FREE ESSAY ON JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU

JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU

Jean Jacques Rousseau was a very famous french philosopher. He wrote many popular stories
and operas during his life. He was a very smart man who was born into a disturbed
family.
Jean Jacques Rousseau was born in Geneva on June 28th, in 1712. Rousseau's mother died
while giving birth to him. His father was a very violent tempered man and he paid little
attention to Jean's training. His father would eventually desert him. The fact that his
father deserted him gave Jean a passion for reading. Rousseau developed a special
fondness for Plutarch's Lives. In 1728, when he was 16, Jean was first apprenticed to a
notary and then to a coppersmith. Rousseau couldn't stand the rigid discipline so he ran
away. After a few days of wandering, he fell in with Roman Catholic priests at Consignon
in Savoy, who turned him over to Madame de Warens at Annecy. She sent him to an
educational institution at Turin. Rousseau was charged with theft and began to wander
again. In 1730, he was at Chambery, he lived with Madame de Warens again. In her
household he spent eight years diverting himself in the enjoyment of nature, the study of
music, the reading of the English, German, and French philosophers and chemistry,
pursuing the study of mathematics and Latin, and enjoying the playhouse and opera.
Over the next few months, Jean spent his time at Venice as secretary of the French
ambassador, Comte de Montaignu. Up to this time, when he was thirty-nine, his life could
be described as subterranean. He then returned to Paris, where his opera Les Muses
Galantes failed, copied music, and was secretary of Madame Dupin. It was here that he
became a contributor to the Encyclopedie. His gifts of entertainment, reckless manner,
and boundless vanity attracted attention. In 1752, his operetta Devin du village was met
with great success. His second sensational writing assured him of fame. It was called
Discours sur l'origine et les fondements de l'inegalite parmi les hommes. In 1754, he
revisited Geneva where he received great acclamation, and called himself from then on a
"citizen of Geneva". Two years later, he retired to a cottage in the woods of
Montmorency, where in the quiet of nature he expected to spend his life. Unfortunately,
domestic troubles, his violent passion for Countess d'Houdetot, and Ms morbid mistrust
and nervous excitability, which lost him his friends, induced him to change his residence
to a chateau in the park of the duke of Luxembourg, Montmorency. From 1758-1762 is when
is famous works appeared. These works included Lettre a d'Alembert, Julie ou la nouvelle
Heloise, Du Contrat social, and Emile ou de l'education. The last-named work was ordered
to be burned by the French parliament and his arrest was ordered, but he fled to
Neuchatel, then within the jurisdiction of Prussia. Here he wrote his Lettres ecrites de
la Montagne, in which, with reference to the Geneva constitution, he advocated the
freedom of religion against the Church and police. In September of 1765, he returned to
the Isle St. Pierre in the Lake of Bienne. The government of Berne ordered him out of its
territory, and he accepted the asylum offered to him by David Hume in England. In 1767,
Rousseau fled to France because he was afraid of being prosecuted. In France he wandered
about and depended on his friends until he was permitted to return to Paris in 1770. Here
he finished the Confessions which he had begun in England, and produced many of his best
stories. He also copied notes, and studied music and botany in Paris. His dread of secret
enemies grew upon his imagination, until he was glad to accept an invitation to retire to
Ermenonville in 1778. It was here in Ermenonville where Jean Jacques Rousseau at age 66,
died. 
Rousseau reacted against the artificiality and corruption of the social customs and
institutions of the time. He was a keen thinker, and was equipped with the weapons of the
philosophical century and with an inspiring eloquence. To these qualities were added a
pronounced egotism, self-seeking, and an arrogance that led to bitter antagonism against
his revolutionary views and sensitive personality, the reaction against which resulted in
a growing misanthropy. Error and prejudice in the name of philosophy, according to him,
had stifled reason and nature, and culture, as he found it, had corrupted morals. In
Emile, he presents the ideal citizen and the means of training the child for the State in
accordance with nature, even to a sense of God. This "nature gospel" of education, as
Goethe called it, was the inspiration, beginning with Pestalozzi, of worldwide
pedagogical methods. The most admirable part in this is the creed of the vicar of Savoy,
in which, in happy phrase, Rousseau shows a true, natural susceptibility to religion and
to God, whose omnipotence and greatness are, published a new every day. Most remarkable
in this projected republic was the provision to banish aliens to the state religion and
to punish dissenters with death. The Social Contract became the textbook of the French
Revolution, and Rousseau's theories as protests bore fruit in the frenzied bloody orgies
of the Commune as well as in the rejuvenation of France and the history of the entire
Western world. 
Jean Jacques Rousseau was a very big influence on the Western world during the years that
he lived. I hope you have enjoyed reading this biography.