ABSTRACT
Political thought in nineteenth-century France was haunted by the excesses and disorder of the Revolution and in all of this Rousseau occupied centre stage. The political literature of the period-and especially up to around 1850-was in fact almost one long consideration of Rousseau’s own person and character and of the consequences of The Social Contract.1 Whether loved or loathed, Rousseau came to be seen not only as a contract theorist but also as the prophet of popular sovereignty, as the patron of a modern Leviathan that had swept away all before it. To show how this was the case and what it meant for the development of political thought in France the core of this chapter will seek to examine three strands of political opinion, each of which in its day exercised considerable influence and (in two cases) power: that associated with Catholic Reaction and the postNapoleonic Restoration; the liberalism of Benjamin Constant and the writerpolitician François Guizot; and finally the anarchism of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. For all their profound ideological differences each shared a horror for what they saw as the Rousseau-inspired radical political and social change of Robespierre’s Jacobin dictatorship and each saw an intimate connection between this project and the theoretical presuppositions of Rousseau’s contract theory. First, however, I intend to say something about the very French context in which Rousseau’s theory of social contract had its origin and then look at what I take to be the significance of his ideas and the innovations they entail.
