Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778)

Rousseau was a French philosopher who believed that legitimate authority derived from a “social contract” in which everyone placed themselves under the direction of a “general will” (or in French, "conscience collective").

With Rousseau, political philosophy started to see shades of distinction between the concepts of "nation", which is closer to the general will that Rousseau theorized, and "state" which is closer to the power of sovereignty which citizens of a nation might concede in order to enhance their own lives.

Rousseau's work is a continuation of "social contract" thinking started by Thomas Hobbes which begins to suggest that society is more than the sum of it's parts.