Jean Jacques Rousseau · Politics

Man Is Born Free

Rousseau’s revolutionary reversal of Hobbes: human beings are naturally good and free, and it is society, not nature, that corrupts them.

What you'll be able to recall

You learned that Rousseau inverts Hobbes’s state of nature. Explain how natural man can be peaceful rather than warlike, and what changes that, in your own words.

Leads to Immanuel Kant.

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