The Swiss-born philosopher and political theorist, Jean Jacques Rousseau ranks as one of the greatest figures of the French Enlightenment. Yet Jean Jacques Rousseau the man and his writings constitute a problem for anyone who wants to grasp to understand his life and work. One interpreter has called Rousseau "an irresponsible writer with a fatal gift for epigram." He has been variously called the founder of the romantic movement in literature and the intellectual father of the French Revolution, among other labels. Rousseau is a contradiction, a severe moralist who lived a dangerously "relaxed" life, a misanthrope who loved humanity.
Three major periods characterize Rousseau's life. The first (1712-1750) culminated in the succès de scandale of his Discours sur les sciences et les arts. The second (1750-1762) saw the publication of his closely related major works: La Nouvelle Héloïse (1761), L'Émile (1762), and Du contrat social (1762). The last period (1762-1778) found Rousseau an outcast, hounded from country to country, his books condemned and burned.
Rousseau was the second child of Suzanne Bernard and Isaac Rousseau, a man less wellborn than she. Jean Jacques was born on June 28, 1712, at Geneva, Switzerland. Nine days later his mother died. Trained in the piano, Rousseau developed a scheme for musical notation (1743) as Dissertation sur la musique moderne,, but his interest in music spurred him to write two operas--Les Muses galantes (1742) and Le Devin du village (1752)--and permitted him to write articles on music for Denis Diderot's Encyclopédie; the Lettre sur la musique française. Rousseau spent the years before his success with his first Discours in Paris, living from hand to mouth the life of a struggling intellectual. In March 1745 Rousseau began a liaison with Thérèse Le Vasseur, a 24-year-old maid at Rousseau's lodgings. She remained with him for the rest of his life--as mistress, housekeeper, mother of their five children, and finally, in 1768, as his wife. Not an educated woman, she nonetheless possessed the uncommon quality of being able to offer stability to a man of volatile intensity.
By 1749 he won a prize with his Discours sur les sciences et les arts and became "l'homme du jour." His famous rhetorical "attack" on civilization called forth 68 articles defending the arts and sciences. This essay sounded one of his essential themes; the arts and sciences, instead of liberating men and increasing their happiness, have for the most part shackled men further. The social order of civilized society, wrote Rousseau, introduced inequality and unhappiness. This social order rests upon private property.
Rousseau's novel La Nouvelle Héloïse (1761) attempted to portray tragedy that foolish education and arbitrary social conventions work among sensitive creatures. Rousseau's two other major treatises--L'Émile ou de l'éducation (1762) and Du contrat social (1762)--undertook the more difficult task of constructing an education and a social order that would enable men to be natural and free. The originality of the novel won it hostile reviews, but its romantic eroticism made it immensely popular with the public. It remained a best seller until the French Revolution.
The overarching spirit is best sensed in opposition to John Locke's essay on education. Locke taught that a man should be educated to the station for which he is intended. Rousseau, on the other hand, advocated one education for all. Man should be educated to be a man, not to be a doctor, lawyer, or priest. Nor is a child merely a little man; he is, rather, a developing creature, with passions and powers that vary according to his stage of development. What must be avoided at all costs is the master-slave mode of instruction. Du contrat social, attempted to spell out the social relation that a properly educated man--a free man--bears to other free men. This treatise is fired by a great passion for humanity. The liberating fervor of the work, however, is easily caught in the key notions of popular sovereignty and general will. Government is not to be confused with sovereignty of the people or with the social order that is created by the social contract. The government is an intermediary set up between the people as law followers and the people as law creators, the sovereignty. Furthermore, the government is an instrument created by the citizens through their collective action expressed in the general will. The purpose of this instrument is to serve the people.
Forced into exile and moving several times, Rousseau came under the good offices of the Scottish philosopher David Hume who invited Rousseau to settle at Wotton, Derbyshire, England, in 1766. Hume managed to obtain from George III a yearly pension for Rousseau. But Rousseau, falsely believing Hume to be in league with his Parisian and Genevan enemies, not only refused the pension but also openly broke with the philosopher. Henceforth, Rousseau's sense of persecution became ever more intense. Rousseau returned to France in June 1767. Wandering from place to place, he at last settled in 1770 in Paris. There he made a living, as he often had in the past, by copying music. By December 1770 the Confessions, was completed.
In May 1778 Rousseau accepted Marquis de Giradin's hospitality at Ermenonville near Paris. There, with Thérèse at his bedside, he died on July 2, 1778, probably from uremia. From birth he had suffered from a bladder deformation. From 1748 onward his condition had grown worse. His adoption of the Armenian mode of dress was due to the embarrassment caused by this affliction, and it is not unlikely that much of his suspicious irritability can be traced to the same malady.
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