Der Bürger als Souverän

Jean-Jacques Rousseau had an incomparable influence on his epoch as both a writer and a philosopher. His most famous treatise, The Social Contract, is one of the cornerstones of Enlightenment philosophy, in which he raises questions that are still extremely relevant today. Rousseau’s conception of a republic is based on the idea of the volonté générale (general will), which is neither the same as the will of one person or a group of people nor with individual will or the will of the majority. Its citizens (citoyens) enact legislation themselves. Any laws that are not passed by the people are not real laws. If one considers Rousseau’s teachings in the grand scheme of time as a whole, several epochs emerge as particularly relevant, according to which this volume is structured.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau did not only become renowned for The Social Contract, for through the idea of the volonté générale he also established one of the central concepts for a radical democratic theory of the state.

With contributions by
Dagmar Comtesse, Judith Frömmer, Otto Hansmann, Oliver Hidalgo, Matthias Kaufmann, Thomas Lau, Oliver W. Lembcke, Urs Marti-Brander, Henning Ottmann, Volker Reinhardt, Alfred Schäfer, Rüdiger Voigt and Jana Weiß.