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Rousseau

Original nameJean-Jacques Rousseau

Author of The Social Contract, champion of popular sovereignty

Asking Where Power Comes From · Political Thinkers
Political PhilosophySocial ContractPopular SovereigntyThe General Will

Who they are

A French Enlightenment thinker, author of The Social Contract. He cried out the world-shaking opening line: "Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains." He held that legitimate political power can come only from the "general will" of the whole people; sovereignty belongs to the people, inalienable and indivisible — the ruler is but the people’s servant. This radical ideal of "popular sovereignty" became the sharpest intellectual weapon of the French Revolution and deeply shaped all later imagination of democracy and revolution; yet how, "in the name of the general will," to prevent the tyranny of the majority, left a long dispute.

Primary sourcesRousseau, The Social ContractÉmile

Key stories

"Man Is Born Free, and Everywhere He Is in Chains"

Rousseau opened The Social Contract with this line: man should be free, yet in reality is everywhere bound by unequal institutions. His cure was the "social contract" — people cede their rights to "the people" as a whole, obeying a "general will" they themselves helped make, and so remain free. This ideal fired the revolutionaries, and Robespierre and others all but revered him as a prophet; yet just who is to interpret the "general will" became the most dangerous question thereafter.

Version differences

Rousseau’s idea of the "general will" is hailed as a source of modern democracy, and also criticized as a possible road to a "tyranny of the majority in the name of the general will"; this site states this long dispute.

Relationships

Disciple
⚔️Robespierre　his popular-sovereignty doctrine was taken up by the French Revolution

Echoes today

Below are how modern works borrow or reinterpret this name or story — not the original material. The two differ, so keep them apart.

"Man is born free" as a revolutionary slogan"Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains" became the slogan of all later imagination of democracy and revolution; his popular-sovereignty doctrine deeply shaped modern discussion of democratic legitimacy.

Appears in

Enlightenment and the Division of PowerRousseau’s Social Contract: Popular Sovereignty
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