"Robespierre’s ideas were derived from his close study of Rousseau, whose theory of the general will formed the intellectual basis for all modern totalitarianisms. According to Rousseau, individuals who live in accordance with the general will are “free” and “virtuous” while those who defy it are criminals, fools or heretics. Those enemies of the common good must be forced to bend to the general will. He described this state-sanctioned coercion in Orwellian terms as the act of “forcing men to be free.” It was Rousseau who originally sanctified the sovereign will of the masses while dismissing the mechanisms of democracy as corrupting and profane. Such mechanics -- voting in elections, representative bodies, and so forth -- are “hardly ever necessary where the government is well-intentioned,” wrote Rousseau in a revealing turn of phrase."
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Academics from FrancePhilosophers from FranceAcademics from SwitzerlandPhilosophers from SwitzerlandBiologists from France
Original Language: English
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Sources
Jonah Goldberg (2007). Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning. NY: Doubleday, , p. 39
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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