Much subsequent controversy about Rousseau's work has hinged on disagreements concerning his claims that citizens constrained to obey the general will are thereby rendered free: The notion of the general will is wholly central to Rousseau's theory of political legitimacy.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau's social contract theory states that governments draw their power from the governed, its ' sovereign ' people ( usually a certain ethnic group, and the state's limits are legitimated theoretically as that people's lands, although that is often not, rarely exactly, the case ), that no person should have absolute power, and that a legitimate state is one which meets the needs and wishes of its citizens.

Rousseau's political theory differs in important ways from that of Locke and Hobbes.

An early critic of social contract theory was Rousseau's friend, the philosopher David Hume, who in 1742 published an essay " Of Civil Liberty ", in whose second part, entitled, " Of the Original Contract ", he stressed that the concept of a " social contract " was a convenient fiction:

Rousseau's theory, that human nature is malleable rather than fixed, is often taken to imply, for example by Karl Marx, a wider range of possible ways of living together than traditionally known.

This concept developed from Rousseau's considerations on the social contract theory of Hobbes, and describes the shared will of a whole citizenry, whose agreement is understood to exist in discussions about the legitimacy of governments and laws.

Opposed to Jean-Jacques Rousseau's theory of social contract, Barrès considered the ' Nation ' ( which he used to replace the ' People ') as already historically founded: it did not need a " general will " to establish itself, thus also contrasting with Ernest Renan's definition of the Nation.

The notion of the general will is wholly central to Rousseau's theory of political legitimacy.

As with de Molina, he affirms that political power does not reside in any one concrete person, but he differs subtly in that he considers that the recipient of that power is the people as a whole, not a collection of sovereign individuals — in the same way, Jean-Jacques Rousseau's theory of popular sovereignty would consider the people as a collective group superior to the sum that composes it.

But it is not to be inferred that, because Proudhon destroyed Rousseau's theory of the social contract, he did not believe in the advisability of a social contract, or would uphold a monarchy in exacting an oath of allegiance " ( Proudhon and Royalism, 1913 ).

It represents Rousseau's last venture into political theory.

He has published three books: Fichte's Theory of Subjectivity ( Cambridge University Press, 1990 ); Foundations of Hegel's Social Theory: Actualizing Freedom ( Harvard University Press, 2000 ), which argues for the centrality of " social freedom " in Hegel's political thought ; and " Rousseau's Theodicy of Self-Love: Evil, Rationality, and the Drive for Recognition.

Modern anarchism sprang from the secular or religious thought of the Enlightenment, particularly Jean-Jacques Rousseau's arguments for the moral centrality of freedom.

He brought up his son according to the principles of Rousseau's Emile, and the boy, after a regime of outdoor life, followed by some years classical study, was apprenticed to a printer, so that he might make acquaintance with manual labor.

John Templeton's interest in botany began with an experimental garden laid out according to a suggestion in Rousseau's ' Nouvelle Heloise ' and following Rousseau's ' Letters on the Elements of Botany '.

Following the trend of Romanticism, which greatly emphasised the role and the nature of the individual, and in the footsteps of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Confessions, a more intimate form of autobiography, exploring the subject's emotions, came into fashion.

Here we see the clear division of male-female attributes which confined the sexes to specific roles, under Rousseau's popular doctrines.

Rousseau's autobiographical writings — his Confessions, which initiated the modern autobiography, and his Reveries of a Solitary Walker — exemplified the late 18th-century movement known as the Age of Sensibility, featuring an increasing focus on subjectivity and introspection that has characterized the modern age.

Virtually, all our information about Rousseau's youth has come from his posthumously published Confessions, in which the chronology is somewhat confused, though recent scholars have combed the archives for confirming evidence to fill in the blanks.

Rousseau's break with the Encyclopedistes coincided with the composition of his three major works, in all of which he emphasized his fervent belief in a spiritual origin of man's soul and the universe, in contradistinction to the materialism of Diderot, La Mettrie, and d ' Holbach.

Rousseau's letter to Hume, in which he articulates the perceived misconduct, sparked an exchange which was published in Paris and received with great interest at the time.

His tomb, in the shape of a rustic temple, on which, in bas relief an arm reaches out, bearing the torch of liberty, evokes Rousseau's deep love of nature and of classical antiquity.

This has led some critics to attribute to Rousseau the invention of the idea of the noble savage, which Arthur Lovejoy ' conclusively showed misrepresents Rousseau's thought.

In fact, Rousseau's natural man is virtually identical to a solitary chimpanzee or other ape, such as the orangutan as described by Buffon ; and the " natural " goodness of humanity is thus the goodness of an animal, which is neither good nor bad.

Perhaps Rousseau's most important work is The Social Contract, which outlines the basis for a legitimate political order within a framework of classical republicanism.

The kind of republican government of which Rousseau approved was that of the city state, of which Geneva was a model, or would have been, if renewed on Rousseau's principles.

Good or bad, the theories of educators such as Rousseau's near contemporaries Pestalozzi, Mme de Genlis, and later, Maria Montessori, and John Dewey, which have directly influenced modern educational practices do have significant points in common with those of Rousseau.

While Rousseau's notion of the progressive moral degeneration of mankind from the moment civil society established itself diverges markedly from Spinoza's claim that human nature is always and everywhere the same ... for both philosophers the pristine equality of the state of nature is our ultimate goal and criterion ... in shaping the " common good ", volonté générale, or Spinoza's mens una, which alone can ensure stability and political salvation.

" Lovejoy concludes that Rousseau's doctrine, as expressed in his Discourse on Inequality: declares that there is a dual process going on through history ; on the one hand, an indefinte progress in all those powers and achievements which express merely the potency of man's intellect ; on the other hand, an increasing estrangement of men from one another, an intensification of ill-will and mutual fear, cuminating in a monstrous epoch of universal conflict and mutual destruction fourth stage in which we now find ourselves.

Rousseau's collectivism is most evident in his development of the " luminous conception " ( which he credited to Diderot ) of the general will.

While Rousseau's social contract is based on popular sovereignty and not on individual sovereignty, there are other theories espoused by individualists, libertarians and anarchists, which do not involve agreeing to anything more than negative rights and creates only a limited state, if any.

She was fascinated by Rousseau's " back to nature " philosophy, as well as the culture of the Incas of Peru and their worship of the sun, about which she had books in her library.

His father, Jacques-François Deluc, was the author of some publications in refutation of Mandeville and other rationalistic writers, which are best known through Rousseau's humorous account of his ennui in reading them ; and he gave his son an excellent education, chiefly in mathematics and natural science.

In the mid-1750s, Rameau criticised Rousseau's contributions to the musical articles in the Encyclopédie, which led to a quarrel with the leading philosophes d ' Alembert and Diderot.

As a disciple of Rousseau, Robespierre's political views were rooted in Rousseau's notion of the social contract, which promoted " the rights of man " ( Schama ; 1989 ; 475 ).

Jean-Jacques Rousseau would argue, however, that his concept of " general will " in the " social contract " is not the simple collection of individual wills and precisely furthers the interests of the individual ( the constraint of law itself would be beneficial for the individual, as the lack of respect for the law necessarily entails, in Rousseau's eyes, a form of ignorance and submission to one's passions instead of the preferred autonomy of reason ).

Rousseau's striking phrase that man must " be forced to be free " should be understood this way: since the indivisible and inalienable popular sovereignty decides what is good for the whole, then if an individual lapses back into his ordinary egoism and disobeys the leadership, he will be forced to listen to what they decided as a member of the collectivity ( i. e. as citizens ).

As commented in Jean-Jacques Rousseau's 1762 book The Social Contract, " Citizenship is the expression of a sublime reciprocity between individual and General will " ( Schama ; 1989 ; 354 ).

This is not an accidental feature of Rousseau's educational and political philosophy ; it is essential to his account of the distinction between private, personal relations and the public world of political relations.

This emphasis on equality is Rousseau's most important and consequential legacy, causing him to be both reviled and applauded:

Yet despite their mutual insistence on the self-evidence that " all men are created equal ", their insistence that the citizens of a republic be educated at public expense, and the evident parallel between the concepts of the " general welfare " and Rousseau's " general will ", some scholars maintain there is little to suggest that Rousseau had that much effect on Thomas Jefferson and other founding fathers.

It is a form of social contract, deduced from Jean-Jacques Rousseau's idea of a general will.

* September 6 – Jean-Jacques Rousseau's house in Switzerland is stoned by a mob.

According to Lovejoy, Rousseau's basic view of human nature after the emergence of social living is basically identical to that of Hobbes.

Many writers ( such as Nikos Kazantzakis ) extol passion and disparage reason ; while in politics modern nationalism is a direct result of Rousseau's argument that rationalist cosmopolitanism brings man ever further from his natural state.