Politics
1712 to 1778, Geneva
The general will and the paradox of freedom.
Start learning Jean →Rousseau’s revolutionary reversal of Hobbes: human beings are naturally good and free, and it is society, not nature, that corrupts them.
Rousseau’s account of how humanity fell - from free and equal in nature to chained by property, vanity, and the rule of the rich.
Rousseau’s answer to how people can unite under government yet remain free - by obeying only a collective will that is truly their own.
Rousseau’s piercing psychology of how society makes us define ourselves by comparison - the source of both our vanity and our misery.
Rousseau’s vision of an education that follows nature instead of crushing it - and the contradictions that haunt his most influential book.
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