Jean Jacques Rousseaue

Jean-Jacques Rousseau was born in Geneva in the city of Calvin in June 28, 1712. His mother died just after giving birth to him. His father, a watchmaker raised him with the idea that Calvin was a great city like Rome or Ancient Sparta. Jean- Jacques was affected at an early age by his father who had married up into the noble class and flaunted his money and his authori

In addition to his influence on Robespierre the entire French revolution started with ideas that could have been spurred by Jean Jacques Rousseau. His main focus in The Social Contract is freedom and equality among all men. In the Social Contract Rousseau

It was on these travels in the province of Savoy in the south-western Alps where he met the wealthy benefactress Baronne De Warens. She agreed to take him into her home and employed him as her steward. Through the years that followed Rousseau was educated by Mme De Warens. He made a conversion from illiterate and unlearned to a scholar, writer, musician, and philosopher. Rousseau and Mme De Warens grew closer and eventually became lovers. Her suave and energetic lifestyle brought out the radical in Rousseau which proved necessary for him to be successful in Paris as a writer.

defined civil liberty; by equality, we should understand, not that the degrees of power and riches are to be absolutely identical for everybody; but that power shall never be great enough for violence… and that… no citizen shall ever be wealthy enough to buy another, and none poor enough to be forced to sell himself.

Possibly the most influential and accurate of all of Rousseau’s writings was Du Contrat social or The Social Contract 1762. The social contract is a political book outlining the concept of general will in which every person in society is equal and equally involved in the decisions of the government. Rousseau coins his famous quote, “Man was born free, but he is everywhere in chains”.

Rousseau underwent a personal reformation swearing off music and worldly pleasures and focusing his entire effort on literature and philosophy. For inspiration he thought back to his Calvinist upbringing and moved back to Geneva. In 1755 Rousseau finished his second discourse, Discours sur l’origine de l’inegalité or Discourse on the Origin of Inequality. In this book he outlines the history of civic society and explains the first time man started competing and becoming unequal. The first expression of primitivism is described as the moment men started putting up huts next to each other. When one man intentionally builds a nice hut to dwarf another man’s that is when people first become unequal.

In 1749 Rousseau was walking to see Diderot who was arrested for irreligious writings in a prison at Vincennes when he experienced what he would call an “illumination” . Rousseau experienced “a terrible flash” of realization about society and the condition of man. He then wrote Discours sur les Sciences et les Arts (A Discourse On The Sciences And The Arts) in 1750. It was his first important work which won a prize from the Academy of Dijon. His first discourse was not his most influential piece of work but it laid the groundwork for the rest of his books. This is where he first put into writing the idea that man was better off uncivilized and that civil society had not made life better but corrupted mankind. He didn’t once imply that man or society were bad but that they somewhere went astray together.

Rousseau was also

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