Jean-Jacques Rousseau

2,012 words

He [Rousseau] had nothing new, but he set everything on fire. — Madame de Staël

Starting from unlimited freedom I arrive at unlimited despotism. — Shigalev, in Dostoevsky’s The Devils

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, not Karl Marx is the real father and inspiration for the theater of the absurd that is today’s Left. Rousseau’s “Man is born free, everywhere he is in chains” is the original formulation of the adolescent anarchist rally-cry, “Rage against the machine!”