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Both informed early American ideas of government and were major influences on the U.S. Constitution. Voltaire's histories were widely read but seldom cited. Noah Webster used Rousseau's educational ideas of child development to structure his famous Speller. The writings of German Samuel Pufendorf were commonly cited by American writers.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (UK: / ˈ r uː s oʊ /, US: / r uː ˈ s oʊ /; [1] [2] French: [ʒɑ̃ʒak ʁuso]; 28 June 1712 – 2 July 1778) was a Genevan philosopher (), writer, and composer.. His political philosophy influenced the progress of the Age of Enlightenment throughout Europe, as well as aspects of the French Revolution and the development of modern political, economic, and educational ...
Thus, the government must remain a separate institution from the sovereign body. When the government exceeds the boundaries set in place by the people, it is the mission of the people to abolish such government and begin anew. Rousseau claims that the size of the territory to be governed often decides the nature of the government.
In this sense, the law is a civilizing force. Therefore Rousseau believed that the laws that govern a people help to mould their character. Rousseau also analyses the social contract in terms of risk management, [20] thus suggesting the origins of the state as a form of mutual insurance.
Thinkers such as Paine, Locke, and Rousseau all take Native American cultural practices as examples of natural freedom. [112] The Americans closely followed English and Scottish political ideas, as well as some French thinkers such as Montesquieu. [113] As deists, they were influenced by ideas of John Toland and Matthew Tindal.
The 1793 French Constitution, on the other hand, cherished legislative supremacy and was based on the idea influenced by Rousseau – that limited government was best achieved through a "rational democratic self-government seeking to give expression to the general will ... as the optimal antidote to the arbitrary rule of absolute monarchy." [2]
Like "the body politic", "the general will" was a term of art and was not invented by Rousseau, though admittedly Rousseau did not always go out of his way to explicitly acknowledge his debt to the jurists and theologians who influenced him. Prior to Rousseau, the phrase "general will" referred explicitly to the general (as opposed to the ...
According to journalist Jamelle Bouie, "among the oldest and most potent strains of American thinking" about self-government is the belief that it cannot coexist "with mass immiseration and gross disparities of wealth and status". [47] He quotes John Adams in a 1776 letter: The balance of power in a society accompanies the balance of property ...