In Rousseau's Social Contract, we find one the most moving passages in the social contract tradition ever written. It reads as follows:

Philosophical writing does not wax more rhapsodic than this. If these remarks describe what Civil Society affords each and every one of its members, nothing could be more rational for a person than to want to be a member of Civil Society. Yet, a note of caution must be sounded. For although this passage certainly implies that every member of society is better off, the idea does not seem to be that this is because society is the best conduit for the maximization of the self-interests of each person insofar as humans beings must live together. More precisely, the idea does not seem to be that Civil Society is preferable because it affords individuals in abundance whatever it is that they might have very much wanted to have in the State of Nature.