WORLD HISTORY

Detailed explanation-1: -He believed in a direct democracy in which everyone voted to express the general will and to make the laws of the land. Rousseau had in mind a democracy on a small scale, a city-state like his native Geneva.

Detailed explanation-2: -The positive notion of freedom Rousseau claims that one can be forced to be free. This seems paradoxical based on the general understanding of freedom. Generally, freedom is understood as the absence of any kind of restrictions. An individual is free as long as they can do whatever they desire.

Detailed explanation-3: -This freedom is total for two reasons. First, natural man is physically free because he is not constrained by a repressive state apparatus or dominated by his fellow men. Second, he is psychologically and spiritually free because he is not enslaved to any of the artificial needs that characterize modern society.

Detailed explanation-4: -Rousseau defines human beings as distinct from other sentient beings by virtue of two essential characteristics, which are already present in the state of nature: 1) human freedom, and 2) perfectibility.

Detailed explanation-5: -Rousseau’s central argument in The Social Contract is that government attains its right to exist and to govern by “the consent of the governed.” Today this may not seem too extreme an idea, but it was a radical position when The Social Contract was published.

Detailed explanation-6: -Classically the term “republic” encompassed both democracies and aristocracies. In a modern sense the republican form of government is a form of government without monarch.