Inspired by the ancient city-states of Greece, Rousseau looked for a way in which the states of his time were equally representative. Keeping men in miserable subservience, feudalism – alongside religion – was a powerful force in the eighteenth century. Selfish monarchical social systems, which collectively reduced the common people to servitude, were now attacked by the philosophers of the Enlightenment, of which Rousseau was a leader. His masterpiece, On the Social Contract, profoundly influenced the subsequent development of society and still remains provocative in a modern era.
