Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-78)
Du contrat social (1762) was truly revolutionary. Its opening sentence railed at the iniquity of the reigning order: �L�homme est ne libre, et partout il est dans les fers� (man is born free, and everywhere he is shackled). Its dominant ideas-the general will, the sovereign nation, and the Contract itself-pointed to solutions which would only be effectively defined, not by any ideal ruler, but by the interests of the governed. Rousseau appealed to the masses.
In Du contrat social, Rousseau argued that people, as a political entity, enjoyed absolute and inalienable sovereignty-Democracy. |
