Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712 - 1778) was a Geneva-born (later Swiss) French-speaking philosopher and writer whose treatises and novels strongly influenced the leaders of the French revolution and the overall development of modern political, social and educational thought. “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains” is the famous opening sentence of the Rousseau's <em>Social Contract</em> in which the philosopher raised the problem of freedom of an individual in a society. He wrote that people would receive in exchange for their independence a better kind of freedom in a society if they concluded a genuine social contract. Under this contract, individual rights are replaced by civil rights and society becomes an artificial person united by a general will. Such coexistence of human beings is considered sovereign and free since its liberty is to be found in obedience to a self-imposed law.
