New Time: Montesquieu, Jean-Jacques Rousseau. /part 2/

Rousseau's main ideas: According to him, history is not progress, but degradation. He thinks that initially humans were naturally equal and free beings. The differences in status are explained by him with the historical transformations of the primary person. He (the primary person), according to Rousseau, is good, without being emotional and virtuous. He becomes a selfish person capable of consciously causing harm to others.

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Rousseau denies that people by nature are struggling and self-loving (Hobbes).Rousseau thinks that primitive societies are the best for man and that civilization is not at all a grace and is always accompanied by a price greater than the benefits it receives. "Back to Nature" (Rousseau). One is enslaved by the requirements of civilization.Rousseau is a radical philosopher. He opposes all political and public institutions on the grounds that they are unnatural, inconsistent with the nature of man. Rousseau thinks that the most appropriate form of state apparatus is that of antiquity.

It magnifies these small states of Antiquity, because only in such small communities can a combination of the interests of individual individuals with the benefit of the community be achieved. Rousseau is a critic of representative power and the founder of direct democracy. Here stands its notion of "common will", ie. collective interest in the individual, which also includes equality before the law.In Rousseau, sovereignty is in the people, not in the ruling. The role of the rulers is the realization of the decisions taken by the people (with the consent of the people).

Rousseau distinguishes the people as sovereign and the rulers as free-will performers.From the principle of Rousseau to the common will, it follows that political decisions must be in accordance with laws made by the will of the people on the one hand and, on the other hand, restrict all citizens equally. In order for a citizen to be subject to any decision in the common interest, the laws must apply to all equally and without exception.