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 French,
Swiss-born writer and philosopher, one of the dominant thinkers
of the 18th century Enlightenment. Although Rousseau gained fame
as an educationist, he consigned his own children to the foundling
hospital. He also was almost certifiably paranoid, and a hopelessly
unsociable human being.
"The first man who, having fenced in a piece of land, said,
"This is mine," and found people naïve enough to believe him,
that man was the true founder of civil society."
(from Discours sur l'Origine et le Fondement de l'Inégalité
Parmi les Hommes, 1754)
Rousseau was born in Geneva, Switzerland, into a Protestant family
of French refugees. His mother died shortly after his birth. Rousseau's
father, who was a watchmaker of unstable temperament, fled from
Geneva after being involved in a brawl. An aunt and a maternal uncle
cared for the young Jean-Jacques. Rousseau received very little
regular training, and never adopted ideas of rigorous discipline.
He was sent for a while to a school in the country, kept by a retired
pastor, and was later apprenticed to an engraver (1725-28).
At the age of 16 Rousseau left Geneva to travel. The next 20 years
he spent vagabonding, studying, and adventuring. Rousseau's upbringing
had been Calvinist, but under the influence of his benefactress,
the Vaudois Madame de Warens, he became a Roman Catholic. From 1731
until 1740 Rousseau lived with or near Madame de Warens. At her
country home, Les Charmettes, near Chambery in Savoy, Rousseau began
his first serious reading and study.
After moving to Paris Rousseau earned a living via secretarial
work and musical copying. In 1741 he met Thérèse Le Vasseur, a dull
and unattractive hotel servant girl, with whom he stayed for the
rest of his life, although he never married her. They had five children
whom Rousseau consigned to Enfants-Trouvés, a foundling hospital.
This was a quite a common practice, but in The Confessions
(1782-89) Rousseau expresses his eternal and bitter regret, although
it must be remembered that the celebrated autobiography is actually
not a true account of his life.
In 1743-44 Rousseau was secretary to the French Ambassador Comte
de Montaignu to Venice, and here he first came into close contact
with political life and institutions. Back in Paris he was introduced,
through Denis Diderot, to the Encyclopaedists. His own contributions
to The Encyclopaedia were mostly on musical subjects, although
he wrote one on political economy. Rousseau's new musical notation
had been pronounced by the Academy of Sciences "neither useful nor
original," and his opera, LES MUSES GALANTES, had failed.
 At
the age of 38 Rousseau received an award from the University of
Dijon for his essay "Discours sur les sciences et les arts." The
development of the arts and sciences, he wrote, did not improve
man in habits and moral. Far from improving human behaviour, the
development had promoted inequality, idleness, and luxury.
Around 1750 Rousseau began to promulgate the romantic conception
of the noble - or innocent -savage. The theme was elaborated upon
in Rousseau's second essay, "Discours sur l'origine et les fondements
de l'inégualité parmi les hommes" (1755), where he maintained that
only the uncorrupted savage is in possession of real virtue. The
most famous adaptation of the idea in literature is Edgar Rice Burroughs's
invincible hero, Tarzan.
In Rousseau the feeling of 'discomfort with culture', which so
many generations before him had felt, became conscious for the first
time. The cultured man is degenerate, Rousseau thought, and the
whole history of civilization a betrayal. Rousseau's naturalism
was in contrast to all that his contemporary Voltaire considered
the quintessence of civilization. Embracing his own thesis, Rousseau
decided to "reform" and live a simple life. In 1754 he returned
to Geneva, reverted to Protestantism, and regained his citizenship.
In 1756 Rousseau moved to a cottage near the forest of Montmorency.
"With Rousseau the wider classes of society, the petty bourgeoisie
and the undifferentiated mass of the poor, the oppressed and the
outlawed, found expression for the first time in literature...
Rousseau is the first to speak as one of the common people, and
to speak for himself when he is speaking for the people; the first
to induce others to rebellion, because he is a rebel himself."
(Arnold Hauser in The Social History of Art, vol. 3, 1962)
During the next six years Rousseau wrote The New Heloise
(1761), Émile (1762), a treatise on education, Bildungsroman
about the ideal education of the innocent child, and The Social
Contract (1762), which begins with the opening declaration,
"Man is born free, yet everywhere he is in chains." Its catchphrase
'Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité', inspired the French Revolution.
Rousseau argues that man ought to welcome such chains. Only by surrendering
to the general will, can an individual find his fullest freedom.
Rousseau believed that the general will, directed as it is towards
the common good, is always right. The citizens of a united community
exchange their natural liberty for something better, moral liberty.
In this theory political society is seen as involving the total
voluntary subjection of every individual to the collective general
will; this being both the sole source of legitimate sovereignty
and something that cannot but be directed towards common good.
Rousseau's JULIE; OU, LA NOUVELLE HÉLOÏSE (1761) was an 18th-century
best seller. It was born of the aging author's dream of finding
a perfect love with a kindred soul. The story depicts the passionate
love of the tutor Saint Preux and his pupil Julie, their separation,
and Julie's marriage to Baron Wolmar. The theme of sexual passion
is in the end transformed into an account of a social utopia on
the Baron's country estate.
Èmile paved the way for modern liberal educational experiments.
It stated that experience should come not from books but from life.
Rousseau's theory of education rests on two assumptions: that man
is by nature good and that society and civilization corrupt the
native goodness. Only through proper education in youth could the
"natural man" come to being. Children should be kept from books
until the age of 12 and youth should be taught "natural religion"
only. Girls were to be trained solely as wives and mothers.
 After
its publication, Èmile was banned both in France and Switzerland.
The French parliament ordered the book to be burned, and in 1762
Rousseau was condemned for religious unorthodoxy. He fled to Switzerland,
first to Neuchâtel (1762-65), then to Bienne (1765). When the government
of Berne ordered Rousseau out of its territory, he visited England.
Rousseau's misanthropy and growing persecution mania led to quarrels
with his new friends, among them David Hume, and he went to France,
where he lived for a time in disguise. In 1768 he married Thérèse,
and in 1770 he was officially permitted to return to Paris.
"I have entered on an enterprise which is without precedent,
and will have no imitator. I purpose to show my fellows a man
as nature made him, and this man shall be myself."
(from Les Confessions, 1781-1788)
Rousseau's later works include The Confessions, the first
"romantic" autobiography, which initiated the subsequent mania for
self-observation and subjectivism, Rousseau Judge of Jean-Jacques,
and the Reveries, also an example of self-analysis. In 1778
Rousseau moved to Ermenonville. He died of apoplexy on July 2, 1778.
Rousseau's remains were placed with Voltaire's in the Panthéon in
Paris in 1794.
For further reading: Bibliography of the Writings of Jean-Jacques
Rousseau to 1800 by Jo-Ann McEachern (1989-93); Jean-Jacques Rousseau
by Maurice Cranston (1983-91); Rousseau and the Republic of Virtue
by Carol Blum (1986); Fictions of Feminine Desire by Peggy Kamuf
(1982); Rousseau et sa fortune littéraire by Raymond Trousson
(1977); Jean-Jacques Rousseau by Lester G. Crocker (1968-73, 2
vols.); Jean-Jacques Rousseau by Jean Guéhenno (1966, 2 vols.);
Rousseau: A Study of His Thought by J. Broome (1963)
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