(1712-1778) philosopher
During the 18th century, a wave of intellectual activity known as the enlightenment swept over Europe, affecting such fields as philosophy, religion, science, and politics. The writers and thinkers of the age, many of whom were known as philosophes, challenged long-accepted beliefs and traditions, arguing that rationalism should be the primary tool through which people discovered the truth. Toward the end of the Enlightenment, however, the views of the philosophes would be challenged by the powerful ideas of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who turned the intellectual currents of European thought away from pure reason and toward human emotion and intuition, setting the stage for the rise of romanticism. Furthermore, the political ideas espoused by Rousseau helped spark the French Revolution and would subsequently contribute to the many revolutions that would shake Europe throughout the 19th century.
Rousseau was born in the independent Swiss city of Geneva, then an independent republic. Ten days after his birth, his mother died from complications of childbirth. He was raised by his father, a watchmaker, and other relatives. Geneva was then a Calvinist state, adhering to a strict form of Protestantism, and it was in this religious environment that Rousseau grew up. Irritated with life in Geneva, he moved to Savoy, a Catholic region, where he was taken in by Madame de Warens, an agent of the king of Savoy. Under her influence, he rejected Protestantism and converted to Catholicism.
Rousseau lived with Madame de Warens for eight years as both a friend and a lover, during which time he undertook an intense program of self-study. He studied Latin, literature, science, philosophy, and music. Surrounded by the beautiful countryside, he also developed a strong love of nature.
Rousseau worked briefly as the secretary to the French ambassador to Venice. When Madame de Warens took another lover in 1742, he moved to Paris, where he was determined to become respected and famous. He earned his wages as a copier of music, while writing his own musical compositions. Although his musical works were not particularly successful, music remained one of Rousseau’s great loves. During this time, he also became acquainted with a number of philosophes, including Denis diderot and wrote several articles on music and economics for the famous encyclopedia.
In 1749 Rousseau learned that the Academy of Dijon was sponsoring an essay competition, the question being whether or not the revival of the arts and sciences had helped or hurt the human race. He pondered this question as he walked along a country road on his way to visit Diderot, who was in prison in Vincennes at the time. During this walk, Rousseau experienced a sudden “awakening,” or awareness, which he later described in terms resembling a religious experience. He resolved to enter the contest and wrote an essay setting out his belief that the arts and sciences had, in fact, hurt the human race.
His essay, Discourse on the Arts and Sciences, won the Academie de Dijon prize after its publication in 1751 and made him famous virtually overnight. In this work, Rousseau explains his belief that the development of science—in the form of agriculture, which necessitated the need for private property and the division of labor—made humanity lose sight of its true nature and thus helped destroy individual liberty. Such loss and destruction, he reasoned, created political power based on and serving the wealthy. As for the arts, Rousseau believed that they merely distracted people from the fact that their liberty had been lost.
Rousseau argued that people should turn their backs on civilization and return to a more natural state of existence, for this was where he believed true nobility of spirit could be found. Thus, the idea of the “noble savage” was born. This idea became very fashionable among the French upper class, but it proved to be little more than a fad, as it did not allow for the luxuries to which the nobility was accustomed.
Rather than enjoying his fame, Rousseau became uncomfortable with the attention he received. He decided to practice what he preached and abandoned his life in Paris for a cottage in the countryside, where he lived with his barely literate mistress, Therese Levasseur, whom he did not marry until late in life. He later gained the patronage of the marshal-duke of Luxembourg, and during the years from 1756 to 1762 produced his three greatest and most well-known works (The Social Contract, Smile, and Julie, or the New Heloise), as well as Moral Letters (which he addressed to Sophie d’Houdetor, a former lover) and Letter to d’Alem-bert (in response to d’ALEMBERT’s Encyclopedia articles on Geneva).
In 1761 Rousseau published La Nouvelle Heloise, a love story told in the form of letters between a young woman named Julie and her tutor, St. Preux, who develop a passionate affair. Although the book was said to be based upon Rousseau’s dreams and fantasies of love, Rousseau used the tale he created in reality as a means to express his own views of morality to his European audience. The book met with great success.
A year after the publication of La Nouvelle Heloise, Rousseau published two works: Emile and The Social Contract. In Emile, Rousseau uses the tale of a young man as a device to convey his views on education, which were revolutionary at the time. Rousseau believed that natural judgment and intuition, rather than intellect, should be nurtured. Furthermore, he believed that teachers should endeavor to discover what the natural inclinations and interests of a child were and then labor to develop them within the child, rather than try to steer the child in directions society expected the child to go. The Social Contractpresents Rousseau’s ideas in the field of political theory. Both Emile and The Social Contract would prove to be powerful contributions to Western intellectual thought.
In the last years of his life, Rousseau seemed to become increasingly unstable. He broke with his friend Diderot and engaged in a long-running dispute with voltaire, who held Rousseau in contempt after he dared to criticize the theater. He also wrote Letter to Christophe de Beaumont (1763), in which he criticizes the archbishop of Paris, and Letters Written on the Mountain (1764), in which he describes his distaste for the power of the elite. Due to the unorthodox ideas presented in Emile, the French authorities ordered the book confiscated and the author arrested. Rousseau fled to Great Britain, where he received the generous help of the Scottish philosopher, David Hume. However, Rousseau proved ungrateful to Hume, accusing the Scot of plotting against him. Rousseau became increasingly paranoid, convinced that everyone was seeking to undermine or persecute him. To some extent, this was true.
During these years, Rousseau wrote the Confessions, which is perhaps the first modern autobiography. He also composed Letter on French Music (1753), Essay on the Origin of Languages (1753), Dictionary of Music (1767), two works on politics, several works on botany, and enough correspondence with friends and enemies alike to fill more than 50 volumes (which where collected and edited by R. A. Leigh in 1965). In his last years, Rousseau returned to France, finally married his longtime mistress, with whom he had five children, and later died at Ermenonville, in the home of a sympathetic friend, the marquis de Girardin. As a hero of the French Revolution, which began approximately eight years after Rousseau’s death, the author’s remains were later moved to the Pantheon in Paris, where he would lay beside such other notables as Voltaire and Mirabeau.
Critical Analysis
The Social Contract, published in 1762, is perhaps Rousseau’s most influential work. The ideas contained in the work were not wholly original, however; English philosopher John locke had discussed similar ideas a century before. But by systematizing the concept of the social contract and presenting it so that it was accessible to the public, Rousseau made a powerful contribution to the spread of the new political ideas of the 18th century.
The general concept of a social contract is fairly easy to illustrate. Rousseau, like Locke, believed that human beings once lived in a natural state, each person trying to survive on his or her own. However, for mutual benefit, people gradually united together to take advantage of the strengths of a group. This was the origin of society and civilization that allowed people to enjoy certain advantages, such as mutual protection from common enemies, and that required people to agree to follow the rules society imposed. For example, in the state of nature, there is no protection against being murdered, but in a society, rules and safeguards are put into place to try and prevent murder. The price a person pays for accepting such protection is to agree not to commit murder; thus, a social contract is formed.
In The Social Contract, Rousseau presents the idea of the General Will, the collective desire of all the members of a society. This is similar to the idea of the Volksgeist articulated by Johann herder. The idea of the General Will formed the basis for the nationalist movements that transformed Europe after Rousseau’s death. In particular, The Social Contract was regarded almost as a textbook by the activists of the French Revolution, who used it to justify their destruction of the old order.
Rousseau’s influence is difficult to overstate. He is certainly one of the most influential writers in all of Western thought. His renunciation of rationalism in favor of pure nature and the power of human emotion set the stage for the advent of Romanticism, which dominated European intellectual and cultural life throughout the 19th century. The political ideas expressed in The Social Contract set the stage for both the French Revolution and many nationalistic revolutions that followed. While some, such as Leo Tolstoy, viewed Rousseau in a positive light, others claimed the author was responsible for the destruction of society as they knew it. Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, it is fair to say that there was not a single important thinker or writer who was not, directly or indirectly, influenced by the ideas of Rousseau.
English Versions of Works by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
The Collected Writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Edited by Roger D. Masters and Christopher Kelly. Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1989.
Confessions. Translated by Patrick Coleman and edited by Angela Scholar. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.
Emile, or Treatise on Education. Translated by William H. Payne. Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 2003.
The Social Contract and The First and Second Discourses. Edited by Gita May and Susan Dunn. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2002.
Works about Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Compayre, Gabriel. Jean Jacques Rousseau and Education from Nature. La Vergne, Tenn.: University Press of the Pacific, 2002.
Friedlander, Eli. J. J. Rousseau: An Afterlife of Words. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2004.
Lange, Lynda, ed. Feminist Interpretations of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Preface by Nancy Tuana. University Park: Pennsylvania University Press, 2002.
O’Hagan, Timothy. Rousseau. London: Routledge, 2003.
Qvortrup, Mads. The Political Philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau: The Impossibility of Reason. Manchester, U.K.: Manchester University Press, 2004.
Reisert, Joseph R. Jean-Jeacques Rousseau: A Friend of Virtue. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2003.
