The germ of the Terror, the dream of the regeneration of humanity by political means, may already be present in
the radically modern idea of sovereignty that informs the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen.
He has taken a
radically sceptical view of traditional
ideas about art and artists: in the light of
modern scientific advances and
modern techniques, he claims that the value of art should lie not in the rarity of an individual work, but in the rarity and originality of its meaning - which should be reproducible.