Explain the major ideas of Enlightenment. Discuss the contribution of Rousseau in Enlightenment.

Answer:

The Enlightenment of the eighteenth century applied reason and observation to human affairs, attacking superstition, absolutism and privilege in the name of liberty and progress. Within it Rousseau occupies a singular place, at once its most influential political theorist and its most searching critic.

The major ideas of the Enlightenment

• Reason was held to be the supreme instrument for understanding nature and society.
• The scientific method of Newton was extended from nature to human affairs.
• Natural rights to life, liberty and property were asserted, following Locke.
• Religious toleration was urged, and clerical authority and superstition attacked.
• Belief in progress held that humanity could be improved by education and reform.
• Montesquieu's separation of powers and Smith's economic liberty shaped later institutions.

Rousseau's political thought

• The Social Contract of 1762 opened with the declaration that man is born free yet is everywhere in chains.
• Sovereignty belongs inalienably to the people and cannot be represented away.
• The general will expresses the common good, distinct from the mere sum of private wills.
• Legitimate government rests solely on the consent of the governed.
• He favoured direct democracy in small states over representative institutions.

His wider contribution

• The Discourse on Inequality traced inequality to the institution of private property.
• Emile proposed an education following nature rather than convention.
• He gave emotion, sentiment and conscience a standing beside reason.
• In this he anticipated and helped to inspire the Romantic movement.

Influence and criticism

• His ideas shaped the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Jacobin phase of the Revolution.
• Robespierre invoked the general will to justify the Terror.
• Critics from Constant to Talmon argue the general will can license majoritarian tyranny.
• He remains the Enlightenment thinker most alive to what reason alone cannot supply.

The movement in wider context

• The salon, the coffee house and the press created a European public sphere.
• Enlightened despots such as Frederick II and Joseph II adopted parts of the programme.
• Diderot and d'Alembert's Encyclopedie embodied the faith that knowledge liberates.
• Its ideas underpinned both the American and the French Revolutions.

The Enlightenment thus rested on reason, natural rights, toleration and progress, and Rousseau both advanced and questioned that programme. As historians of ideas observe, his doctrine of popular sovereignty became the foundation of modern democratic theory, while his insistence on sentiment and community marked the limits of pure rationalism.