Overview
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) was a Genevan-born philosopher and novelist of the French Enlightenment who unsettled its confidence in progress. Discourses on inequality and the arts, Émile, and The Social Contract made him famous and persecuted. Autobiographical Confessions remade modern self-writing. Handbook dates: 1712–1778. Relations with Voltaire, Hume, and the Encyclopedists swung between alliance and rupture.
Main ideas
Natural goodness is corrupted by social comparison, property, and amour-propre. Legitimate polity arises from the general will, not aggregate private interests. Freedom is obedience to law one prescribes as citizen. Education should protect the child’s nature before introducing social artifice. Pity and self-preservation are natural; reason alone does not found morals. Music, language, and inequality share intertwined genealogies.
Major works
- The Social Contract
- Émile
- Discourse on Inequality
- Confessions
Legacy
Rousseau shaped Revolution-era politics, romanticism, pedagogy, and critiques of civilization. Totalitarian and democratic readers fight over the general will. He remains modernity’s most eloquent critic of polish without virtue.
Themes in this archive
Quotes by theme
Jean-Jacques Rousseau on freedom · Jean-Jacques Rousseau on society