Rousseau (1712-1778) helped inspire the French Revolution. He had already died by the time the French Revolution broke out in 1789, but his ideas about freedom inspired the revolutionaries. Rousseau believed that people should choose their own government, and he was revered during the French Revolution. In fact, he was reburied in the Pantheon in 1794, and he was celebrated as a hero.
In particular, Rousseau's idea of the general will (though first formulated by others, such as Diderot and Montesquieu), inspired Jacobins to demand reforms that would create greater equality in France, such as land reform. Rousseau's idea of "general will" meant that a nation should be governed by the rule of law, not by the decisions of an arbitrary leader. Robespierre was also influenced by Rousseau's ideas, including Rousseau's focus on the government's power to promote the common good. The professed egalitarianism of the leaders during the French Revolution was inspired by Rousseau, who believed in religious equality, and this focus on egalitarianism was behind ideas such as Deism as the new religion of the country during the French Revolution.
Sunday, January 4, 2015
How did Jean Jaques Rousseau help produce the French Revolution of 1789? Or, conversely, did the French Revolution proceed with little of his influence and help him become famous later?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Why is the fact that the Americans are helping the Russians important?
In the late author Tom Clancy’s first novel, The Hunt for Red October, the assistance rendered to the Russians by the United States is impor...
-
There are a plethora of rules that Jonas and the other citizens must follow. Again, page numbers will vary given the edition of the book tha...
-
The poem contrasts the nighttime, imaginative world of a child with his daytime, prosaic world. In the first stanza, the child, on going to ...
-
The given two points of the exponential function are (2,24) and (3,144). To determine the exponential function y=ab^x plug-in the given x an...
-
The play Duchess of Malfi is named after the character and real life historical tragic figure of Duchess of Malfi who was the regent of the ...
-
The only example of simile in "The Lottery"—and a particularly weak one at that—is when Mrs. Hutchinson taps Mrs. Delacroix on the...
-
Hello! This expression is already a sum of two numbers, sin(32) and sin(54). Probably you want or express it as a product, or as an expressi...
-
Macbeth is reflecting on the Weird Sisters' prophecy and its astonishing accuracy. The witches were totally correct in predicting that M...
No comments:
Post a Comment