Freedom for Rousseau and individual libertiesThe purpose that Rousseau apparently gives to his social contract is to free man from the illegitimate chains to which existing governments have chained him. If this is his aim, then it follows that he should be concerned above all with the preservation of freedom in political society, first so that wild man can be drawn out of nature and into society, and then so that Rousseau's framework for this society it will prevent the current tyranny from reasserting itself. In fact, in defining the purpose of man's initial union in society, he states that, despite his belonging to an association towards which he must necessarily have some type of obligation for the contract to be valid, he "will obey only if himself and will remain free as before" (I.vi. 4). However, just a paragraph later, he seems to completely contradict this idea, stating instead that the union of men in society constitutes “the total alienation of each associate with all his rights towards the whole community” (I.vi.6). This apparent contradiction raises the question: what is the freedom that Rousseau imagines for man, and how does this type of freedom relate to individual rights and protect the individual within a society governed by the general will? Rousseau's conception of freedom begins to take shape in the transition from nature to society, in which a fundamental change occurs in human nature that results in a change in the nature of freedom between the two states. Entry into civil society, Rousseau argues, “produces the most remarkable change in man by substituting justice for instinct in his conduct” (I.viii.1). That is, entry into civil society allows man to exist peacefully among the paper without any other recourse other than to accept the constant error of his ways and obey. Rousseau opens The Social Contract by claiming to “take men as they are,” but in reality he is taking man as he wishes he might one day become, as his theory of human perfectionism betrays (Ii1). And while Hobbes understands that man will never willingly bow to coercion and fight for his life within and without society, Rousseau thinks that man can be conditioned to accept coercion as a blessing so that you won't need to exert any force to keep it tidy. . And in the process of molding men into the image of his mind, he is willing to tolerate what he calls "the most egregious abuses," from the submission of men's very thoughts to the jurisdiction of the law, to the right of the sovereign to execute citizens is a danger to his amorphous good.