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From Hobbes Individualism to Rousseau’s [Totalitarian rule by one of few in Dictatorship] General Will Roesch connects the two thinkers through the evolution of the social contract: Hobbes's Atomized Individual: Thomas Hobbes starts with isolated, self-interested individuals in a state of nature driven by fear and competition. To survive, they surrender all individual power to an absolute sovereign. [1, 2, 3] Rousseau’s Collective Subject: Jean-Jacques Rousseau tries to preserve individual freedom through the general will. However, Roesch argues that Rousseau demands a total surrender of the individual to the collective community. [1, 2] The Totalitarian Pivot: Because the collective body defines the general will—and dissent is treated as mere error against that collective—Rousseau's radical autonomy morphs seamlessly into absolute state control, effectively realizing the totalitarian threat latent in Hobbes's Leviathan. [, 2, 3]

Fred martinez Fred’s Newsletter just now Could Pius XI's "problematic" Social Justice terminology "lead to a Rousseau-like "Forced to be Free" State? ? Did John Paul II correct Leo XIII's encyclical with ambiguous Lockean rights language while adopting non-Thomistic Kantian-like ideas?... ... Fr. Fortin shows that the first pope to use the "problematic" ambiguous term "social justice" was Pope Pius XI. He was also sadly the pope of the Cristero "Mexican Massacre" and "fell under the influence of the progressives" according Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre. Fortin suggests that this term came in some sense from Jean-Jacques Rousseau who said we will be "forced to be free" by the state. - The Catholic Monitor https://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2026/08/douglas-kries-professor-of-philosophy.html The mistake you and they make is that Rousseau tried to preserve atomized individual freedom through the general will wh...
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