Jean Jacques Rousseau
From Conservapedia
Swiss-born political philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) was an influential French essayist and prominent liberal and socialist social theorist. He felt that politics and morality could not be separated, and that the will of the majority was not always correct. However, Rousseau also attacked private property, and laid the groundwork for future communist writers such as Karl Marx. Rousseau declared that government's goal should be to provide freedom, equality and justice. But note that freedom often results in inequality.
Rousseau's most famous work was the "The Social Contract" (1762), which supported a direct democracy based on a "public will" rather than republicanism such as that adopted 25 years later by the U.S. Constitution. In it, he further develops the concept of the "social contract" established by Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. Rousseau disapproved of titles like nobility, and demanded complete equality between all people.
Rousseau vehemently detested Catholicism along with other institutionalized as well as private forms of Christianity, believing that mankind would be better off with his idea of a civil religion wedded to the state[1].
- ↑ Religion as a Public Good, Alan Mittleman, Rowman & Littlefield, 2003 ISBN 0742531252, 9780742531253, 336 pages, pp. 16-17
