Jean-Jacques Rousseau was born in Geneva on June 28, 1712. His family was of French origin. Jean-Jacques, who lost his mother at birth, was first raised by his father, who made him read him adventure stories and Plutarch's Lives. Then he spent two years with his uncle Bernard, who put him up to board with the Lambercier pastor at Bossey. Then, Rousseau returned to Geneva and was apprenticed to an engraver. But one day, in order to escape a deserved punishment, he went to the priest of Confignon, a village two leagues from Geneva, and told him he wanted to convert to Catholicism. The priest sent him to Annecy Madame de Warrens, and there he began to study the catechism.
When he left Turin, Rousseau tried to earn a living, but after several misadventures, he returned to Madame de Warrens, then to his home region of Charmettes. There, he read, he looked at nature, he dreamed.
In 1740 (he was twenty-eight years old), he accepted the tutelage of M. de Mably, in Lyon. However, he failed. Later, he arrived in Paris with a few coins that he then gave to Mrs de Warrens, as well as a new system of musical notation he wants to present to the Academy of Sciences. He met Diderot and some financial supporters. He made arrangements to enter as secretary to M. de Montaigne who was leaving for the Embassy of Venice; after one year, having quarreled with his boss, he ended up back in Paris. Here Rousseau accepted a position of a secretary, Mme Dupin, wife of a farmer-general: the mundane moment of its existence. He composed music, and he seemed to cope well in society – but that would not last for long.
In 1750, Jean-Jacques suddenly revealed himself to be a paradoxical philosopher and writer of genius by publishing his Discourse on the Arts and Sciences, a topic proposed by the Academy of Dijon. His success was such that he felt compelled to put his life in accordance with his principles. He broke with the world, moved into an attic and earned his living by copying music. Then Rousseau went to Geneva, where he was received as a great man and admitted to making the new profession of Calvinism.
In 1755, Rousseau made a second speech on the origin of inequality among men, and that speech was even better known than his first. He moved to Mme d'Epinay a house located in the forest of Montmorency, the Hermitage, near the castle of the Chevrette. There, living in nature, he began three books: The Emile, the Social Contract and the New Heloise. But soon he felt persecuted by Mme d'Epinay and all those who followed her, and he left the Hermitage in December 1757.
He then settled in Montmorency, first in the village and the castle of Luxembourg Marshal. Jaen-Jacques completed the Nouvelle Heloise and the Social Contract (1761); When the Parliament took the book and ordered the arrest of the author, Rousseau left France and took refuge in Switzerland. He was seen successively at Yverdon, at Metiers, where he dressed in Armenian, in the Ile Saint-Pierre on Lake Bienne. Everywhere he went, the philosopher made enemies. In 1766 he left for England, which was the home of the philosopher David Hume. But he soon fell out with him. He returned to France, and after a few stops in Normandy, Lyon, Moquin (Dauphine), he moved back to Paris: he was living in Plâtrière the street that now bears his name, and he started to copy music. One of his admirers, Mr. Girardin, took him May 20, 1778, in his castle of Ermenonville. This is where Jean-Jacques died of a stroke on July 2, 1778. He was buried according to his wishes, on the island of Poplars in the park of the castle. In 1701, his remains were transported to the Pantheon.
The philosophy of Rousseau
Rousseau expressed his philosophical theories in all his works, but particularly in The Social Contract (1762).
Rousseau establishes that no one has the right to cede to another one’s moral and civic freedom. He, therefore, condemns all monarchical or aristocratic government. But man sacrifices his freedom for the benefit of the community: "Everyone is giving all, does give anyone; and as there is not a partner in which it acquires the same right as such, it earns the equivalent of all that is lost and more strength to keep what we have. "So we come to the design of abstract power, and absolute: the State. To measure the dangers of such a doctrine, just do not forget that the conventional Jacobinism is highly demanded of the Social Contract.
This thesis may be argued: without state and a kind of supreme power the development of the society is impossible because the survival of the mankind turns into the fight of all against all. These ideas of returning to a natural state are assumed by some scholars as groundless because they deny the whole social progress. And there has to be some kind of regulator in the community. Unfortunately the scope of these ideas leaves them just fantastic and unrealistic.
If his main goal in writing The Social Contract was to show a civil society may permit its members some freedoms, it is important to consider just what freedom means. When one has freedom in a vacuum, of course, that means that there are no constraints on one’s behavior. However, when one enters into a social contract, there are going to be infringements on that liberty. For example, if one is going to live in the vast majority of the towns and cities in the United States, one is willing to accept maximum speeds for driving their cars. In many places, one is also willing to accept a restriction on times when one may use one’s cellular phone, as it is not legal to do so while driving in many municipalities and states. Rousseau would say here that in situations like this, people surrender their total physical freedom for a civil sort of freedom, which permits the use of rational thought. The use of moral reasoning imposes a sense of right and wrong on the things that we want to do, and so we make ethical decisions on the basis of that new thinking. Rousseau indicates in The Social Contract that morality only has any sort of meaning in this sort of society. There can be discrete ethics, but morals show the intersection points between ethics and actions. When people apply ethics to their actions, the result is a set of morals.
This, then, is the essence of the social contract: citizens surrender a number of freedoms in order to live in a civil society. Of course, when the government stops living up to its end of the social contract – providing a sense of order that makes the citizens feel as though their privations under the social contract are worthwhile – then problems can ensue. One of the factors in the rise of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders in the 2016 Republican and Democratic primary campaigns is a sense that the American government is no longer listening to the plight of the common people. The idea that Wall Street has taken over the government is a growing one, and even if Hillary Clinton can get by these two candidates and win the presidency in 2016, there is a progressive movement building on both sides of the aisle that will have a lot of momentum going forward. Rousseau’s response might well be that the collective group is more important than the individuals, and the sovereign will (which he also terms the general will) is more important in his paradigm than the will of the individual. Rousseau at times refers to the sovereign as a discrete individual as well, which might sound like a totalitarian claim, but it might also be termed a socialist claim, one that points the individual toward the greater good of all. Of course, in the wrong hands, that sort of leadership could become totalitarian in a hurry (as the twentieth century demonstrated, over and over and over again).
The romanticism of Rousseau
Rousseau can be called a romantic: (1) because he made personal literature are his impressions on him is given in all his works; and (2) by the way he felt and painted nature; (3) by his religious feeling; and (4) by the excitement and color of his descriptions.
The style of Rousseau
This is not the clarity of Voltaire. Rousseau wrote in a mixed language, uneven, its syntax is often heavy and painful; his sentence feels rhetorical with an emphasis on declamation. But he did get in our literature writing that shows eloquence and is picturesque. Read aloud the personification of Fabricius, the second part of the Discourse on Inequality, the profession of faith of the Savoyard Vicar, letters to Malesherbes: what harmony, how big, how fast! Read the ride on the lake (New Heloise), the harvest in Clarens (id.), Sunrise (Émile), the voyages walk (Émile), the plan of life for a rich man (Emile), and especially Confessions, stay at Charmettes, walks in the forest of Montmorency, the description of the island Biel: how charming and what truth! What variety in color! What freshness and what sense of mystery! Rousseau has made us a soul to feel and the eyes to see (Grimsley, p. 47).
Thus, bold innovative policymaker, reformer in education, "inventor" of personal literature, where self-spreads and exasperates, deeply religious, sentimental, eloquent, picturesque, Rousseau was to have a lasting influence. Goethe was right in saying: "With Voltaire, it is the world that ends; Rousseau is the world that begins" (Grimsley, p. 49).
Works cited
Bréhier, Emile. The History Of Philosophy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963. Print.
Charvet, John. The Social Problem In The Philosophy Of Rousseau. [Cambridge, Eng.]: Cambridge University Press, 1974. Print.
Grimsley, Ronald. The Philosophy Of Rousseau. London: Oxford University Press, 1973. Print.
