Writing in 1764, Immanuel Kant acknowledged his debt to Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778), whose “noble sweep of genius” had uncovered for Kant “the deeply hidden nature of man.” This debt is not surprising. Kant was only one among many who benefitted from Rousseau’s critique of culture, his commitment to freedom and the natural character of human goodness, and his respect for the new science. Flamboyant, controversial, unorthodox, complex, and brilliant, Rousseau employed his self-taught intelligence in diverse ways and for diverse purposes, from musical theory, drama, and operatic composition, to cultural criticism and political analysis. His mind wandered as he himself did, and while his heart remained bound to Geneva, his birthplace, it was as ambivalent a fidelity as that which characterized many other relationships of his life.
Born in Geneva in 1712, Rousseau had an unhappy childhood. His mother died a week after his birth, and his father, ambitious but irresponsible, was eventually forced to leave Geneva. His younger son, whom his father had educated at home, was at thirteen apprenticed to a harsh, insensitive engraver. In 1728, returning late from a country walk, Rousseau found the city gates locked and, rather than face the man’s anger, fled Geneva.
By 1742 Rousseau had become richly educated, encouraged by Madame de Warens, with whom he lived as a guest and then as a lover. In that year he moved to Paris and became secretary to the Comte de Montaigu, the French ambassador to Venice. After a bitter dispute with the ambassador in Venice, Rousseau returned to Paris and was befriended by Denis Diderot, Jean Le Rond d’Alembert, and other philosophes of the French Enlightenment. They recognized in Rousseau a rare intellect, with range and fascinating depth. He had already written a play, developed a new system of musical notation, and begun a major work on political institutions.
In 1750, ironically at the urging of Diderot, Rousseau submitted an essay for the prize of the Academy of Dijon on the question: “Has the progress of the sciences and arts contributed to the purification of morals?” In his Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts, which won the competition, Rousseau extolled those in antiquity who, like the Spartans, were strong as a result of military discipline, and he assailed moderns who were weak and effeminate because of their lack of such discipline. Furthermore, Rousseau praised the modern scientists, like Francis Bacon and Isaac Newton, who remained independent of court intrigue and corruption and were capable of employing modern science for public benefit. He developed similar themes in a political context and by means of a scientific examination of people living in primitive, natural societies in his Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, published in 1755.
This second Discourse failed to win the Dijon prize, but it did win Rousseau international fame and recognition. But not by all. By the mid-1750s Rousseau had become estranged from many of his intellectual friends, in part as a result of his vigorous attack on modern culture and the scientific spirit that supported it. At about this time, he converted back to Protestantism and returned to Geneva, only to be compelled to return to France by a dispute with Voltaire and fears of repression in Geneva. It is ironic that for all his devotion to the ideal of Geneva as a small participatory democracy, he never enjoyed life in his birthplace. In 1755 he had dedicated his Discourse on the Origin of Inequality to the sovereign citizens of Geneva, but by the 1760s he was to indict the city as an “odious and lawless despotism.”
In 1762 Rousseau published Émile, his famous account of a mode of education consonant with natural growth and conducted with respect for the child’s kinship with nature. In the same year, drawing on his long-term project on political institutions, Rousseau published On The Social Contract. In this short work, he grounded sovereignty in the freedom of the citizen and the general will that expresses the common well-being of the people. Both works generated great debate until, on June 9, 1762, the Parlemant of Paris authorized Rousseau’s arrest, and, a short time later, both books were condemned. Simultaneously, the two books were burned in Geneva and his arrest was decreed. From then until his death in 1778, Rousseau lived a fitful life, in ill health, constantly moving, and forever defending his views on the corrupting influence of culture, the purity of nature, and the centrality of freedom and equality. It was during this period that Rousseau wrote his famous autobiographical Confessions, a work which was completed by 1775 but which remained unpublished until after his death.
Recommended Readings
Cassirer, Ernst. The Question of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1963.
Chavet, John. The Social Problem in the Philosophy of Rousseau. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974.
Cranston, Maurice, and R. Peters (eds.). Hobbes and Rousseau. Garden City: Doubleday, 1972.
Gildin, Hilail. Rousseau’s Social Contract. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982.
Hendel, Charles. Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Moralist. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1936.
Masters, Roger D. The Political Philosophy of Rousseau. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968.
Okin, Susan Moller. Women in Western Political Thought. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979.
Shklar, Judith. Men and Citizens: A Study of Rousseau’s Social Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969.