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Rousseau, Jean-Jacques
Jean-Jacques Rousseau is a pivotal thinker in the history of political thought. First, Rousseau’s thought in general marks a turning point as he was the first great critic of early modern philosophy whose own thinking constituted a radicalized version of early modern thought that influenced later romantic, historical, socialist, and other schools of thought. Second, Rousseau is a seminal democratic theorist, being the first major thinker to argue that democracy is the only legitimate form of government.
Life
The life and thought of Rousseau (1712–78) are intertwined to an unusual degree for a political thinker. In addition to writing autobiographical works that he saw as part of his thought, Rousseau himself suggested that his unusual life enabled him to grasp the variety of human nature and see ...
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