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 on 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 apprenticed to a notary and later to 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 began to be his lover, although she also gave him the training of a nobleman by sending him to a great Catholic school, where Rousseau began to become familiar 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 the interpersonal contract (or perhaps contractualism), was highly influential in the French Revolution, as well as in the improvement of liberal, socialist, and conservative theory. A remarkable thinker, unconventional and undisciplined throughout his colorful life, his views on Educational Philosophy and religion had been equally contentious but important nonetheless.
In 1762, he published two important books, “Du Contrat Social, Principes du droit politique” (“The Social Contract, Principles of Political Law”) 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 in 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 find paranoid fantasies about plots. against him regarding Others and Hume.
He returned to south-eastern France, incognito and under an assumed name, in 1767. The following season, he left via a legally invalid marriage to 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 it to arrest him, as well as the “Confessions”. it was partially published in 1782, four years after his death (all his subsequent works were published posthumously).
The last few years of his had been spent mainly in conscious retirement, although he continued to write, including “Considerations on the Government of Poland” (“Considerations on the Government of Poland”), “Rousseau: Jean Jacques Judge” (“Rousseau: Judge by Jean Jacques”) and “Les Rêveries du promeneur solitaire” (“Reveries of the Lone Walker”), supporting himself through music doubling.
Rousseau died on July 2, 1778 of a hemorrhage while taking a morning walk on the estate of the Marquis de Giradin at Ermenonville, near Paris. 16 years later, his remains were transferred to the Panthéon in Paris (in front of people from his contemporary, Voltaire).