modern jusnaturalistic tradition, is that, in the absence of a previous moral obligation - the natural law - and therefore of a sanction able to procure binding force to the promise of those who engage in the act of contracting, the fundamental pact would be but a vain form, whose terms its celebrants would hardly keep. Thusly, the contratualist theories of the origin of the political body would necessarily find themselves linked to jusnaturalism. As a counterpoint to this interpretative bias, we intend in the present article to develop and sustain the hypothesis that the social contract conceived by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, distinct from the classical contractual form in some crucial aspects, dismisses the sanction from the law of nature. To that end, it will be relevant to unravel the sui generis structure of the Rousseaunian pact, elucidating, lastly, the source of its coercive power.
Keywords
J.-J. Rousseau; Social contract; Natural right; Sanction