Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712 - 1778) was a French philosopher and writer of the Age of Enlightenment. His Political Philosophy, particularly his formulation of social contract theory (or Contractarianism), strongly influenced the French Revolution and the development of Liberal, Conservative and Socialist theory.
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Introduction
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712 - 1778) was a French philosopher and writer of the Age of Enlightenment.
His Political Philosophy, particularly his formulation of social contract theory (or Contractarianism), strongly influenced the French Revolution and the development of Liberal, Conservative and Socialist theory. A brilliant, undisciplined and unconventional thinker throughout his colorful life, his views on Philosophy of Education and on religion were equally controversial but nevertheless influential.
He is considered to have invented modern autobiography and his novel "Julie, ou la nouvelle Héloïse" was one of the best-selling fictional works of the 18th Century (and was important to the development of Romanticism). He also made important contributions to music, both as a theorist and as a composer.
Life
Rousseau was born on 28 June 1712 in Geneva, Switzerland (although he spent most of his life in France, he always described himself as a citizen of Geneva). His mother, Suzanne Bernard, died just nine days after his birth from birth complications. His father, Isaac Rousseau, a failed watchmaker, abandoned him in 1722 (when he was just 10 years old) to avoid imprisonment, after which time Rousseau was cared for by an uncle who sent him to study in the village of Bosey. His only sibling, an older brother, ran away from home when Rousseau was still a child.
His childhood education consisted solely of reading the Plutarch's "Lives" and Calvinist sermons in a public garden. His youthful experiences of corporal punishment at the hands of the pastor's sister developed in later life into a predilection for masochism and exhibitionism. For several years as a youth, he was apprenticed to a notary and then to an engraver.
In 1728, at the age of 16, Rousseau left Geneva for Annecy in south-eastern France, where he met Françoise-Louise de Warens, a French Catholic baroness. She later became his lover, but she also provided him with the education of a nobleman by sending him to a good Catholic school, where Rousseau became familiar with Latin and the dramatic arts, in addition to studying Aristotle. During this time he earned money through secretarial, teaching and musical jobs.
He was secretary to the French ambassador in Venice for 11 months from 1743 to 1744, although he was forced to flee to Paris to avoid prosecution by the Venetian Senate (he often referred to the republican government of Venice in his later political work). Back in Paris, he befriended and lived with Thérèse Levasseur, a semi-literate seamstress who bore him five children all of whom were left at the Paris orphanage soon after birth.".
His 1750 "Discours sur les Sciences et les Arts" ("Discourse on the Arts and Sciences") won him first prize in an essay competition (on whether or not the development of the arts and sciences had been morally beneficial, to which Rousseau had answered in the negative) and gained him significant fame. He also continued his interest in music and his popular opera "Le Devin du Village" ("The Village Soothsayer") was performed for King Louis XV in 1752. He was outspoken in his defense of Italian music against the music of popular French composers such as Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683 - 1764). In 1754, he returned to Geneva where he re-converted to Calvinism and regained his official Genevan citizenship.
In 1755, Rousseau completed his second major work, the "Discours sur l’origine et les fondments de l’inegalite" ("Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men", usually known as the "Discourse on Inequality"), which was widely read and further solidified Rousseau’s place as a significant intellectual figure. However, it also caused him to gradually become estranged from his former friends such as Diderot and the Baron von Grimm and from benefactors such as Madame d'Epinay, although he continued to enjoy the support and patronage of one of the wealthiest nobles in France, the Duc de Luxembourg. In 1761, Rousseau published the successful romantic novel "Julie, ou la nouvelle Héloïse" ("Julie, or The New Heloise").
In 1762, he published two major books, "Du Contrat Social, Principes du droit politique" ("The Social Contract, Principles of Political Right") in April and then "Émile, ou de l’Éducation (or "Émile, or On Education") in May. The books criticized religion and were banned in France and Geneva, and Rousseau was forced to flee. He made stops in Bern, Germany and in Môtiers, Switzerland, where he enjoyed for a time the protection of Frederick the Great of Prussia and his local representative, Lord Keith. However, when his house in Môtiers was stoned in 1765, he took refuge in England with the philosopher David Hume, although he soon began to experience paranoid fantasies about plots against him involving Hume.
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