"[F]ascism owed something to the Enlightenment idea that society need not be determined by tradition, but could be organized according to a blueprint derived from universal principles. The Enlightenment thinker Jean-Jacques Rousseau's notion that society should be governed by one such universal ideal, the ‘general will’, is especially relevant, since it was taken up by the most revolutionary of the French Revolutionaries, the Jacobins. The Jacobins justified violence as a means to construct a new order and weed out those who opposed the general will (or the nation). They were ready to force people to be free."
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Academics from FrancePhilosophers from FranceAcademics from SwitzerlandPhilosophers from SwitzerlandBiologists from France
Original Language: English
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Sources
Kevin Passamore, Fascism: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, , p. 34
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jean-Jacques_Rousseau
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Jean-Jacques Rousseau
1712 – 1778
französisch-schweizerischer Schriftsteller und Philosoph
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