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Read the excerpt on Jean Jacques Rousseau then answer the following question Jean Jacques Rousseau was one of the most influential thinkers of the Enlightenment A writer of amazing breadth and depth his works of social and political theory as well as musical criticism novels and even a successful opera continue to be relevant His ideas inspired the architects of the American and French revolutions and encouraged the rise of Romanticism In 1755 Rousseau published a controversial essay entitled Discours sur l origine de l in galit Discourse on the Origin of Inequality The work expanded on the themes of his earlier Discourse In it Rousseau argued that humans had originally existed in a state of nature that was morally superior to that of the contemporary world Rousseau s dim view of human progress met sharp criticism from many sources most notably from the French philosophe Voltaire In the wake of their public disagreement the two philosophers became implacable enemies Rousseau soon fell out with a number of other prominent intellectuals of the day including his friend Diderot In The Social Contract Rousseau argues that civil liberties are natural rights of all human beings The work begins with the famous sentence Man was born free but he is everywhere in chains The philosopher insists that the sovereignty of a community does not lie in the divine right of kings but in the interests of the people as expressed in what he calls the general will In 1755 Rousseau published the Discourse on the Origin of Inequality in which he said that early humans had been better off in The Garden of Eden A monastic separation A Medieval ignorance

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