Jean Jacques Rousseau (
GenevaGeneva, is the second-most-populous city in Switzerland and is the most populous city of Romandie...
, 28 June 1712
ErmenonvilleErmenonville is a commune in the Oise department in northern France.Ermenonville is notable for its park named for Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whose tomb designed by the painter Hubert Robert is on the Isle of Poplars in its lake.-Park:...
, 2 July 1778) was a major philosopher, writer, and
composerA composer is a person who creates music, usually by musical notation, for interpretation and performance. The level of distinction between composers and other musicians varies, which affects issues such as copyright and the deference given to individual interpretations of a particular piece of...
of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, whose
political philosophyPolitical philosophy is the study of city, government, politics, liberty, justice, property, rights, law, and the enforcement of a legal code by authority: what they are, why they are needed, what makes a government legitimate, what rights and freedoms it should protect and why, what form it...
influenced the
French RevolutionThe French Revolution was a period of political and social upheaval and radical change in the history of France, during which the French governmental structure, previously an absolute monarchy with feudal privileges for the aristocracy and Catholic clergy, underwent radical change to forms based...
and the development of modern political and educational thought.
His novel,
Emile: or, On EducationEmile, or On Education was considered by Jean-Jacques Rousseau to be the “best and most important of all my writings”. On its first appearance in 1762 it was publicly burned....
, which he considered his most important work, is a seminal treatise on the education of the whole person for citizenship. His
sentimental novelThe sentimental novel or the novel of sensibility is an 18th century literary genre which celebrates the emotional and intellectual concepts of sentiment, sentimentalism, and sensibility...
,
Julie, ou la nouvelle HéloïseJulie, or the New Heloise is an epistolary novel by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, published in 1761 by Rey . The original edition was entitled Lettres de deux amans habitans d'une petite ville au pied des Alpes .The novel’s subtitle points to the history of Heloise and Pierre Abélard, a medieval story...
, was of great importance to the development of pre-Romanticism and
romanticismRomanticism is a complex artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Western Europe, and gained strength during the Industrial Revolution...
in fiction. Rousseau's autobiographical writings: his
ConfessionsConfessions is an autobiographical book by Jean-Jacques Rousseau. In modern times, it is often published with the title The Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau in order to distinguish it from St. Augustine of Hippo's Confessions, the book from which Jean-Jacques Rousseau took the title for his own...
, which initiated the modern
autobiographyAn autobiography is a book about the life of a person, written by that person.-Origin of the term:...
, and his
Reveries of a Solitary WalkerReveries of a Solitary Walker is an unfinished book by French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, written between 1776 and 1778. It was the last of a number of works composed toward the end of his life which were deeply autobiographical in nature...
(along with the works of
LessingLessing is the surname of:* Gotthold Ephraim Lessing , one of the most prominent philosophers of the Enlightenment era* Doris Lessing , British novelist and the 2007 Nobel Prize laureate in literature...
and Goethe in Germany, and
RichardsonSamuel Richardson was an 18th-century English writer and printer. He is best known for his three epistolary novels: Pamela: Or, Virtue Rewarded , Clarissa: Or the History of a Young Lady and The History of Sir Charles Grandison...
and
SterneLaurence Sterne was an Irish-born English novelist and an Anglican clergyman. He is best known for his novels The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, and A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy; but he also published many sermons, wrote memoirs, and was involved in local politics...
in England), were among the pre-eminent examples of the late eighteenth-century movement known as the "Age of
SensibilitySensibility refers to an acute perception of or responsiveness toward something, such as the emotions of another. This concept emerged in eighteenth-century Britain, and was closely associated with studies of sense perception as the means through which knowledge is gathered...
", featuring an increasing focus on subjectivity and introspection that has characterized the modern age.
Rousseau also wrote a play and two operas, and made important contributions to
musicMusic is an art form whose medium is sound. Common elements of music are pitch , rhythm , dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture...
as a theorist. During the period of the French Revolution, Rousseau was the most popular of the
philosophes among members of the
Jacobin ClubThe Jacobin Club was the largest and most powerful political club of the French Revolution. It originated as the Club Benthorn, formed at Versailles as a group of Breton deputies to the Estates General of 1789. At the height of its influence, there were thousands of chapters throughout France,...
. He was interred as a national hero in the Panthéon in Paris, in 1794, sixteen years after his death.
Biography
Rousseau was born in 1712 in
GenevaGeneva, is the second-most-populous city in Switzerland and is the most populous city of Romandie...
, since 1536 a
HuguenotThe Huguenots were members of the Protestant Reformed Church of France from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. Since the eighteenth century, Huguenots have been commonly designated "French Protestants", the title being suggested by their German co-religionists or "Calvinists"...
republic and the seat of
CalvinismCalvinism is a theological system and an approach to the Christian life...
(now part of Switzerland). Rousseau was proud that his family, of the
moyen (or middle-class) order, had voting rights in that city and throughout his life he described himself as a citizen of Geneva. In theory Geneva was governed democratically by its male voting citizens (who were a minority of the population). In fact, a secretive executive committee, called the Little Council (made up of 25 members of its wealthiest families), ruled the city. In 1707 a patriot called Pierre Fatio protested at this situation and the Little Council had him shot. Jean-Jacques Rousseau's father Isaac was not in the city at this time, but Jean-Jacques's grandfather supported Fatio and was penalized for it. Rousseau's father, Isaac Rousseau, was a watchmaker who, notwithstanding his artisan status, was well educated and a lover of music. "A Genevan watchmaker," Rousseau wrote, "is a man who can be introduced anywhere; a Parisian watchmaker is only fit to talk about watches." Rousseau's mother, Suzanne Bernard Rousseau, the daughter of a Calvinist preacher, died of birth complications nine days after his birth. He and his older brother François were brought up by their father and a paternal aunt, also named Suzanne.
Rousseau had no recollection of learning to read, but he remembered how when he was five or six his father encouraged his love of reading:
Every night, after supper, we read some part of a small collection of romances [i.e., adventure stories], which had been my mother's. My father's design was only to improve me in reading, and he thought these entertaining works were calculated to give me a fondness for it; but we soon found ourselves so interested in the adventures they contained, that we alternately read whole nights together and could not bear to give over until at the conclusion of a volume. Sometimes, in the morning, on hearing the swallows at our window, my father, quite ashamed of this weakness, would cry, "Come, come, let us go to bed; I am more a child than thou art." —Confessions, Book 1
Not long afterward, Rousseau abandoned his taste for escapist stories in favor of the antiquity of
PlutarchPlutarch, born Plutarchos then, on his becoming a Roman citizen, Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus , c. AD 46 – 120, was a Greek historian, biographer, essayist, and Middle Platonist known primarily for his Parallel Lives and Moralia...
's
Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans, which he would read to his father while he made watches.
When Rousseau was ten, his father, an avid hunter, got into a legal quarrel with a wealthy landowner on whose lands he had been caught trespassing. To avoid certain defeat in the courts, he moved away to Nyon in the territory of Bern, taking Rousseau's aunt Suzanne with him. He remarried, and from that point Jean-Jacques saw little of him. Jean-Jacques was left with his maternal uncle, who packed him, along with his own son, Abraham Bernard, away to board for two years with a Calvinist minister in a hamlet outside of Geneva. Here the boys picked up the elements of mathematics and drawing. Rousseau, who was always deeply moved by religious services, for a time even dreamed of becoming a Protestant minister.
Virtually all our information about Rousseau's first youth has come from his posthumously published
Confessions, in which the chronology is somewhat confused, though recent scholars have combed the archives for confirming evidence to fill in the blanks. At age 13 Rousseau was apprenticed first to a
notaryCivil-law notaries are specialized lawyers acting as public officers with jurisdiction over voluntary, i.e., non-contentious, private law. Unlike notary publics, their common-law counterparts, they are able to provide legal advice and prepare instruments with legal effect...
and then to an engraver who beat him. At fifteen he ran away from Geneva (on 14 March 1728) after returning to the city and finding the city gates locked due to the curfew. In adjoining
SavoySavoy is a region of Europe on the western flank of the Alps that emerged following the collapse of the Frankish Kingdom of Burgundy. The historical land of Savoy is shared between the modern republics of France and Italy.-Background:...
he took shelter with a Roman Catholic priest, who introduced him to
Françoise-Louise de WarensFrançoise-Louise de Warens, born Louise Éléonore de la Tour du Pil, also called Madame de Warens , was the benefactress and mistress of Jean-Jacques Rousseau....
, age 29. She was a noblewoman of Protestant background who was separated from her husband. As professional lay proselytizer, she was paid by the King of
PiedmontPiedmont is one of the 20 regions of Italy. It has an area of 25,399 km
2 and a population of about 4.4 million. The capital is Turin. The main local language is Piedmontese. Occitan is also spoken by a minority in the so-called Occitan Valleys...
to help bring Protestants to Catholicism. They sent the boy to
TurinTurin is a major city as well as a business and cultural centre in northern Italy, capital of the Piedmont region, located mainly on the left bank of the Po River surrounded by the Alpine arch...
, the capital of Savoy (which included Piedmont, in what is now Italy), to complete his conversion. This resulted in his having to give up his Genevan citizenship, although he would later revert to Calvinism in order to regain it.
In converting to Catholicism, both De Warens and Rousseau were likely reacting to the severity of Calvinism's insistence on the
total depravityTotal depravity is a theological doctrine that derives from the Augustinian concept of original sin...
of man. Leo Damrosch writes, "an eighteenth-century Genevan liturgy still required believers to declare ‘that we are miserable sinners, born in corruption, inclined to evil, incapable by ourselves of doing good'." De Warens, a deist by inclination, was attracted to Catholicism's doctrine of forgiveness of sins.
Finding himself on his own, since his father and uncle had more or less disowned him, the teenage Rousseau supported himself for a time as a servant, secretary, and tutor, wandering in Italy (Piedmont and Savoy) and France. During this time, he lived on and off with De Warens, whom he idolized and called his "
maman". Flattered by his devotion, De Warens tried to get him started in a profession, and arranged formal music lessons for him. At one point, he briefly attended a seminary with the idea of becoming a priest. When Rousseau reached twenty De Warens took him as her lover, whilst intimate also with the steward of her house. The sexual aspect of their relationship (in fact a
ménage à troisMénage à trois is the French term describing a domestic arrangement in which three people having sexual relations occupy the same household.-Term:...
) confused Rousseau and made him uncomfortable, but he always considered De Warens the greatest love of his life. A rather profligate spender, she had a large library and loved to entertain and listen to music. She and her circle, comprising educated members of the Catholic clergy, introduced Rousseau to the world of letters and ideas. Rousseau had been an indifferent student, but during his twenties, which were marked by long bouts of hypochondria, he applied himself in earnest to the study of philosophy, mathematics, and music. At twenty-five, he came into a small inheritance from his mother and used a portion of it to repay De Warens for her financial support of him. At twenty-seven he took a job as a tutor in Lyon.
In 1742 Rousseau moved to Paris in order to present the Académie des Sciences with a new system of
numbered musical notationThe numbered musical notation, better known as jianpu in Chinese, is a musical notation system widely used among the Chinese people. Some people call it the numeric notation or numerical notation, but it is not to be confused with the integer notation...
he believed would make his fortune. His system, intended to be compatible with
typographyTypography is the art and technique of arranging type, type design, and modifying type glyphs. Type glyphs are created and modified using a variety of illustration techniques...
, is based on a single line, displaying numbers representing
intervalsIn music theory, the term interval describes the relationship between the pitches of two notes.Intervals may be described as:* vertical if the two notes sound simultaneously* linear , if the notes sound successively....
between notes and dots and commas indicating rhythmic values. Believing the system was impractical, the Academy rejected it, though they praised his mastery of the subject, and urged him to try again.
From 1743 to 1744 Rousseau had an honorable but ill-paying post as a secretary to the Comte de Montaigue, the French ambassador to
VeniceVenice is a city in northern Italy, the capital of the region Veneto, a population of 271,367 . Together with Padua, the city is included in the Padua-Venice Metropolitan Area . The city historically was an independent nation...
. This awoke in him a life-long love for Italian music, particularly
operaOpera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score. Opera is part of the Western classical music tradition. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
:
I had brought with me from Paris the prejudice of that city against Italian music; but I had also received from nature a sensibility and niceness of distinction which prejudice cannot withstand. I soon contracted that passion for Italian music with which it inspires all those who are capable of feeling its excellence. In listening to barcaroles, I found I had not yet known what singing was... —Confessions
Rousseau's employer routinely received his stipend as much as a year late and paid his staff irregularly. After eleven months Rousseau quit, taking from the experience a profound distrust of government bureaucracy.
Returning to Paris, the penniless Rousseau befriended and became the lover of
Thérèse LevasseurThérèse Levasseur, also known as Thérèse Le Vasseur and Thérèse Lavasseur, was the wife of French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau....
, a pretty seamstress who was the sole support of her termagant mother and numerous ne'er-do-well siblings. At first they did not live together, though later Rousseau took Thérèse and her mother in to live with him as his servants, and himself assumed the burden of supporting her large family. According to his
Confessions, before she moved in with him, Thérèse bore him a son and as many as four other children (there is no independent for this number). Rousseau wrote that he persuaded Thérèse to give each of the newborns up to a foundling hospital, for the sake of her "honor". "Her mother, who feared the inconvenience of a brat, came to my aid, and she [Thérèse] allowed herself to be overcome" (
Confessions). The foundling hospitals had been started as a reform to save the numerous infants who were being abandoned in the streets of Paris. Infant mortality at that date was extremely high — some fifty percent, in large part because families sent their infants to be wet nursed. The mortality rate in the foundling hospitals, which also sent the babies out to be wet nursed, proved worse, however, and most of the infants sent there likely perished. Ten years later Rousseau made inquiries about the fate of his son, but no record could be found. When Rousseau subsequently became celebrated as a theorist of education and child-rearing, his abandonment of his children was used by his critics, including
VoltaireFrançois-Marie Arouet , better known by the pen name Voltaire, was a French Enlightenment writer, essayist, and philosopher known for his wit and his defense of civil liberties, including both freedom of religion and free trade.Voltaire was a prolific writer and produced works in almost every...
and
Edmund BurkeEdmund Burke PC was an Anglo-Irish statesman, author, orator, political theorist, and philosopher who, after relocating to England, served for many years in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom as a member of the Whig party. He is mainly remembered for his opposition to the French Revolution...
, as the basis for
ad hominemAn ad hominem argument, also known as argumentum ad hominem is an argument which links the validity of a premise to a characteristic or belief of a person advocating the premise....
attacks. In an irony of fate, Rousseau's later injunction to women to breastfeed their own babies (as had previously been recommended by the French natural scientist
BuffonGeorges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon was a French naturalist, mathematician, cosmologist and encyclopedic author. His collected information influenced the next two generations of naturalists, including Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and Georges Cuvier...
), probably saved the lives of thousands of infants.
While in Paris, Rousseau became a close friend of French philosopher
DiderotDenis Diderot was a French philosopher, art critic and writer. He was a prominent figure during the Enlightenment and is best known for serving as chief editor of and contributor to the Encyclopédie....
and, beginning with some articles on music in 1749, contributed numerous articles to Diderot and D'Alembert's great
EncyclopédieEncyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers was a general encyclopedia published in France between 1751 and 1772, with later supplements and revisions in 1772, 1777 and 1780 and numerous foreign editions and later derivatives.Its introduction, the Preliminary...
, the most famous of which was an article on political economy written in 1755.
Rousseau's ideas were the result of an almost obsessive dialogue with writers of the past, filtered in many cases through conversations with Diderot. His genius lay in his strikingly original way of putting things rather than in the originality,
per se, of his thinking. In 1749 Rousseau was paying daily visits to Diderot, who had been thrown into the fortress of
VincennesVincennes is a commune of the Val-de-Marne located in the eastern suburbs of Paris, France. This Francilienne town is located . from the centre of Paris...
under a
lettre de cachetIn French history, lettres de cachet were letters signed by the king of France, countersigned by one of his ministers, and closed with the royal seal, or cachet...
for opinions in his "
Lettre sur les aveugles," that hinted at
materialismThe philosophy of materialism holds that the only thing that exists is matter; that all things are composed of material and all phenomena are the result of material interactions. In other words, matter is the only substance. As a theory, materialism is a form of physicalism and belongs to the...
, a belief in atoms, and natural selection. Rousseau had read about an essay competition sponsored by the Académie de Dijon to be published in the
Mercure de France on the theme of whether the development of the arts and sciences had been morally beneficial. He wrote that while walking to Vincennes (about three miles from Paris), he had a revelation that the arts and sciences were responsible for the moral degeneration of mankind, who were basically good by nature. According to Diderot, writing much later, Rousseau had originally intended to answer this in the conventional way, but his discussions with Diderot convinced him to propose the paradoxical negative answer that catapulted him into the public eye. Whatever the case, it was the great French naturalist Buffon had previously suggested that man's moral decline arose from his acquisition of property and culture. Both Rousseau and Diderot would have been aware of Buffon's speculations. Rousseau's 1750 "
Discourse on the Arts and Sciences"A Discourse on the Moral Effects of the Arts and Sciences" , more commonly known as "Discourse on the Arts and Sciences" , is an essay by Genevan philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau which argued that the arts and sciences corrupt human morality...
", in which he made that argument, was awarded the first prize and gained him significant fame.
Rousseau continued his interest in music, and his opera
Le Devin du VillageLe devin du village is an interméde / one-act opera by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who also wrote the libretto.It was first performed before the court at Fontainebleau on 18 October 1752. King Louis XV loved the work so much that he offered Rousseau the great honor of a life pension. Rousseau refused...
(
The Village Soothsayer) was performed for
King Louis XVLouis XV ruled as King of France and of Navarre from 1 September 1715 until his death on 10 May 1774...
in 1752. The king was so pleased by the work that he offered Rousseau a life-long pension. To the exasperation of his friends, Rousseau turned down the great honor, bringing him notoriety as "the man who had refused a king's pension." He also turned down several other advantageous offers, sometimes with a brusqueness bordering on truculence that gave offense and caused him problems. The same year, the visit of a troupe of Italian musicians to Paris, and their performance of
Giovanni Battista PergolesiGiovanni Battista Pergolesi was an Italian composer, violinist and organist.-Biography:Born at Jesi, Pergolesi studied music there under a local musician, Francesco Santini, before going to Naples in 1725, where he studied under Gaetano Greco and Francesco Feo among others...
's
La Serva PadronaLa serva padrona is an opera buffa by Giovanni Battista Pergolesi to a libretto by Gennaro Antonio Federico, after the play by Jacopo Angello Nelli. The opera is only 45 minutes long and was originally performed as an intermezzo between the acts of a larger opera...
, prompted the Querelle des Bouffons, which pitted protagonists of French music against supporters of the Italian style. Rousseau as noted above, was an enthusiastic supporter of the Italians against
Jean-Philippe RameauJean-Philippe Rameau was one of the most important French composers and music theorists of the Baroque era...
and others, making an important contribution with his
Letter on French Music.
On returning to Geneva in 1754, Rousseau reconverted to
CalvinismCalvinism is a theological system and an approach to the Christian life...
and regained his official Genevan citizenship. In 1755, Rousseau completed his second major work, the
Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men (the
Discourse on InequalityDiscourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men also commonly known as the Second Discourse is a work by the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau...
), which elaborated on the arguments of the
Discourse on the Arts and Sciences.
He also pursued an unconsummated romantic attachment with the twenty-five-year old Sophie d'Houdetot, which partly inspired his
epistolary novelAn epistolary novel is a novel written as a series of documents. The usual form is letters, although diary entries, newspaper clippings and other documents are sometimes used. Recently, electronic "documents" such as recordings and radio, blogs and e-mails have also come into use...
,
Julie, ou la nouvelle HéloïseJulie, or the New Heloise is an epistolary novel by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, published in 1761 by Rey . The original edition was entitled Lettres de deux amans habitans d'une petite ville au pied des Alpes .The novel’s subtitle points to the history of Heloise and Pierre Abélard, a medieval story...
(also based on memories of his idyllic youthful relationship with Mme de Warens). Sophie was the cousin and house guest of Rousseau's patroness and landlady Madame d'Epinay, whom he treated rather highhandedly. He resented being at Mme d'Epinay's beck and call and detested the insincere conversation and shallow atheism of the
Encyclopedistes whom he met at her table. Wounded feelings gave rise to a bitter three-way quarrel between Rousseau and Madame d'Epinay; her lover, the philologist
GrimmFriedrich Melchior, Baron von Grimm was a German author.- Biography :Grimm was born at Regensburg, the son of a pastor. He studied at the University of Leipzig, where he came under the influence of Johann Christian Gottsched and of Johann August Ernesti, to whom he was largely indebted for his...
; and their mutual friend, Diderot, who took their side against Rousseau. Diderot later described Rousseau as being, "false, vain as Satan, ungrateful, cruel, hypocritical, and wicked ... He sucked ideas from me, used them himself, and then affected to despise me".
Rousseau's break with the
Encyclopedistes coincided with the composition of his three major works, in all of which he emphasized his fervent belief in a spiritual origin of man's soul and the universe, in contradistinction to the
materialismThe philosophy of materialism holds that the only thing that exists is matter; that all things are composed of material and all phenomena are the result of material interactions. In other words, matter is the only substance. As a theory, materialism is a form of physicalism and belongs to the...
of Diderot, La Mettrie, and d'Holbach. During this period Rousseau enjoyed the support and patronage of the Duc de Luxembourg, and the
Prince de ContiLouis François de Bourbon, Prince of Conti was a French nobleman, who was the Prince of Conti from 1727 to his death, following his father Louis Armand II. His mother was Louise Élisabeth de Bourbon, a natural granddaughter of Louis XIV...
, two of the richest and most powerful nobles in France. These men truly liked Rousseau and enjoyed his ability to converse on any subject, but they also used him as a way of getting back at Louis XV and the political faction surrounding his mistress, Mme de Pompadour. Even with them, however, Rousseau went too far, courting rejection when he criticized the practice of
tax farmingTax farming was originally a Roman practice whereby the burden of tax collection was reassigned by the Roman State to private individuals or groups. In essence, these individuals or groups paid the taxes for a certain area and for a certain period of time and then attempted to cover their outlay by...
, in which some of them engaged.
Rousseau's 800-page novel of
sentimentSentiment can refer to:*Feelings and emotions*Sentimentality, the literary device which is used to induce an emotional response disproportionate to the situation, and thus to substitute heightened and generally unthinking feeling for normal ethical and intellectual judgment*Sentimental novel, an...
,
Julie, ou la nouvelle HéloïseJulie, or the New Heloise is an epistolary novel by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, published in 1761 by Rey . The original edition was entitled Lettres de deux amans habitans d'une petite ville au pied des Alpes .The novel’s subtitle points to the history of Heloise and Pierre Abélard, a medieval story...
, was published in
1761See also: 1760 in literature, other events of 1761, 1762 in literature, list of years in literature.-Events:* On the death of Johann Matthias Gesner, the chair of rhetoric at the University of Göttingen is refused by both Johann August Ernesti and by David Ruhnken...
to immense success. The book's rhapsodic descriptions of the natural beauty of the Swiss countryside struck a chord in the public and may have helped spark the subsequent nineteenth century craze for Alpine scenery. In 1762, Rousseau published
Du Contrat Social, Principes du droit politique (in English, literally
Of the Social Contract, Principles of Political RightThe Social Contract, Or Principles of Political Right by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, is the book in which Rousseau theorized about the best way in which to set up a political community in the face of the problems of commercial society which he had already identified in his Discourse on Inequality .THE...
) in April and then
Emile: or, On EducationEmile, or On Education was considered by Jean-Jacques Rousseau to be the “best and most important of all my writings”. On its first appearance in 1762 it was publicly burned....
in May. The final section of
Émile, "The Profession of Faith of a Savoyard Vicar," was intended to be a defense of religious belief. Rousseau's choice of a Catholic vicar of humble peasant background (plausibly based on a kindly prelate he had met as a teenager) as a spokesman for the defense of religion was in itself a daring innovation for the time. The vicar's creed was that of
SocinianismSocinianism is a form of Nontrinitarianism, named for Laelius Socinus and of his nephew Faustus Socinus .-Origins:...
(or
UnitarianismUnitarianism as a theology is the belief in the single personality of God, in contrast to the doctrine of the Trinity ....
as it is called today). Because it rejected original sin and divine
RevelationIn religion and theology, revelation is the revealing or disclosing, or making something obvious and clearly understood through active or passive communication with supernatural entities . It is believed that revelation can originate directly from a deity, or through an agent, such as an angel...
, both Protestant and Catholic authorities took offense. Moreover, Rousseau advocated the opinion that, insofar as they lead people to virtue, all religions are equally worthy, and that people should therefore conform to the religion in which they have been brought up. This religious
indifferentismIn the Catholic Church, indifferentism is a condemned heresy that holds that one religion is as good as another, and that all religions are equally valid paths to salvation...
caused Rousseau and his books to be banned from France and Geneva. He was condemned from the pulpit by the Archbishop of Paris, his books were burned, and warrants were issued for his arrest.
A sympathetic observer, British philosopher
David HumeDavid Hume was a Scottish philosopher, economist, historian and a key figure in the history of Western philosophy and the Scottish Enlightenment...
, "professed no surprise when he learned that Rousseau's books were banned in Geneva and elsewhere. Rousseau, he wrote, 'has not had the precaution to throw any veil over his sentiments; and, as he scorns to dissemble his contempt for established opinions, he could not wonder that all the zealots were in arms against him. The liberty of the press is not so secured in any country … as not to render such an open attack on popular prejudice somewhat dangerous.'" Rousseau, who thought he had been defending religion, was crushed. Forced to flee arrest he made his way, with the help of the Duc of Luxembourg and Prince de Conti, to
NeuchâtelNeuchâtel is the capital of the Swiss canton of Neuchâtel on Lake Neuchâtel.The city has approximately 32,600 inhabitants , by and large French-speaking, although the city is sometimes referred to historically by the German name , which has the same meaning, since Prussia ruled the area until...
, a
CantonCanton may refer to:*Canton , territorial subdivision in some countries**township , called canton in Canadian FrenchPlacenames:China:* Guangzhou, city formerly Kwongchau/Kwangchou, traditionally romanized as Canton....
of the Swiss Confederation that was a protectorate of the Prussian crown. His powerful protectors discreetly assisted him in his flight and they helped to get his banned books (published in Holland) distributed in France disguised as other works using false covers and title pages. In the town of
MôtiersMôtiers is a municipality in the district of Val-de-Travers in the canton of Neuchâtel in Switzerland.The old castle, dating in part from the 14th century, stands on a rock sput between Val de Travers and the Bied valley...
, he sought and found protection under Lord Keith, who was the local representative of the free-thinking Frederick the Great of Prussia. While in Môtiers, Rousseau wrote the
Constitutional Project for Corsica (
Projet de Constitution pour la Corse, 1765).
After his house in Môtiers was stoned on the night of 6 September 1765, Rousseau took refuge in Great Britain with Hume, who found lodgings for him at a friend's country estate in
WoottonThe Weaver Hills are a small range of hills in north Staffordshire.-Weaver Hills:The Weaver Hills are situated about 15 miles east of Stoke on Trent and about 5 miles west of Ashbourne, Derbyshire, just south of the A52 and north of the Churnet Valley...
in Staffordshire. Neither Thérèse nor Rousseau was able to learn English or make friends. Isolated, Rousseau, never emotionally very stable, suffered a serious decline in his mental health and began to experience paranoid fantasies about plots against him involving Hume and others. “He is plainly mad, after having long been maddish”, Hume wrote to a friend. Rousseau's letter to Hume, in which he articulates the perceived misconduct, sparked an exchange which was published in and received with great interest in contemporary Paris.
.jpg)
Although officially barred from entering France before 1770, Rousseau returned in 1767 under a false name. In 1768 he went through a marriage of sorts to Thérèse (marriages between Catholics and Protestants were illegal), whom he had always hitherto referred to as his "housekeeper". Though she was illiterate, she had become a remarkably good cook, a hobby her husband shared. In 1770 they were allowed to return to Paris. As a condition of his return he was not allowed to publish any books, but after completing his
Confessions, Rousseau began private readings in 1771. At the request of Madame d'Epinay, who was anxious to protect her privacy, however, the police ordered him to stop, and the
Confessions was only partially published in 1782, four years after his death. All his subsequent works were to appear posthumously.
In 1772, Rousseau was invited to present recommendations for a new constitution for the
Polish-Lithuanian CommonwealthThe Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth was formed by the union of the Kingdom of Poland and Grand Duchy of Lithuania in 1569. The new Commonwealth was one of the largest and most populous countries of 16th and 17th-century Europe....
, resulting in the
Considerations on the Government of PolandConsiderations on the Government of Poland — also simply The Government of Poland or, in the original French, Considérations sur le gouvernement de Pologne — is an essay by French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau concerning the design of a new constitution for the people of Poland...
, which was to be his last major political work. In 1776 he completed
Dialogues: Rousseau Judge of Jean-Jacques and began work on the
Reveries of the Solitary WalkerReveries of a Solitary Walker is an unfinished book by French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, written between 1776 and 1778. It was the last of a number of works composed toward the end of his life which were deeply autobiographical in nature...
. In order to support himself, he returned to copying music, spending his leisure time in the study of botany.
Although a celebrity, Rousseau's mental health did not permit him to enjoy his fame. His final years were largely spent in deliberate withdrawal; however, he did respond favorably to an approach from the composer Gluck, whom he met in 1774. One of Rousseau's last pieces of writing was a critical yet enthusiastic analysis of Gluck's opera
AlcesteAlceste is an opera by Christoph Willibald Gluck. The libretto was written by Ranieri de Calzabigi and based on the play Alcestis by Euripides.-Preface and reforms:...
. While taking a morning walk on the estate of the marquis
René Louis de GirardinRené Louis de Girardin , the marquis de Vauvray, was the last patron of philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the creator of the gardens of Ermenonville, the first gardens in France inspired by the ideas of Rousseau, and the author of De la composition des paysages , which strongly influenced the...
at
ErmenonvilleErmenonville is a commune in the Oise department in northern France.Ermenonville is notable for its park named for Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whose tomb designed by the painter Hubert Robert is on the Isle of Poplars in its lake.-Park:...
(28 miles northeast of Paris), Rousseau suffered a hemorrhage and died on 2 July 1778. He was sixty-six.
Rousseau was initially buried at Ermenonville on the Ile des Peupliers, which became a place of pilgrimage for his many admirers. His remains were moved to the Panthéon in Paris in 1794, sixteen years after his death, where they are located directly across from those of his contemporary
VoltaireFrançois-Marie Arouet , better known by the pen name Voltaire, was a French Enlightenment writer, essayist, and philosopher known for his wit and his defense of civil liberties, including both freedom of religion and free trade.Voltaire was a prolific writer and produced works in almost every...
. His tomb, in the shape of a rustic temple, on which, in bas relief an arm reaches out, bearing the torch of liberty, evokes Rousseau's deep love of nature and of classical antiquity. In 1834, the Genevan government somewhat reluctantly erected a statue in his honor on the tiny Île Rousseau in
Lake GenevaLake Geneva or Lake Léman is the largest natural freshwater lake in western Europe . In addition it is the largest body of freshwater in continental Europe in term of volume . 60% of it comes under the jurisdiction of Switzerland , and 40% under France...
. Today he is proudly claimed as their most celebrated native son. In 2002, the
Espace Rousseau was established at 40 Grand-Rue, Geneva, Rousseau's birthplace.
Philosophy
Theory of Natural Man
In common with other philosophers of the day, Rousseau looked to a hypothetical
State of NatureState of nature is a term in political philosophy used in social contract theories to describe the hypothetical condition of humanity before the state's foundation. In a broader sense, the state of nature is the condition before the rule of positive law comes into being, thus being a synonym of...
as a normative guide. Rousseau deplores Hobbes for asserting that since man in the "state of nature . . . has no idea of goodness he must be naturally wicked; that he is vicious because he does not know virtue". On the contrary, Rousseau holds that "uncorrupted morals" prevail in the "state of nature" and he especially praised the admirable moderation of the Caribbeans in expressing the sexual urge despite the fact that they live in a hot climate, which "always seems to inflame the passions". This has led Anglophone critics to erroneously attribute to Rousseau the invention of idea of the
noble savageThe term "noble savage" expresses a concept of the universal essential humanity as unencumbered by civilization; the normal essence of an unfettered human....
, an oxymoronic expression that was never used in France and which grossly misrepresents Rousseau's thought. (The expression, "the noble savage" was first used in 1672 by British poet
John DrydenJohn Dryden was an influential English poet, literary critic, translator, and playwright who dominated the literary life of Restoration England to such a point that the period came to be known in literary circles as the Age of Dryden.-Early life:Dryden was born in the village rectory of Aldwincle...
in his play
The Conquest of GranadaThe Conquest of Granada is a Restoration era stage play, a two-part tragedy written by John Dryden that was first acted in 1670 and 1671 and published in 1672...
. The French word "
sauvage" means "wild", as in "a wild flower", and does not have the connotations of fierceness or brutality that the word "savage" does in English, though in the eighteenth century the English word was closer in connotation to the French one.) Rousseau did deny that morality is a construct or creation of society. He considered it as "natural" in the sense of "innate", an outgrowth of man's instinctive disinclination to witness suffering, from which arise the emotions of compassion or empathy, sentiments whose existence even Hobbes acknowledged, and which are shared with animals.
Contrary to what his many detractors have claimed, Rousseau never suggests that humans in the state of nature act morally; in fact, terms such as "justice" or "wickedness" are inapplicable to pre-political society as Rousseau understands it. Morality proper, i.e., self restraint, can only develop through careful education in a civil state. Humans "in a state of Nature" may act with all of the ferocity of an animal. They are good only in a negative sense, insofar as they are self-sufficient and thus not subject to the vices of political society. In fact, Rousseau's natural man is virtually identical to a solitary chimpanzee or other ape, such as the orangutan as described by
BuffonGeorges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon was a French naturalist, mathematician, cosmologist and encyclopedic author. His collected information influenced the next two generations of naturalists, including Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and Georges Cuvier...
; and the "natural" goodness of humanity is thus the goodness of an animal, which is neither good nor bad. Rousseau, a deteriorationist, proposed that, except perhaps for brief moments of balance, at or near its inception, when a relative equality among men prevailed, human civilization has always been artificial, creating inequality, envy, and unnatural desires.
In Rousseau's philosophy, society's negative influence on men centers on its transformation of
amour de soi, a positive self-love, into
amour-propre, or
pridePride is, depending on the context, either a high sense of the worth of one's self or one's own or a pleasure taken in the contemplation of these things...
.
Amour de soi represents the instinctive human desire for self-preservation, combined with the human power of
reasonReason is the mental faculty that is able to generate conclusions from assumptions or premisses.Reason in this sense is often contrasted with authority, intuition, emotion, mysticism, superstition, and faith, and is thought by rationalists to be more reliable than these in discovering what is true...
. In contrast,
amour-propre is artificial and encourages man to compare himself to others, thus creating unwarranted
fearFear is an emotional response to a threat. It is a basic survival mechanism occurring in response to a specific stimulus, such as pain or the threat of danger. Some psychologists such as John B. Watson, Robert Plutchik, and Paul Ekman have suggested that fear is one of a small set of basic or...
and allowing men to take pleasure in the pain or weakness of others. Rousseau was not the first to make this distinction; it had been invoked by, among others,
VauvenarguesLuc de Clapiers, marquis de Vauvenargues was a French moralist, essayist, and miscellaneous writer.-Life:...
.
In
Discourse on the Arts and Sciences"A Discourse on the Moral Effects of the Arts and Sciences" , more commonly known as "Discourse on the Arts and Sciences" , is an essay by Genevan philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau which argued that the arts and sciences corrupt human morality...
Rousseau argues that the arts and sciences have not been beneficial to humankind, because they arose not from authentic human needs but rather as a result of pride and
vanityIn conventional parlance, vanity is the excessive belief in one's own abilities or attractiveness to others. Prior to the 14th century it did not have such narcissistic undertones, and merely meant futility. The related term vainglory is now often seen as an archaic synonym for vanity, but...
. Moreover, the opportunities they create for idleness and luxury have contributed to the corruption of man. He proposed that the progress of
knowledgeKnowledge is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as expertise, and skills acquired by a person through experience or education; the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject, what is known in a particular field or in total; facts and information or awareness or familiarity gained...
had made
governmentA government is the body within a community, political entity or organization which has the authority to make and enforce rules, laws and regulations.....
s more
powerPower is a measure of an entity's ability to control the environment around itself, including the behavior of other entities. The term authority is often used for power, perceived as legitimate by the social structure. Power can be seen as evil or unjust, but the exercise of power is accepted as...
ful and had crushed individual
libertyLiberty is a concept of political philosophy and identifies the condition in which an individual has the right to act according to his or her own will....
; and he concluded that material progress had actually undermined the possibility of true
friendshipFriendship is the cooperative and supportive relationship between two or more people. In this sense, the term connotes a relationship which involves mutual knowledge, esteem, affection, and respect along with a degree of rendering service to friends in times of need or crisis...
by replacing it with
jealousyJealousy is an emotion and typically refers to the negative thoughts and feelings of insecurity, fear, and anxiety over an anticipated loss of something that the person values, such as a relationship, friendship, or love. Jealousy often consists of a combination of emotions such as anger, sadness,...
,
fearFear is an emotional response to a threat. It is a basic survival mechanism occurring in response to a specific stimulus, such as pain or the threat of danger. Some psychologists such as John B. Watson, Robert Plutchik, and Paul Ekman have suggested that fear is one of a small set of basic or...
, and suspicion.
In contrast to the optimistic view of other Enlightenment figures, for Rousseau, progress
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_progress has been inimical to the well-being of humanity,
that is, unless it can be counteracted by the cultivation of civic morality and duty. Only in Civil Society, can man be ennobled—through the use of reason:
The passage from the state of nature to the civil state produces a very remarkable change in man, by substituting justice for instinct in his conduct, and giving his actions the morality they had formerly lacked. Then only, when the voice of duty takes the place of physical impulses and right of appetite, does man, who so far had considered only himself, find that he is forced to act on different principles, and to consult his reason before listening to his inclinations. Although, in this state, he deprives himself of some advantages which he got from nature, he gains in return others so great, his faculties are so stimulated and developed, his ideas so extended, his feelings so ennobled, and his whole soul so uplifted, that, did not the abuses of this new condition often degrade him below that which he left, he would be bound to bless continually the happy moment which took him from it for ever, and, instead of a stupid and unimaginative animal, made him an intelligent being and a man.
Society corrupts men only insofar as the Social Contract has not
de facto succeeded, as we see in contemporary society as described in the
Discourse on InequalityDiscourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men also commonly known as the Second Discourse is a work by the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau...
(1754). In this essay, which elaborates the ideas introduced in the
Discourse on the Arts and Sciences"A Discourse on the Moral Effects of the Arts and Sciences" , more commonly known as "Discourse on the Arts and Sciences" , is an essay by Genevan philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau which argued that the arts and sciences corrupt human morality...
, Rousseau traces man's social evolution from a primitive
state of natureState of nature is a term in political philosophy used in social contract theories to describe the hypothetical condition of humanity before the state's foundation. In a broader sense, the state of nature is the condition before the rule of positive law comes into being, thus being a synonym of...
to modern society. The earliest solitary humans possessed a basic drive for self preservation and a natural disposition to
compassionCompassion is a human emotion prompted by the pain of others. More vigorous than empathy, the feeling commonly gives rise to an active desire to alleviate another's suffering. It is often, though not inevitably, the key component in what manifests in the social context as altruism...
or pity. They differed from animals, however, in their capacity for free will and their potential perfectibility. As they began to live in groups and form clans they also began to experience family love, which Rousseau saw as the source of the greatest happiness known to humanity. As long as differences in wealth and status among families were minimal, the first coming together in groups was accompanied by a fleeting golden age of human flourishing. The development of agriculture, metallurgy, private property, and the
division of labourDivision of labour or economic specialisation is the specialisation of cooperative labour in specific, circumscribed tasks and roles, intended to increase the productivity of labour...
and resulting dependency on one another, however, led to
economic inequalityEconomic inequality comprises all disparities in the distribution of economic assets and income. The term typically refers to inequality among individuals and groups within a society, but can also refer to inequality among countries. Economic Inequality generally refers to equality of outcome, and...
and conflict. As population pressures forced them to associate more and more closely, they underwent a psychological transformation: they began to see themselves through the eyes of others and came to value the good opinion of others as essential to their self esteem. Rousseau posits that the original, deeply flawed
Social ContractSocial contract describes a broad class of theories that try to explain the ways in which people form states and/or maintain social order. The notion of the social contract implies that the people give up some rights to a government or other authority in order to receive or maintain social order...
(i.e., that of Hobbes), which led to the modern state, was made at the suggestion of the rich and powerful, who tricked the general population into surrendering their liberties to them and instituted inequality as a fundamental feature of human society. Rousseau's own conception of the Social Contract can be understood as an alternative to this fraudulent form of association. At the end of the
Discourse on InequalityDiscourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men also commonly known as the Second Discourse is a work by the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau...
, Rousseau explains how the desire to have value in the eyes of others comes to undermine personal integrity and authenticity in a society marked by interdependence, and
hierarchyA hierarchy is an arrangement of items in which the items are represented as being "above," "below," or "at the same level as" one another and with only one "neighbor" above and below each level. These classifications are made with regard to rank, importance, seniority, power status or authority...
. In the last chapter of the
Social Contract, Rousseau would ask "What is to be done?" He answers that now all men can do is to cultivate virtue in themselves and submit to their lawful rulers. To his readers, however, the inescapable conclusion was that a new and more equitable Social Contract was needed.
Political theory
Perhaps Jean Jacques Rousseau's most important work is
The Social Contract, which outlines the basis for a legitimate political order within a framework of
classical republicanismClassical republicanism is a form of republicanism originating from and inspired by the governmental forms and writings of classical antiquity...
. Published in 1762, it became one of the most influential works of political philosophy in the Western tradition. It developed some of the ideas mentioned in an earlier work, the article
Economie Politique (
Discourse on Political Economy), featured in Diderot's
EncyclopédieEncyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers was a general encyclopedia published in France between 1751 and 1772, with later supplements and revisions in 1772, 1777 and 1780 and numerous foreign editions and later derivatives.Its introduction, the Preliminary...
. The treatise begins with the dramatic opening lines, "Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains. One man thinks himself the master of others, but remains more of a slave than they."
Rousseau claimed that the state of nature was a primitive condition without law or morality, which human beings left for the benefits and necessity of cooperation. As society developed, division of labor and private property required the human race to adopt institutions of law. In the degenerate phase of society, man is prone to be in frequent competition with his fellow men while at the same time becoming increasingly dependent on them. This double pressure threatens both his survival and his freedom. According to Rousseau, by joining together into civil society through the social contract and abandoning their claims of natural right, individuals can both preserve themselves and remain free. This is because submission to the authority of the general will of the people as a whole guarantees individuals against being subordinated to the wills of others and also ensures that they obey themselves because they are, collectively, the authors of the law.
Although Rousseau argues that
sovereigntySovereignty is the quality of having supreme, independent authority over a territory. It can be found in a power to rule and make law that rests on a political fact for which no purely legal explanation can be provided...
(or the power to make the laws) should be in the hands of the people, he also makes a sharp distinction between the sovereign and the government. The government is composed of magistrates, charged with implementing and enforcing the general will. The "sovereign" is the rule of law, ideally decided on by direct democracy in an assembly. Under a monarchy, however, the real sovereign is still the law. Rousseau was opposed to the idea that the people should exercise sovereignty via a representative assembly. The kind of republican government of which Rousseau approved was that of the city state, of which Geneva, was a model, or would have been, if renewed on Rousseau's principles. France could not meet Rousseau's criterion of an ideal state because it was too big. Much subsequent controversy about Rousseau's work has hinged on disagreements concerning his claims that citizens constrained to obey the general will are thereby rendered free:
The notion of the general will is wholly central to Rousseau's theory of political legitimacy ... It is, however, an unfortunately obscure and controversial notion. Some commentators see it as no more than the dictatorship of the proletariat or the tyranny of the urban poor (such as may perhaps be seen in the French Revolution). Such was not Rousseau's meaning. This is clear from the Discourse on Political Economy, where Rousseau emphasizes that the general will exists to protect individuals against the mass, not to require them to be sacrificed to it. He is, of course, sharply aware that men have selfish and sectional interests which will lead them to try to oppress others. It is for this reason that loyalty to the good of all alike must be a supreme (although not exclusive) commitment by everyone, not only if a truly general will is to be heeded but also if it is to be formulated successfully in the first place".
Education and Child Rearing
Rousseau’s philosophy of education is not concerned with particular techniques of imparting information and concepts, but rather with developing the pupil’s character and moral sense, so that he may learn to practice self-mastery and remain virtuous even in the unnatural and imperfect society in which will have to live. The hypothetical boy, Émile, is to be raised in the countryside, which, Rousseau believes, is a more natural and healthy environment than the city, under the guardianship of a tutor who will guide him through various learning experiences arranged by the tutor. Today we would call this the disciplinary method of "logical consequences", since like modern psychologists, Rousseau felt that children learn right and wrong through experiencing the consequences of their acts rather than through physical punishment. The tutor will make sure than no harm results to Émile through his learning experiences.
Rousseau was one of the first to advocate developmentally appropriate education; and his description of the stages of child development mirrors his conception of the evolution of culture. He divides childhood into stages: the first is to the age of about 12, when children are guided by their emotions and impulses. During the second stage, from 12 to about 16, reason starts to develop; and finally the third stage, from the age of 16 onwards, when the child develops into an adult. Rousseau recommends that the young adult should learn a manual skill such as carpentry, which requires creativity and thought, will keep him out of trouble, and will supply a fallback means of making a living in the event of a change of fortune. (The most illustrious aristocratic youth to have been educated this way may have been Louis XVI, whose parents had him learn the skill of locksmithing, though he was beheaded before he had a chance to use it.) The sixteen-year old is also ready to have a companion of the opposite sex.
Although his ideas foreshadowed modern ones in many ways, in one way they do not: Rousseau was a believer in the moral superiority of the patriarchal family on the antique Roman model. Sophie, the young woman Émile is destined to marry, as a representative of ideal womanhood, is educated to be governed by her husband while Émile, as representative of the ideal man, is educated to be self-governing. This is not an accidental feature of Rousseau's educational and political philosophy; it is essential to his account of the distinction between private, personal relations and the public world of political relations. The private sphere as Rousseau imagines it depends on the subordination of women, in order for both it and the public political sphere (upon which it depends) to function as Rousseau imagines it could and should. Rousseau anticipated the modern idea of the bourgeois nuclear family, with the mother at home taking responsibility for the household and for childcare and early education.
Feminists, beginning in the late eighteenth century with
Mary WollstonecraftMary Wollstonecraft was an eighteenth-century British writer, philosopher, and feminist. During her brief career, she wrote novels, treatises, a travel narrative, a history of the French Revolution, a conduct book, and a children's book...
in 1792 have criticized Rousseau for his confinement of women to the domestic sphere—unless women were
domesticatedDomestication or taming is the process whereby a population of animals or plants, through a process of selection, becomes accustomed to human provision and control. A defining characteristic of domestication is artificial selection by humans...
and constrained by modesty and shame, he feared "men would be tyrannized by women... For, given the ease with which women arouse men's senses... men would finally be their victims...." His contemporaries saw it differently.
Rousseau made a point on insisting that mothers should breastfeed their children instead of consigning them to wet nurses, and mothers listened. ’We all said it,’ the great naturalist Buffon remarked, ‘but M. Rousseau alone commanded it and made himself obeyed.’ Long after his death, women held him in high esteem on this score. MarmontelJean-François Marmontel was a French historian and writer, a member of the Encyclopediste movement.-Biography:He was born of poor parents at Bort-les-Orgues, in Corrèze...
describes a near disaster his infant son suffered when given to a wet nurse who starved him, and said that his wife could never accept his constant denigration of Rousseau; she felt infinite gratitude for his persuading women to nurse their infants, and for taking care to make the first stage of life happy. "One must forgive something," she said, "in one who has taught us to be mothers."
Rousseau's detractors have blamed him for everything they do not like in what they call modern "child-centered" education. John Darling's 1994 book
Child-Centered Education and its Critics argues that the history of modern
educational theoryPedagogy is the study of being a teacher. The term generally refers to strategies of instruction, or a style of instruction.Pedagogy is also sometimes referred to as the correct use of teaching strategies . For example, Paulo Freire referred to his method of teaching adults as "critical pedagogy"...
is a series of footnotes to Rousseau, a development he regards as bad. Good or bad, the theories of educators such as Rousseau's near contemporaries
PestalozziThis name could refer to a number of different people and organizations:* Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi * Hans A. Pestalozzi Schools with that name:* Colegio Pestalozzi, Argentina* Pestalozzi-Gymnasium Biberach, Germany...
,
Mme de Genliss, and later,
Maria MontessoriMaria Montessori was an Italian physician, educator, philosopher, humanitarian and devout Catholic; she is best known for her philosophy and the Montessori method of education of children from birth to adolescence...
, and
Dewey- Persons with the surname Dewey :* A. Peter Dewey, , first American victim of Vietnam war* Charles Melville Dewey, , American landscape painter* Chester Dewey, , American scientist...
, which have directly influenced modern educational practices do have significant points in common with those of Rousseau.
Religion
Having converted to Roman Catholicism early in life and returned to the austere
CalvinismCalvinism is a theological system and an approach to the Christian life...
of his native Geneva as part of his period of moral reform, Rousseau maintained a profession of that religious philosophy and of Jean Calvin as a modern lawgiver throughout the remainder of his life.
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/510932/Jean-Jacques-Rousseau/23965/Major-works-of-political-philosophy His views on religion presented in his works of philosophy, however, may strike some as discordant with the doctrines of both Catholicism and Calvinism.
At the time, however, Rousseau's strong endorsement of religious toleration, as expounded by the Savoyard vicar in
ÉmileEmile, or On Education was considered by Jean-Jacques Rousseau to be the “best and most important of all my writings”. On its first appearance in 1762 it was publicly burned....
, was interpreted as advocating
indifferentismIn the Catholic Church, indifferentism is a condemned heresy that holds that one religion is as good as another, and that all religions are equally valid paths to salvation...
, a heresy, and led to the condemnation of the book in both Calvinist
GenevaGeneva, is the second-most-populous city in Switzerland and is the most populous city of Romandie...
and Catholic Paris. His assertion in the
Social ContractThe Social Contract, Or Principles of Political Right by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, is the book in which Rousseau theorized about the best way in which to set up a political community in the face of the problems of commercial society which he had already identified in his Discourse on Inequality .THE...
that true followers of
JesusJesus of Nazareth —also known as Jesus Christ or occasionally Jesus the Christ—is the central figure of Christianity. Within most Christian denominations...
would not make good citizens may have been another reason for Rousseau's condemnation in Geneva.
Although, unlike many of the more radical Enlightenment philosophers, Rousseau affirmed the necessity of religion, he repudiated the doctrine of
original sinOriginal sin is, according to a doctrine proposed in Christian theology, humanity's state of sin resulting from the Fall of Man. This condition has been characterized in many ways, ranging from something as insignificant as a slight deficiency, or a tendency toward sin yet without collective guilt,...
, which plays so large a part in Calvinism (in
Émile, Rousseau writes "there is no original perversity in the human heart").
In the eighteenth century, many deists viewed God merely an abstract and impersonal creator of the universe, which they likened to a giant machine. Rousseau's deism differed from the usual kind in its intense emotionality. He saw the presence of God in His creation, including mankind, which, apart from the harmful influence of society, is good, because God is good. Rousseau's acceptance of the argument of intelligent design and his explicit attribution of a spiritual value to the beauty of nature anticipates the attitudes of nineteenth-century
RomanticismRomanticism is a complex artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Western Europe, and gained strength during the Industrial Revolution...
towards nature and religion.
Rousseau was upset that his deistic views were so forcefully condemned, while those of the more frankly atheistic
philosophes were ignored. He defended himself against critics of his religious views in his "Letter to
Christophe de BeaumontChristophe de Beaumont , French ecclesiastic and archbishop of Paris, was a cadet of the Les Adrets and Saint-Quentin branch of the illustrious Dauphin family of Beaumont....
, the Archbishop of Paris.".
Legacy
Rousseau's idea of the
volonté générale ("
general willThe general will , made famous by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, is a concept in political philosophy referring to the desire or interest of a people as a whole, or, as the U.S. constitution puts it, the "general welfare"...
") was not original with him but rather belonged to a well-established technical vocabulary of juridical and theological writings in use at the time. The phrase was used by Diderot and also by Montesquieu (and by his teacher, the Oratorian friar Malebranche). It served to designate the common interest embodied in legal tradition, as distinct from and transcending people's private and particular interests at any particular time. The concept was also an important aspect of the more radical seventeenth century republican tradition of Spinoza, from whom Rousseau differed in important respects, but not in his insistence on the importance of equality. This emphasis on equality is Rousseau's most important and consequential legacy, causing him to be both reviled and applauded:
While Rousseau's notion of the progressive moral degeneration of mankind from the moment civil society established itself diverges markedly from Spinoza's claim that human nature is always and everywhere the same . . . for both philosophers the pristine equality of the state of nature is our ultimate goal and criterion . . . in shaping the "common good", volonté générale, or Spinoza's mens una, which alone can ensure stability and political salvation. Without the supreme criterion of equality, the general will would indeed be meaningless. .. . When in the depths of the French Revolution the Jacobin clubs all over France regularly deployed Rousseau when demanding radical reforms. and especially anything -- such as land redistribution -- designed to enhance equality, they were at the same time, albeit unconsciously, invoking a radical tradition which reached back to the late seventeenth century.
The cult that grew up around Rousseau after his death, and particularly the radicalized versions of Rousseau's ideas that were adopted by Robespierre and
Saint Just during the
Reign of TerrorThe Reign of Terror , also known as the The Terror was a period of violence that occurred four years and two months after the onset of the French Revolution, incited by conflict between rival political factions, the Girondins and the Jacobins, and marked by mass executions of "enemies of the...
, caused him to become identified with the most extreme aspects of the
French RevolutionThe French Revolution was a period of political and social upheaval and radical change in the history of France, during which the French governmental structure, previously an absolute monarchy with feudal privileges for the aristocracy and Catholic clergy, underwent radical change to forms based...
. The revolutionaries were also inspired by Rousseau to introduce Deism as the new official
civil religionThe intended meaning of the term civil religion often varies according to whether one is a sociologist of religion or a professional political commentator...
of France, scandalizing traditionalists:
Ceremonial and symbolic occurrences of the more radical phases of the Revolution invoked Rousseau and his core ideas. Thus the ceremony held at the site of the demolished Bastille, organized by the foremost artistic director of the Revolution, Jacques-Louis DavidJacques-Louis David was a highly influential French painter in the Neoclassical style, considered to be the preeminent painter of the era...
, in August 1793 to mark the inauguration of the new republican constitution, an event coming shortly after the final abolition of all forms of feudal privilege, featured a cantata based on Rousseau's democratic pantheistic deism as expounded in the celebrated "Profession de foi d'un vicaire savoyard" in Book four of Émile.
Opponents of the Revolution and defenders of religion, most influentially the Irish essayist
Edmund BurkeEdmund Burke PC was an Anglo-Irish statesman, author, orator, political theorist, and philosopher who, after relocating to England, served for many years in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom as a member of the Whig party. He is mainly remembered for his opposition to the French Revolution...
, therefore placed the blame for the excesses of the French Revolution directly on the revolutionaries' misplaced (as he considered it) adulation of Rousseau. Burke's "Letter to a Member of the National Assembly", published in February 1791, was a diatribe against Rousseau, whom he considered the paramount influence on French Revolution (his
ad hominem attack did not really engage with Rousseau's political writings). Burke maintained that the excesses of the Revolution were not accidents but were designed from the beginning and were rooted in Rousseau's personal vanity, arrogance, and other moral failings. He recalled Rousseau's visit to Britain in 1766, saying: "I had good opportunities of knowing his proceedings almost from day to day and he left no doubt in my mind that he entertained no principle either to influence his heart or to guide his understanding, but vanity". Conceding his gift of eloquence, Burke deplored Rousseau's lack of the good taste and finer feelings that would have been imparted by the education of a gentleman:
Taste and elegance . . . are of no mean importance in the regulation of life. A moral taste. . .infinitely abates the evils of vice. Rousseau, a writer of great force and vivacity, is totally destitute of taste in any sense of the word. Your masters [i.e., the leaders of the Revolution], who are his scholars, conceive that all refinement has an aristocratic character. The last age had exhausted all its powers in giving a grace and nobleness to our mutual appetites, and in raising them into a higher class and order than seemed justly to belong to them. Through Rousseau, your masters are resolved to destroy these aristocratic prejudices.
In America, where there was no such cult, the direct influence of Rousseau was arguably less. The American founders did share Rousseau's enthusiastic admiration for the austere virtues described by
LivyTitus Livius , known as Livy in English, was a Roman historian who wrote a monumental history of Rome and the Roman people, Ab Urbe Condita Libri, "Chapters from the Foundation of the City," covering the period from the earliest legends of Rome well before the traditional foundation in 753 BC...
and in
PlutarchPlutarch, born Plutarchos then, on his becoming a Roman citizen, Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus , c. AD 46 – 120, was a Greek historian, biographer, essayist, and Middle Platonist known primarily for his Parallel Lives and Moralia...
's portrayals the great men of ancient
SpartaSparta was a city-state in ancient Greece, situated on the River Eurotas in the southern part of the Peloponnese. From c. 650 BC it rose to become the dominant military power in the region and as such was recognized as the overall leader of the combined Greek forces during the Greco-Persian Wars...
and the
classical republicanismClassical republicanism is a form of republicanism originating from and inspired by the governmental forms and writings of classical antiquity...
of early Rome, but so did most other enlightenment figures. Rousseau’s praise of Switzerland and Corsica’s economies of isolated and self-sufficient independent homesteads, and his endorsement of a well-regulated citizen militia, such as Switzerland’s, recall the ideals of
Jeffersonian democracyJeffersonian democracy is the set of political goals that were named after Thomas Jefferson. It dominated American politics in the years 1800-1820s. It is contrasted with Jacksonian democracy, which dominated the next political era...
. To Rousseau we owe the invention of the concept of a "
civil religionThe intended meaning of the term civil religion often varies according to whether one is a sociologist of religion or a professional political commentator...
", one of whose key tenets is religious toleration. Yet despite their mutual insistence on the self evidence that "all men are created equal", their insistence that the citizens of a republic be educated at public expense, and the evident parallel between the concepts of the "general welfare" and Rousseau's "
general willThe general will , made famous by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, is a concept in political philosophy referring to the desire or interest of a people as a whole, or, as the U.S. constitution puts it, the "general welfare"...
", some scholars maintain there is little to suggest that Rousseau had that much impact on
Thomas JeffersonThomas Jefferson was the third President of the United States , the principal author of the Declaration of Independence , and one of the most influential Founding Fathers for his promotion of the ideals of republicanism in the United States...
and other founding fathers. They argue that the American constitution owes as much or more to the English
LiberalLiberalism is the belief in the importance of individual freedom. This belief is widely accepted today throughout the world, and was recognized as an important value by many philosophers throughout history...
philosopher
John LockeJohn Locke was an English physician and philosopher regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers. Considered the first of the British empiricists, he is equally important to social contract theory. His work had a great impact upon the development of epistemology and political...
's emphasis on the rights of property and to Montesquieu's theories of the
separation of powersThe separation of powers, also known as trias politica, is a model for the governance of democratic states. The model was first developed in ancient Greece and came into widespread use by the Roman Republic as part of the uncodified Constitution of the Roman Republic...
. Rousseau's writings had an indirect influence on American literature through the writings of Wordsworth and
KantKANT is a computer algebra system for mathematicians interested in algebraic number theory, performing sophisticated computations in algebraic number fields, in global function fields, and in local fields. KASH is the associated command line interface...
, whose works were important to the New England Transcendentalists
Ralph Waldo EmersonRalph Waldo Emerson was an American essayist, philosopher, and poet, best remembered for leading the Transcendentalist movement of the early 19th century. His teachings directly influenced the growing New Thought movement of the mid 1800s...
, and his disciple
Henry David ThoreauHenry David Thoreau was an American author, poet, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, historian, philosopher, and leading transcendentalist...
, as well as on such Unitarians as theologian
William Ellery ChanningDr. William Ellery Channing was the foremost Unitarian preacher in the United States in the early nineteenth century and, along with Andrews Norton, one of Unitarianism's leading theologians. He was known for his articulate and impassioned sermons and public speeches, and as a prominent thinker...
. American novelist James Fennimore Cooper's
Last of the Mohicans and other novels reflect republican and egalitarian ideals present alike in Rousseau, Tom Paine, and also in English Romantic
primitivismPrimitivism is the opinion that life was better or more moral during the early stages of mankind or among primitive peoples and has deteriorated with civilization - is a response to the perennial question of whether the development of complex civilization and technology has benefited or harmed...
Another American admirer was lexicographer
Noah WebsterNoah Webster was an American lexicographer, textbook author, spelling reformer, word enthusiast, and editor. He has been called the “Father of American Scholarship and Education.” His “Blue-Backed Speller” books were used to teach spelling and reading to five generations of American children...
.
Criticisms of Rousseau
The first to criticize Rousseau were his fellow
PhilosopheThe philosophes were a group of intellectuals of the 18th century Enlightenment.- Characterisation of philosophe :...
s, above all Voltaire. According to Jacques Barzun:
Voltaire, who had felt annoyed by the first essay [On the Arts and Sciences], was outraged the second, [Discourse on the Origin of Inequality Among Men], declaring that Rousseau wanted us to “walk on all fours” like animals and behave like savages, believing them creatures of perfection. From these interpretations, plausible but inexact, spring the clichés Noble Savage and Back to Nature.
Barzun states that, contrary to myth, Rousseau was no primitivist, for him:
The model man is the independent farmer, free of superiors and self-governing. This was cause enough for the philosophes hatred of their former friend. Rousseau’s unforgivable crime was his rejection of the graces and luxuries of civilized existence. Voltaire had sung “The superfluous, that most necessary thing." For the high bourgeois standard of living Rousseau would substitute the middling peasant’s. It was the country versus the city – an exasperating idea, that, and so was the amazing fact that every new work of Rousseau’s was a huge success, whether the subject was politics, the theater, education, religion, or a novel about love.”
Following the French Revolution, other commentators fingered a potential danger of Rousseau’s project of realizing an “antique” conception of virtue amongst the citizenry in a modern world (e.g. through education, physical exercise, a citizen militia, public holidays, and the like). Taken too far, as under the
JacobinJacobin may refer to:* Jacobin , a member of the Jacobin club, or political radical, generally* The Jacobin Club, a political club during the French Revolution* Jacobin , a breed of Domestic Pigeon...
s, such social engineering could result in tyranny.
As early as 1819, in his famous speech “On Ancient and Modern Liberty,” the political philosopher
Benjamin ConstantHenri-Benjamin Constant de Rebecque was a Swiss-born, nobleman, thinker, writer and French politician.-Biography:...
, a proponent of constitutional monarchy and representative democracy, criticized Rousseau, or rather his more radical followers (specifically the
Abbé de MablyGabriel Bonnot de Mably , sometimes known as Abbé de Mably, was a French philosopher and politician...
), for allegedly believing that "everything should give way to collective will, and that all restrictions on individual rights would be amply compensated by participation in social power.”
Common also were attacks by defenders of social hierarchy on Rousseau's "romantic" belief in equality. In 1860, shortly after the Sepoy Rebellion in India, two British white supremacists, John Crawfurd and James Hunt mounted a defense of British
imperialismImperialism, as defined by the dictionary of human geography, is “the creation and maintenance of an unequal economic, cultural and territorial relationship, usually between states and often in the form of an empire, based on domination and subordination.” Imperialism, in many ways, is described...
based on “
scientific racismScientific racism is the use of scientific or ostensibly scientific findings and methods to investigate differences between races, often to support or validate racist attitudes and worldviews. It is based on belief in the existence and significance of racial categories, typically with a hierarchy...
". Crawfurd, in alliance with Hunt, took over the presidency of the British Anthropological Society, which had been founded with the mission to defend indigenous peoples against slavery and colonial exploitation. Invoking "science" and "realism", the two men derided their "philanthropic" predecessors for believing in human equality and for not recognizing the that mankind was divided into superior and inferior races. Crawfurd, who opposed Darwinian evolution, "denied any unity to mankind, insisting on immutable, hereditary, and timeless differences in racial character, principal amongst which was the 'very great' difference in 'intellectual capacity.'" For Crawfurd, the races had been created separately and were different species. Since Crawfurd was Scots, he thought the Scots "race" superior and all others inferior; whilst Hunt, on the other hand, believed in the supremacy of the Anglo-Saxon "race". Crawfurd and Hunt routinely accused those who disagreed with them of believing in "Rousseau’s Noble Savage". (The pair ultimately quarreled because Hunt believed in slavery and Crawfurd did not). "As Ter Ellinson demonstrates, Crawfurd was responsible for re-introducing the Pre-Rousseauian concept of 'the Noble Savage' to modern anthropology, attributing it wrongly and quite deliberately to Rousseau.”
In 1919
Irving BabbittIrving Babbitt was an American academic and literary critic, noted for his founding role in a movement that became known as the New Humanism, a significant influence on literary discussion and conservative thought in the period between 1910 to 1930...
, founder of a movement called the "
New HumanismNew Humanism or neohumanism were terms applied to a theory of literary criticism, together with its consequences for culture and political thought, developed around 1900 by the American scholar Irving Babbitt, and the scholar and journalist Paul Elmer More...
", wrote a critique of what he called "sentimental humanitarianism", for which he blamed Rousseau. Babbitt's depiction of Rousseau was countered in a celebrated and much reprinted essay by A. O. Lovejoy in 1923. In France, fascist theorist and anti-Semite
Charles Maurras__FORCETOC__ Charles-Marie-Photius Maurras was a French author, poet, and critic. He was a leader and principal thinker of Action Française, a political movement that was monarchist, anti-parliamentarist, and counter-revolutionary, and is the main intellectual influence of National Catholicism...
, founder of
Action FrançaiseThe Action Française is a French Monarchist counter-revolutionary movement and periodical founded by Maurice Pujo and Henri Vaugeois and whose principal ideologist was Charles Maurras...
, “had no compunctions in laying the blame for both
Romantisme et Révolution firmly on Rousseau in 1922."
During the Cold War, some liberals, among them
Karl PopperSir Karl Raimund Popper, CH, FRS, FBA was an Austrian and British philosopher and a professor at the London School of Economics. He is considered one of the most influential philosophers of science of the 20th century, and also wrote extensively on social and political philosophy...
, criticized Rousseau for his association with nationalism and its attendant abuses. This came to be known among scholars as the "totalitarian thesis" (the word "totalitarian" having been coined during the reign of Mussolini). An example is J. L. Talmon's,
The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy (1952). Political scientist J. S. Moloy states that “the twentieth century added Nazism and Stalinism to Jacobinism on the list of horrors for which Rousseau could be blamed. ... Rousseau was considered to have advocated just the sort of invasive tampering with human nature which the totalitarian regimes of mid-century had tried to instantiate." But Moloy adds that "The totalitarian thesis in Rousseau studies has, by now, been discredited as an attribution of real historical influence.” Arthur Melzer, however, while conceding that Rousseau would not have approved of modern nationalism, observes that his theories do contain the "seeds of nationalism", insofar as they set forth the "politics of identification", which are rooted in sympathetic emotion. Melzer also believes that in admitting that people's talents are unequal, Rousseau therefore tacitly condones the tyranny of the few over the many. For Stephen T. Engel, on the other hand, Rousseau's nationalism anticipated modern theories of "imagined communities" that transcend social and religious divisions within states.
On similar grounds, one of Rousseau's strongest critics during the second half of the twentieth century was political philosopher
Hannah ArendtHannah Arendt was an influential German-Jewish political theorist. She has often been described as a philosopher, although she refused that label on the grounds that philosophy is concerned with "man in the singular." She described herself instead as a political theorist because her work centers...
. Using Rousseau's thought as an example, Arendt identified the notion of
sovereigntySovereignty is the quality of having supreme, independent authority over a territory. It can be found in a power to rule and make law that rests on a political fact for which no purely legal explanation can be provided...
with that of the general will. According to her, it was this desire to establish a single, unified will based on the stifling of opinion in favor of public passion that contributed to the excesses of the
French RevolutionThe French Revolution was a period of political and social upheaval and radical change in the history of France, during which the French governmental structure, previously an absolute monarchy with feudal privileges for the aristocracy and Catholic clergy, underwent radical change to forms based...
.
See also
- Age of Enlightenment
The Age of Enlightenment, or simply The Enlightenment, is a term used to describe a time in Western philosophy and cultural life, centered upon the eighteenth century, in which reason was advocated as the primary source and legitimacy for authority....
- Classical republicanism
Classical republicanism is a form of republicanism originating from and inspired by the governmental forms and writings of classical antiquity...
- Civil militia
- Deism
Deism or is a religious and philosophical belief that a supreme being created the universe, and that this can be determined using reason and observation of the natural world alone, without a need for either faith or organized religion...
- Georges Hébert, a physical culturist influenced by Rousseau's teachings
- Natural rights
Some philosophers and political scientists make a distinction between natural and legal rights.Legal rights are rights conveyed by a particular polity, codified into legal statutes by some form of legislature , and as such are contingent upon local laws, customs,...
- Rousseau's educational philosophy
- Rousseau Institute
Rousseau Institute is a private school in Geneva, Switzerland. In 1912, Édouard Claparède created an institute to turn educational theory into a science...
- Social Contract
Social contract describes a broad class of theories that try to explain the ways in which people form states and/or maintain social order. The notion of the social contract implies that the people give up some rights to a government or other authority in order to receive or maintain social order...
- State of Nature
State of nature is a term in political philosophy used in social contract theories to describe the hypothetical condition of humanity before the state's foundation. In a broader sense, the state of nature is the condition before the rule of positive law comes into being, thus being a synonym of...
Major works
- Dissertation sur la musique moderne, 1736
- Discourse on the Arts and Sciences
"A Discourse on the Moral Effects of the Arts and Sciences" , more commonly known as "Discourse on the Arts and Sciences" , is an essay by Genevan philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau which argued that the arts and sciences corrupt human morality...
(Discours sur les sciences et les arts), 1750
- Narcissus, or The Self-Admirer: A Comedy, 1752
- Le Devin du Village
Le devin du village is an interméde / one-act opera by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who also wrote the libretto.It was first performed before the court at Fontainebleau on 18 October 1752. King Louis XV loved the work so much that he offered Rousseau the great honor of a life pension. Rousseau refused...
: an opera, 1752,
- Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men (Discours sur l'origine et les fondements de l'inégalité parmi les hommes), 1754
- Discourse on Political Economy, 1755
- Letter to M. D'Alembert on Spectacles
Letter to D’Alembert on the Theatre is an essay written by Jean-Jacques Rousseau in opposition to an article published in the l’Encyclopedia by Jean d’Alembert, that proposed the establishment a theatre in Geneva...
, 1758 (Lettre à d'Alembert sur les spectacles)
- Julie, or the New Heloise
Julie, or the New Heloise is an epistolary novel by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, published in 1761 by Rey . The original edition was entitled Lettres de deux amans habitans d'une petite ville au pied des Alpes .The novel’s subtitle points to the history of Heloise and Pierre Abélard, a medieval story...
(Julie, ou la nouvelle Héloïse), 1761
- Émile: or, on Education
Emile, or On Education was considered by Jean-Jacques Rousseau to be the “best and most important of all my writings”. On its first appearance in 1762 it was publicly burned....
(Émile ou de l'éducation), 1762
- The Creed of a Savoyard Priest, 1762 (in Émile)
- The Social Contract, or Principles of Political Right
The Social Contract, Or Principles of Political Right by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, is the book in which Rousseau theorized about the best way in which to set up a political community in the face of the problems of commercial society which he had already identified in his Discourse on Inequality .THE...
(Du contrat social), 1762
- Four Letters to M. de Malesherbes, 1762
- Pygmalion: a Lyric Scene
Pygmalion was a short play written in 1762 by Jean-Jacques Rousseau with music by Horace Coignet. It was first performed at the Hotel de Ville, Lyon in 1770....
, 1762
- Letters Written from the Mountain, 1764 (Lettres de la montagne)
- Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Les Confessions), 1770, published 1782
- Constitutional Project for Corsica, 1772
- Considerations on the Government of Poland
Considerations on the Government of Poland — also simply The Government of Poland or, in the original French, Considérations sur le gouvernement de Pologne — is an essay by French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau concerning the design of a new constitution for the people of Poland...
, 1772
- Essay on the Origin of Languages
"Essay on the Origin of Languages" is an essay by Jean-Jacques Rousseau published posthumously in Oeuvres completes de J.J. Rousseau compiled by Furne in 1852...
, published 1781 (Essai sur l'origine des langues)
- Reveries of a Solitary Walker
Reveries of a Solitary Walker is an unfinished book by French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, written between 1776 and 1778. It was the last of a number of works composed toward the end of his life which were deeply autobiographical in nature...
, incomplete, published 1782 (Rêveries du promeneur solitaire)
- Dialogues: Rousseau Judge of Jean-Jacques, published 1782
Editions in English
- Basic Political Writings, trans. Donald A. Cress. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1987.
- Collected Writings, ed. Roger D. Masters and Christopher Kelly, Dartmouth: University Press of New England, 1990-2005, 11 vols. (Does not as yet include Émile.)
- The Confessions, trans. Angela Scholar. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.
- Emile, or On Education, trans. with an introd. by Allan Bloom
Allan David Bloom was an American philosopher, classicist, and academic. He studied under David Grene, Leo Strauss, Richard McKeon and Alexandre Kojève...
, New York: Basic Books, 1979.
- "On the Origin of Language," trans. John H. Moran. In On the Origin of Language: Two Essays. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986.
- Reveries of a Solitary Walker, trans. Peter France. London: Penguin Books, 1980.
- 'The Discourses' and Other Early Political Writings, trans. Victor Gourevitch. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
- 'The Social Contract' and Other Later Political Writings, trans. Victor Gourevitch. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
- 'The Social Contract, trans. Maurice Cranston. Penguin: Penguin Classics Various Editions, 1968-2007.
- The Political writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, edited from the original MCS and authentic editions with introduction and notes by C.E.Vaughan, Blackwell, Oxford, 1962. (In French but the introduction and notes are in English).
Online texts
External links
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau Bibliography
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau page at Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- Rousseau Association/Association Rousseau, a bilingual association devoted to the study of Rousseau's life and works
- Edward Winter
Edward Winter is an English journalist, archivist, historian, collector and author about the game of chess. He writes a regular column on that subject, Chess Notes, and is also a regular columnist for ChessBase. Hans Ree has written, "Winter is a just but stern supervisor of chess literature...
, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Chess
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau, at the Internet edition of Encyclopedia Britannica.
- Chronology de Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Photographic chronology (in French).
- Grand Jean Jacques A French song dedicated to Jean Jacques Rousseau, based on his "origins of inequality..."