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Concept

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Personal dependence

Concept · 1 reading

Personal dependence makes a person’s choices vulnerable to another’s favor. Rousseau asks how institutions might replace that subjection with equal standing under common laws.

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Guided course · Module 9 · Lesson 53
Freedom, inequality and a common will
Rousseau traces how inequality grows and argues that citizens could remain free as joint authors of the law. A majority’s victory, the lesson warns, is not the same as the general will.