"(On the Social Contract Bk1, chapter VI, pp.8-9) .
Rousseau's solution to this problem is the social contract, the essence of which he reduces to the following terms:.
"Each of us puts his person and all his power in common under the supreme direction of the general will, and in our corporate capacity, we receive each member as an indivisible part of the whole." (On the Social Contract Bk. VI, p .9).
In order to assess whether or not this form of association promotes or restricts the freedom of individual associates one must gain some further understanding of the concept of the general will which Rousseau believes should provide the "supreme direction" and therefore the source of legitimate legislative power for the group. .
Rousseau means that the will must, in order to be truly general and therefore legitimate "both come from all and apply to all" "(On the Social Contract Bk.2 chapter Ivp.19) he suggests that this could be ensured by the structure of the association of the social contract, that is, the "total alienation of each associate together with his rights, to the whole community"(On the Social Contract Bk. 1 chapter VI, p.9) Rousseau believes that if each individual renounces his natural liberty in favour of the conventional liberty provided by the social contract, this total surrender would result in perfect equality; "each man, in giving himself to all gives himself to nobody; and there is no associate over which he does not acquire the same right as he yields others over himself" In this way Rousseau attempts to get over the problem of servants and masters by making every man both master and servant of every other. Once bound by the social contract in this way the public take on the form of the body politic, which Rousseau terms the Sovereign when active and the State when inactive. The citizens that make up the sovereign must never will anything that is contrary to the good of the body politic of which they are a part because to deprive the body politic of good is to deprive oneself of that good.