contract
Having countered his opponents' (i.e. Hobbes' and Grotius') views of the origins of political rule, Rousseau now shifts, (as he does in On Social Contract) to his own views.
His first point is that the act by which a people decides to come together as a people is the real "social contract." As he suggests in para1647 below, this act of association istherefore "the foundation of all civil society."