Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712 – 1778) was obviously a French philosopher and writer of the Age of Enlightenment. Rousseau was born on June 28, 1712, in Geneva, Switzerland (although he spent most of his life in France, he generally described himself as a citizen of Geneva). His mother, Suzanne Bernard, died just 9 days after his birth due to complications from childbirth. His father, Isaac Rousseau, a failed watchmaker, abandoned him in 1722 (when he was only ten years old) to avoid imprisonment, after which time Rousseau was cared for by an uncle who sent him to investigate in the town of Bosey. . His only sibling, an older brother, ran away from home when Rousseau was still a child.
His childhood education consisted entirely of reading Plutarch’s “Lives” and Calvinist sermons in a public garden. Her youthful encounters with corporal punishment at the hands and wrists of the pastor’s daughter created in her later life a predilection for exhibitionism and masochism. For a few years, when he was young, he was an apprentice notary and then an engraver.
In 1728, at the age of 16, Rousseau left Geneva for Annecy, in southeastern France, where he met Françoise-Louise de Warens, a French Catholic baroness. She later became his mistress, though she also provided him with a nobleman’s training by sending him to a large Catholic school, where Rousseau began to familiarize himself with Latin and the dramatic arts, as well as learning Aristotle. . During this particular time, he earned cash through secretarial teaching and musical assignments.
His political philosophy, especially the formulation of his theory of interpersonal contract (or perhaps contractualism), greatly influenced the French Revolution, as well as the improvement of liberal, socialist, and conservative theory. A remarkable, unconventional and undisciplined thinker throughout his colorful life, his views on the Philosophy of Education and religion had been equally contentious but nonetheless important.
In 1762, he published two important 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 publications were critical of religion and had been banned in Geneva and France, and Rousseau was pressured to flee. He made stops in Bern, Germany, and Môtiers, Switzerland, where he briefly enjoyed 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 asked refuge in England with the philosopher David Hume, although he soon began to encounter paranoid fantasies about plots. against him regarding Others and Hume.
He returned to southeastern France, incognito and under an assumed name, in 1767. The following season, he left through a legally invalid marriage with his mistress Thérèse, and also in 1770 he was finally allowed to return to Paris. . Among the circumstances of his return was that he was not allowed to publish some books, but after finishing his “Confessions”, Rousseau began private readings in 1771. The police bought him to arrest him, as well as the “Confessions”. it was partially published in 1782, four years after his death (all of his subsequent works were published posthumously).
His last years had been spent mostly in conscious retirement, though he continued to write, including “Considerations on the Government of Poland” (“Considerations on the Government of Poland”), “Rousseau: Judge of Jean Jacques” (“Rousseau: judge of Jean Jacques”) and “Les Rêveries du promeneur solitaire” (“Reveries of the lonely walker”), supporting himself by doubling music.
Rousseau died on July 2, 1778, of a hemorrhage while taking a morning stroll through the Marquis de Giradin’s estate at Ermenonville, near Paris. 16 years later, his remains were transferred to the Pantheon in Paris (in front of people from his contemporary, Voltaire).