Jean-Jacques Rousseau

French-speaking humanist writer and philosopher, he was born in Geneva in 1712 and died in Ermenonville in 1778. By refocusing the reflection on human nature on the themes of sensibility, feeling and passion to the detriment of reason, Rousseau antagonizes the principles of the Enlightenment, already announcing what will become the central values of Romanticism.

Marked by a strong optimism regarding the human essence, he considers that primitively human beings would live in a hypothetical state of nature in which, allowing themselves to be governed by feeling (love of self and pity), freedom and equality reigned. With the advent of the division of labor and private property, such a state of harmony would have been perverted, and society would have fallen prey to selfishness and corruption.

In this way, the powerful, appropriating the Law, placed it at the service of their private interests and made it an instrument of servitude. In the same way, science and culture in general are seen as foci of degeneration that distance human beings from their genuine nature.

To free man from the state of servitude in which society places him, Rousseau presents two complementary ways:

The first - expounded in detail in the Émile (1762) - concerns pedagogy, proposing that it allows the child to develop naturally in the spontaneous affirmation of his essence and according to his own personal experience, preventing him from becoming a victim of the deformations that society seeks to impose on him.

The second, in the context of political philosophy - and developed in the Social Contract (also from 1762) - aims at the reestablishment of freedom and is based on the idea of popular sovereignty. This must be achieved through the social contract according to which each individual must submit to the general will, convergence and mediated expression of the will of each one, thus guaranteeing the freedom and equality of all. The submission of the Law to the general will will ensure its justice, and it is not up to the executive power to do more than guarantee its correct application.