David Lay Williams is Associate Professor of Political Science at DePaul University and the author of Rousseau's Platonic Enlightenment (2007) and The General Will: The Evolution of a Concept (forthcoming from Cambridge University Press), as well as numerous articles in journals such as History of Political Thought, the Journal of the History of Ideas, The Journal of Politics, The American Journal of Political Science, and Polity. He has twice held fellowships at the Institute for Research in the Humanities at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, as well as a fellowship at the DePaul Humanities Center. He was formerly Professor of Philosophy and Political Science at the University of Wisconsin, Stevens Point.

• 1. Introduction; 2. Book I; 3. Book II; 4. Book III; 5. Book IV; 6. Conclusion; Appendix A. On the general will; Appendix B. On women in the Social Contract?

'David Lay Williams's splendid new commentary on Rousseau's greatest contribution to political philosophy will rapidly become the 'standard' work on this subject. In The Social Contract Rousseau formulates his most famous idea, 'the general will', and Williams throws more light on this difficult notion than any scholar in the past half-century. This is a truly remarkable book.' Patrick Riley, author of The General Will Before Rousseau