![]() The locus of democratic political authority is at the center of On the Social Contract, in which Rousseau advances a notoriously difficult concept: the "general will." As he explains it, the general will is expressly not what one might expect to emerge from democratic deliberation and voting, i.e., either the sum of all individual preferences or a majority consensus. ![]() (Wikimedia Commons) Although he died 11 years before the French Revolution, Rousseau’s works have often been blamed for its excesses. And so, while Rousseau's Discourse treats human nature, his follow-up works Emile and On the Social Contract (both published in 1762) explore the sort of education and political order best suited to this nature. Like Plato and Machiavelli before him, Rousseau refused to separate concerns of politics and ethics from those of education. ![]() The Discourse on Inequality's conception of natural man – as uncorrupted by social institutions and systems of artificial distinction – sits in the background of Rousseau's later work, On the Social Contract. ![]()
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