JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU - BIOGRAPHY

Jean-Jacques Rousseau was born June 28, 1712 in Geneva and died July 2, 1778 in Ermenonville, France. He
was one of the most important philosophers of the French enlightenment.
He was born to Isaac Rousseau, a clock maker, and Suzanne Bernard, who tragically died only a few days after
his birth. By the year 1725, Jean-Jacques Rousseau had begun an apprenticeship as an engraver. Three years
later he left Geneva for Annecy, where he held several jobs as a teacher and secretary.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau eventually moved to Paris, in 1742. There he metDenis Diderot and served as a
contributor for his Encyclopdie, a radical magazine at the time. However, that had not been his actual intention;
Jean-Jacques Rousseau planned to become a composer. He had introduced a new system of numbered notation
(Dissertation sur la musique moderne), which he presented at the Acadmie des Sciences. Though it was
rejected, Jean-Jacques Rousseau continued to compose none the less.
The following two years, Jean-Jacques Rousseau worked for the French embassy in Venice. During this time he
gained a great interest in Italian opera and had already written an opera himself entitled, Les Muses
galantes (1742). In 1752, he then composed Le Devin du village, which earned him much praise and fame.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau was also involved philosophically and wrote his first major philosophical work in 1750.
From this work he earned a prize from the Academy of Dijon. The text, Discours sur les sciences et les arts,
begins with a question, The question before me is: 'Whether the Restoration of the arts and sciences has had
the effect of purifying or corrupting morals. This first discourse represents a radical critique of civilization.
According to Rousseau, civilization is to be seen as a history of decay instead of progress. He does not conceive
of the world as necessarily good per se, but rather argues for a sense of rationalismone must attain rational
knowledge in order to be able to control nature.
In 1754, Jean-Jacques Rousseau returned to Geneva and (re)converted to Calvinism. One year later he
published the Discours sur l'origine et les fondements de l'ingalit parmi les hommes (Discourse on the Origin
and Basis of Inequality Among Men). Infamously he writes:
The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying This is mine, and found
people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars, and
murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the
stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows: Beware of listening to this imposter; you are undone if you
once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody.
He compares the savages, who live within themselves, with social men, who live outside themselves, and
therefore, lives in and through the opinion of others. Thus, and in contrast to the first Discourse, Jean-Jacques
Rousseau here considers reason to be the root of all problems, for it is precisely through reason that people are
led to compare with each other.
In 1761, Jean-Jacques Rousseau published the novel Julie, ou la nouvelle Hlose (Julie or the New Heloise),
which turned out to be an immediate bestseller. In the following year, he finished Du Contrat Social, Principes du
droit politique (Of the Social Contract, Principles of Political Right), one of the most influential books of republican
thought. Departing with his perhaps most famous lines Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains, JeanJacques Rousseau challenges the actual law criticized in his second Discourse by proposing a form of contract
that should grant people liberty, namely To find a form of association which may defend and protect with the
whole force of the community the person and property of every associate, and by means of which each,
coalescing with all, may nevertheless obey only himself, and remain as free as before. Yet, in order to gain civil
rights, people are to abandon their natural rights. The government of this state (ideally a small city-state such as
Geneva) is to be an intermediate body established between the subjects and the sovereign for their mutual
correspondence, charged with the execution of the laws and with the maintenance of liberty both civil and
political. And it is thus subjected to the general will: Each of us puts in common his person and his whole power
under the supreme direction of the general will, and in return we receive every member as an indivisible part of
the whole.
Though Jean-Jacques Rousseau never condemned religion per se, in the Contrait he argues in favour of a civil
religion, which should support the unification of the state. After dividing religion into three forms, the religion of
man, which is personal, the religion of the citizen, which is public, and the third, including Christianity, which he
criticizes, has two competing systems of laws, namely state and religion. He then continues to outline the
dogmas of civil religion, which ought to be few, simple, and exactly worded, without explanation or
commentary. The existence of a mighty, intelligent and beneficent Divinity, possessed of foresight and
providence, the life to come, the happiness of the just, the punishment of the wicked, the sanctity of the social
contract and the laws: these are its positive dogmas. Its negative dogmas I confine to one, intolerance, which is a
part of the cults we have rejected.
Only one month after the publication of the Contrat, Rousseaus next book appeared, mile ou De
l'ducation (mile, or on education). It was again a bestseller. In compliance with his critique of civilization
(Everything is good as it leaves the hands of the author of things, everything degenerates in the hands of man),
Jean-Jacques Rousseau elaborates on the principles of how children should be raised in order to become good
citizens:
What wisdom can you find that is greater than kindness? Love childhood, indulge its sports, its pleasures, its
delightful instincts. Who has not sometimes regretted that age when laughter was ever on the lips, and when the
heart was ever at peace? Why rob these innocents of the joys which pass so quickly, of that precious gift which

they cannot abuse? Why fill with bitterness the fleeting days of early childhood, days which will no more return for
them than for you? Fathers, can you tell when death will call your children to him? Do not lay up sorrow for
yourselves by robbing them of the short span which nature has allotted to them. As soon as they are aware of the
joy of life, let them rejoice in it, go that whenever God calls them they may not die without having tasted the joy of
life.
Given their radical and innovative nature, both the Contrat and mile caused major scandals and were burned in
public. As a result, Jean-Jacques Rousseau had to flee. At first he went to the Swiss canton of Neuchtel, then,
by invitation from David Hume, he proceeded to England. Although he was still banned from France, JeanJacques Rousseau returned to the south of France in 1767 and was eventually, in 1770, allowed to settle in
Paris. By this time, he had finished his autobiography Confessions, which wasnt published until just after his
death. And with this text he pioneered again developing what has become know as the autobiographical genre: I
have entered on an enterprise which is without precedent, and will have no imitator. I propose to show my fellows
a man as nature made him, and this man shall be myself.
In 1772, Jean-Jacques Rousseau finished his last political work, Considrations sur le gouvernement de
Pologne (Considerations on the Government of Poland, published 1782). In this text he sketches out a new
constitution for Poland. Just before his death, Jean-Jacques Rousseau finished the additional autobiographical
works Rousseau, juge de Jean-Jacque; Dialogue (Dialogues: Rousseau, Judge of Jean-Jacques); and Les
Rveries du promeneur solitaire(Reveries of the Solitary Walker). He died in 1778 just as the turmoil in France
was erupting. After his death, his ideas were taken up by proponents of the Reign of Terror, but were also
employed by the later American philosophers/poets Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. Among his
most ardent critics were Voltaire and, much later, Karl Popper and Hannah Arendt.