He didn't. He admired the type of government in Geneva at that time, realizing it would never work in France (too big as you suggest), which is why he modified his social contract to include a representative form of government, as a necessary evil, not as a preferred choice.
Monsieur Rousseau is thought brilliant?
Actually he was subjected to rather strong criticism form the English side of the social contract for allegedly idealizing the "natural man."
So . . . when his ideas failed, a bunch of thugs took over and declared themselves the new elite. We seem to be repeating history.
He was dead eleven years when the French Revolution broke out. But he wouldn't be the first or the last philosopher whose ideas were misused for extreme political purposes. Nietzsche comes to mind.
Well, that's certainly an understatement! Certainly the "English" who objected would include Edmund Burke (who you seem to cite in support of your own view, which is mystifying to me); and Jonathan Swift — among others. Rousseau didn't "allegedly" idealize the "natural man." He actually did so.
Trouble there is Reality trumps ideological idealizations every time.
In Monsieur Rousseau's book, man is born a "noble savage." Which strikes some sensibilities as being an outright oxymoron on logical grounds. But he never explains this "term of art." He cites no empirical evidence in support of it (though he had several millennia of human experience and history to draw from, had he chosen to do so); no fuller definition is forthcoming. This term of art stands as simply an unsupported allegation, which we are instructed to uncritically accept. But it is interesting to note that where such "allegations" loaded into the base of abstract systems have actually been tried in human history, all have failed — to the misery of untold numbers of human beings.
Obviously, there must be some deeper truth in Nature than man as the Noble Savage. Or man as the center of moral order in the universe. But that's the very truth that neither Rousseau — and one sadly suspects, nor dear kosta — refuses to accept.
If man is the center of order in the universe, then it should be perfectly legitimate to accept that 28 million Frenchmen — of virtually uncountable degrees of intelligence, culture, and condition — can make a "representative form of government," a social contract. And thereby establish a workable "democracy."
But this overlooks the problem of: How do you get 28 million Frenchmen to agree about what should be in that social contract? Are you going to poll them? (Oh, isn't that what an election is all about?) The peasant wants to fill his belly, and his family's bellies, and hopefully get some security WRT property into his insecure position in society. The merchant or banker is looking after his mercantile or banking interests. The lawyer, the dignity of his profession, on which his personal revenues depend. The guildsman, the rights and privileges of his trade. The sick, the "right" to be healed. The hungry, the right to be fed. Etc., etc.
Dear kosta, earlier you wrote: "Morality is part of society and society is man-made. Reason is capacity humans are born with."
Well we know that morality is necessarily "part of society." [Let alone that "part" business for now; to me fidelity to the moral law is the whole of a just, free, good society — and I do believe the historical record is on my side here.] If morality is man-made — if it is something that is to be determined by 28 million Frenchmen — then how can we even call it "morality?" You can't base the moral law on the shifting sands of human self-interest and cupidity.
”necessary evil” . . . Even though it was a favorite of Madison’s, I’ve always had a little trouble with that expression. How can something ‘evil’ be thought ‘necessary’? Bad idea? Good idea badly expressed? What?
Despite their remarkable achievement, the Founding Fathers don’t seem to have hit it quite square on the screws. They spoke of even the best-constructed republics as lasting little more than two hundred years, and expressed the hope that their posterity would rise to the challenge of keeping things going. Time’s up.
Aside from a couple of obviously needed changes made by their posterity, I’ll take the vision of the Founders over anything anyone else has proposed. I’ve been waiting for over a half century now, but I haven’t seen anything better come along. Have you?
[Rousseau] “was dead eleven years when the French Revolution broke out.”
Yeah, and Marx was some 125 years’ dead when 0bama broke out. So, what? Am I mistaken in understanding that it was the thought and the spirit of Rousseau driving the French Revolution? Something went awry. What was it?
Mz boop has introduced the idea that something deeper (greater?) than Man’s nature is at the center of the Universe, and that it has guided our more profound thoughts about Man’s relationship amongst his own and with the Universe. Rousseau and the Revolutionaries had little but themselves to fall back on in their attempt to create a greater society. It was a debacle.
The Founding Fathers seemed to have something more. So, while they built a republic that has lasted for over two hundred years, the French went through a king, two empires, a Directory, a Convention, a Consulate a Vichy puppet government, and five republics. Whence might that ‘something more’ have come, do you suppose? From a source with which you find yourself in perpetual denial. But you seem to have no better answer. Jefferson does, however:
“If we are made in some degree for others, yet, in a greater, are we made for ourselves. It were contrary to feeling, and indeed ridiculous to suppose that a man had less rights in himself than one of his neighbors, or indeed all of them put together. This would be slavery, and not that liberty which the [Virginia] bill of rights has made inviolable, and for the preservation of which our government has been charged. Nothing could so completely divest us of that liberty as the establishment of the opinion, that the State has a perpetual right to the services of all its members. This, to men of certain ways of thinking, would be to annihilate the blessings of existence, and to contradict the Giver of life, who gave it for happiness and not for wretchedness. (Thomas Jefferson, letter to James Monroe, 20 May, 1782, The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Vol 4, pg 196)
Yet you seem incapable of looking past doctrine to see values.