Rousseau, Jean Jacques 1712-78
French political philosopher, educationist and author

Rousseau was born in Geneva, Switzerland. His mother died at his birth, and he had little early family life and no formal education. In 1728 he ran away from Geneva to Italy and Savoy, where he lived with Baronne Louise de Warens (1700-62). He was baptized a Catholic, and after an itinerant existence for a few years eventually became her lover and general factotum (1733-41). In 1741 he was supplanted, and moved to Paris where he began to thrive, making a living from secretarial work and music copying. There he began a lifelong association with an illiterate maidservant at his inn, Th�r�se le Vasseur; together they had five children, all of whom he consigned to foundling hospitals, despite his later proclamations about the innocence of childhood. He became acquainted with Voltaire and Denis Diderot, and contributed articles on music and political economy to the Encyclop�die.

In 1750 he made his name with a prize essay, Discours sur les arts et sciences (Eng trans A Discourse on the Arts and Sciences, 1752), which argued that civilization had corrupted our natural goodness and decreased our freedom; and in 1752 he triumphed with an operetta, Le Devin du village (Eng trans The Cunning Man, 1766). He was now a celebrity, and in 1754 wrote Discours sur l'origine et les fondements de l'in�galit� parmi les hommes ('Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality Among Men'), in which he attacked private property and argued that man's perfect nature was corrupted by society. He travelled restlessly first to Geneva, where he was much influenced by Calvinism, back to Paris and then to Luxembourg in 1757.

In 1762 he published his masterpiece, Du contrat social (Eng trans A Treatise on the Social Contract, 1764), in which every individual is made to surrender his rights totally to the collective 'general will', which is the sole source of legitimate sovereignty and by definition represents the common good; the aberrant can then, in the sinister phrase, 'be forced to be free' in their own interests. His text, with its slogan 'Liberty, Equality, Fraternity', became the bible of the French Revolution and of progressive movements generally, though the main thesis is vulnerable to totalitarian misrepresentations.

Also in 1762 he published his theory of education in the form of a novel, �mile, ou de l'�ducation (Eng trans Emilius and Sophia; or, A New System of Education, 1762-73), a simple romance of a child reared apart from other children as an experiment. This work greatly influenced educationists such as Johann Pestalozzi and Friedrich Froebel, but so outraged the political and religious establishment that he had to escape to Switzerland. He moved to England in 1766 at the invitation of David Hume and went to live at Wootton Hall near Ashbourne in Derbyshire (1766-67), where he began writing his Les Confessions (Eng trans Confessions, 1783-91), a remarkably frank work published posthumously (1782-89).

He became mentally unstable at about this time, quarrelled with his British friends (particularly Hume), developed a persecution complex, and fled back to France in 1767. In Paris from 1770 to 1778 he completed his Confessions and other works. He declined further, became seriously insane, and died in Ermenonville. In 1794 his remains were placed alongside those of Voltaire in the Panth�on in Paris.

Bibliography: R D Masters, The Political Philosophy of Rousseau (1968); J H Broome, Rousseau: A Study of His Thought (1963).