When one starts out wrong...

one is unlikely to end up right

‘Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.’ (Rousseau, The Social Contract)

Rousseau wants to understand how man ends up in chains. I considered going through the entire Social Contract, decided it would be less fun for you to read than for me to write. So here is the gist:

Man is not born free. We are enslaved by original sin. (Eastern Orthodoxy thinks we are born innocent, but we become sinful so quickly that I think this is a distinction without a difference.) There is no question for Rousseau to answer, other than: how do we become free? And that Book had already been written.