What did Rousseau mean when he wrote about “forcing a man to be free”?

In his work The Social Contract, Jean-Jacques Rousseau used the phrase “forcing a man to be free” to describe the process of compelling an individual to obey the general will when they have breached the law.12

Rousseau did not intend this to support totalitarianism or the oppression of society as a whole. Instead, he argued that when an individual acts against the law, they are being enslaved by their own personal passions rather than acting in their capacity as a citizen. Because legitimate laws are founded on the general will—which represents the collective interest of the political community—obeying these laws is equivalent to an individual obeying their own higher interest.12

Therefore, when society coerces an individual to follow the law, it is not stripping them of liberty; rather, it is restoring them to an awareness of their true interests and their autonomy as a member of the republic.12