Rousseau’s Implicit Socratism: Utopianism in the Social Contract

Whether or not Rousseau’s Social Contract is a utopian text is a matter of long-standing debate. This article suggests that the answer to this question is not a simple one. Rousseau’s text contains different levels of meaning, and while some of them are utopian, others are not. Specifically, the article focuses on three levels of meaning in the book and concludes that while there is a utopian level in the text, it is not where most interpreters find it, and it is not simply political. Instead, it is a multifaceted utopia pointing at the same time back to Socrates and forward to Kant.