How Did Rousseau Influence The French Revolution

The French Revolution was heavily inspired by the ideas and writings of philosophers during the Enlightenment. These great thinkers, including Voltaire, Mary Wollstonecraft, and John Locke, contributed their different ways of thinking to the ideas that became the Revolution. One of the most important was Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whose works were particularly influential. Jean-Jacques Rousseau was born in Geneva in 1712. He was raised solely by his father, after his only sibling ran away from home and his mother died a few days after he was born. His father left Geneva when Rousseau was a child and he went to live with an uncle. At thirteen, he became a engraver’s apprentice, which he enjoyed, except for the fact that his mentor was “violent and tyrannical”. He later met Louise de Warens, who was a large influence on him. Because of her, he converted to Catholicism, and one of his basic philosophies is thought to have come from her belief in basic human purity: he
thought that humans are naturally morally good and become corrupt through the evils of civilization (“Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712—1778)”). This idea may have also stemmed from his apprenticeship as a young boy; while he disliked his boss, Rousseau believed he wasn’t born “violent and tyrannical”, he just became that way. The time in which he lived was also an influence on his philosophies. Living in a world of absolute rulers, Rousseau generally agreed with the monarchy. He thought government jobs should be hereditary and that higher classes should have special privileges. He did see some issues with it, however. He did not agree with the king being the only lawmaker and above the laws he put in place. He thought that the king should be subject to all laws because he was a part of the state just like his subjects were (“Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712—1778)”). Some of Rousseau’s most important beliefs and ideas are illustrated by quotes in “Chapter VI: The Social Compact” of his book The Social Contract and Discourses. An important excerpt from this book is "Each of us puts his person and all his power in common under the supreme direction of the general will, and, in our corporate capacity, we receive each member as an indivisible part of the whole." By this, Rousseau is saying that in order to avoid chaos, people need to unite under a single power, such as a king.
In doing so, they create a social contract: in return for giving up their power, they get the protection and security of the person they chose to lead them, so long as this person is making a majority content. This also means that each person, or each group of people, is crucial to the community- the upper class, the lower class, the King himself, and everyone in between. This idea was very influential to the French Revolution, and, more specifically, the Reign of Terror. During this time, leaders thought that anyone who did not completely surrender themselves to their new society needed to be weeded out because they were an enemy to the
Revolution. A second influential quote is “Finally, each man, in giving himself to all, gives himself to nobody; and as there is no associate over whom he does not acquire the same right as he yields others over himself, he gains an equivalent for everything he loses, and an increase of force for the preservation of what he has.” This means that if each person gives up their power to the community- or leader of the community- since all people are equal, they wouldn’t lose their basic human rights. This also pertains to the idea of a social contract: “an increase force for the preservation of what he has”, meaning they were giving up some rights, but gaining protection over the ones they were not giving up. This belief is arguably one of the most influential in the entirety of the French Revolution. The entire basis of the Revolution hinged on the Third Estate- 97% of the French population- having far fewer privileges than that of the First and Second Estates. The First and Second were able to have better, higher paying jobs, pay no taxes, and have more votes in the Estates General relative to their size. The Third Estate seeing these social differences was the beginning of the Revolution, which completely changed those things by eliminating the rigid, caste-like class divides. Of all the Enlightenment philosophers that lended their ideas to the Revolution, Jean-Jacques Rousseau was one of the most influential. His ideas and writings helped form the foundation of the Revolution at its best and, when taken a bit too far, inspired guillotining at its worst. Without him, history could have been very different from what it turned out to be.