“Man is born free, and everywhere he is in
chains. One man thinks himself the master of others, but remains more of a
slave than they are."
― Jean
Jacques Rousseau, “The Social
Contract and The Discourses
Jean-Jacques Rousseau influenced the French revolution
by altering the idea of the effects of civilization upon natural freedoms.
Rousseau was a composer, music theorist and novelist, as well as a political
thinker of the Enlightenment. Rousseau mainly effected the French perception of
civilization's consequences upon liberty and most of his works deal with the
mechanisms through which humans are forced to give up liberty. his main idea can be summed up in the first
line of his most renowned work, The Social Contract (1762): "Man is born
free, but everywhere is in chains". Rousseau argued that civilization
affected liberty in a negative way, as opposed to the original perception in
which civilization enhanced human liberty. Rousseau's idea of a perfect government
was a republic. he believed that "a people could only be free if it ruled
itself". he also believed that freedom was, in effect, "ruling
oneself, living under a law which one has oneself enacted” or a system approved
and made by the people. his ideas influenced many revolutionary figures - both
negatively and positively - including Maximillien Robespierre (1758 - 1794),
who twisted Rousseau's ideas, such as the idea that citizens have the right to
rebel against their civilization, to fit his own purposes during the
"Reign of Terror".
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