Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Born: 1712

Died: 1778, at the age of 66

Country of origin: Switzerland (but did most of his writing in France)

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• Major Books written by Jean-Jacques Rousseau:
  
  
  • "A Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts" (1750) (his most famous essay)
    
  • "Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men" (1754)
    
  • "Emile, or Education" (1762)
    
  • "The Social Contract, Or Principles of Political Right" (1762)
    
  • "Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau" (1770)
  
  
• Cocktail summary of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's main ideas:
  
  
  Jean-Jacques Rousseau marks the beginning of the idea that modern culture is bad for you. He argued that a primitive culture is healthier and more pure than any modern culture. The idea that the trappings of modern civilization have corrupted the inherent purity of primitive mankind first appears in their modern form in the writings of Rousseau. He was the original hippie.
  
  Modern Culture - the Arts and Science - have not improved the lot of humanity, Rousseau argued, but have instead corrupted the human soul. It is in the primitive, uncultured state that mankind is the most pure and innocent, and the more exposed a person is to Art and Science the more he is corrupted. Mankind is naturally good, but civilization corrupts. Rousseau called this pure, primitive state the "Noble Savage", and all of his ideas revolve around this basic argument that Culture hinders, rather than helps, humanity.
  
  Rousseau's basic goal in all of his writings was to define the idea of Freedom. He argued that mankind's freedom is hindered by the idea of "The State". The State, Rousseau argued, is basically a conspiracy imposed by the holders of wealth and power to control the masses. He viewed the modern State as a form of spiritual imprisonment, and he saw little difference between a state ruled by an absolute monarch or a republican form of a state in which representatives supposedly legislate on behalf of the citizens. True freedom can only exist in a condition in which people form small, independent groups and directly participate in the process of Democracy, he argued.
  
  He decided that the ancient Greek idea of the City-State was the ideal compromise between the anarchy of primitive life and the requirement to form social units, and the best context in which citizens could directly participate in the Democratic process. He considered his native Geneva as the best example of a modern City-State, and he used it as a model for how the rest of the modern world should be organized. It is the City-State, he argued, with the lack of an absolute ruler, that is the best vehicle in which the so-called "General Will" can be expressed. He looked back to the ancient Greek ideal of Democracy in which every citizen could theoretically participate in all decisions, as opposed to the original idea of the Republic, with representatives elected to represent the General Will, but never fulfilling this basic expectation.
  
  Rousseau elaborated this theme to include the various trappings of modern society that supposedly hinder our freedom, such as the division of labor and the concept of private property. These were ideas that were eagerly picked up later by the French Revolution, which occurred only 11 years after his death, and also inspired the ideas of Karl Marx (although Marx rarely mentioned Rousseau by name in his writings).
  
  Rousseau's ideals were also famously expressed in the next century in the life and paintings of the artist Paul Gauguin, who believed he had found an example of the pure Noble Savage in the islands of Tahiti. In this regard, Rousseau is sometimes seen as a forerunner of the modern idea of the "Bohemian". Due to his criticism of Private Property, he is also sometimes seen as a forerunner of Communism. But since he also argued for the right of the State to be led by an absolute ruler in times of crisis, in which popular Democracy could be temporarily suspended, he is sometimes seen as a defender of Totalitarianism. So he is often criticized from both sides of the political fence.
  
  Rousseau also argued that Education in his day was too obsessed with rote memorization and vocational training, at the expense of true learning. Since primitive man, and therefore children, were by nature good and altruistic and without vice, it was exposure to modern "civilized" education that corrupted all youth. He argued for a more experience-focused form of education in which children went on more field-trips, with more hands-on teaching, and letting them set their own pace in learning. These ideas were met with disapproval by the Education establishment, and many pointed to the fact that Rousseau did not practice his own ideals, since he had placed all 5 of his own children in an orphanage. But his ideas were the basis for many subsequent liberalizations of educational practice.
  
  Rousseau is often viewed as sitting on the fence between the end of the Age of Reason and the beginning of the Romantic era. He made a lot of intellectual arguments by appealing to emotional issues, stressing the importance of "the heart" and the importance of emotional engagement and sentiment in even the most abstract intellectual issues. He was often criticized for this, being accused of easy sentimentality - sort of Hallmark Card Philosopher - but he ignored these criticisms and never stopped appealing to the power of emotion when answering intellectual questions.
  
  
  
• Jean-Jacques Rousseau praised & criticized:
  
  
  • Jean-Jacques Rousseau was perhaps the least academic of any modern Philosopher. He was a Romantic at heart, and calling him a Philosopher isn't a reflection of his education but more an emphasis on the uniqueness of his ideas. His lack of formal education and academic focus is sometimes a target of criticism, since Philosophy is usually associated with a more rigorous, academic discipline. His use of romanticized, emotional language has often been a target for arguments against his lack of intellectual rigor, but it was this personal passion towards his ideas that inspired his followers, particularly the early leaders of the French Revolution.
    
    Rousseau was also criticized, very publicly by Voltaire, for hypocrisy regarding his views on education. Despite his lengthy writings on the ideal ways in which children should be reared and educated, he abandoned all 5 of his own children to an orphanage, choosing to not have any role in their lives. His argument that he wouldn't be a good parent was seen as a weak excuse by his contemporaries. His later paranoia contributed to his reputation as an unstable figure, but his ideas about the nature of Freedom took on a life of their own, inspiring many revolutionaries in the centuries after his death, who were more interested in his basic themes than the details of his life.
    
    
  
  
• Notable Facts about Jean-Jacques Rousseau:
  
  
  • Religious affiliation:
    Rousseau felt a strong inclination towards religious worship throughout his life, particularly in the context of Nature and the purity of primitive man's view of the universe. He emphasized the importance of personal conscience, which he called the "divine voice of the soul in man", in determining moral action and religious doctrine, which didn't sit well with the established religious Establishment of his day. He was not critical of Christianity per-se, but he was critical of the contemporary religious Establishment at the expense of personal religious expression.
    
    Rousseau switched Christian denominations twice. Since he was born in Geneva he was baptized as a Calvinist, but when he moved to France at the age of 16 he converted to Catholicism, under the "tutelage" of his elder patroness Baron de Warens (with whom he was romantically involved). He remained a Catholic until 1754 when he returned to Geneva and converted back to his Calvinist roots, at the age of 42.
    
    He argued for the necessity of religion as the foundation of society, saying that "no state has ever been founded without religion at its base." Yet he did not support the separation of Church and State. He felt that the idea of maintaining 2 separate entities - where one maintains moral sensibilities and the other maintains civil duty - could only end up in chaos and was a bad idea. He argued for a compromise between independent, organized religion and a purely privatized faith. He argued for the inclusion of a basic set of religious doctrines that supported a commonly agreed-upon social conscience. He argued that this should focus on morality and duty, without requiring citizens to sign on to too many doctrinal specifics.
    
    
  • Rousseau was associated with the so-called "Philosophes" in France, the group of intellectuals led by Denis Diderot who were basically a think-tank of the Age of Reason. Many famous celebrity-Philosophers of the period were card-carrying members, like Voltaire, Georges-Louis Leclerc de Buffon, and Étienne Bonnot de Condillac, and their most famous project was their attempt to condense all of human knowledge into a format consistent with the new values of Reason, Scientific Determinism, "Free-Thinking", and Tolerance. The final result, which they called simply "The Encyclopédie", was completed in 1780 in a mere 35 volumes. Rousseau contributed articles on Music, which was a hobby of his. The project was an on-going one, continuing for about 90 years, with the final volume of the Encyclopédie (the 166th volume) being published in 1832, long after the deaths of the original Philosophes.
    
    Rousseau eventually fell out of favor with the Philosophes, who had written an article on his native Geneva for the Encyclopédie, which was critical of the Calvinist religious leaders there and recommending that a theater be built in the city to help alleviate their social ills. Rousseau, miffed at the rebuke of his favorite city, responded with another article defending the Calvinism of Geneva and arguing that the Theater would only corrupt the pure Genevans, and thus ended his career as a Philosophe.
    
    The Encyclopédie project was famous for the many people who it irked. Since its tone was generally anti-Establishment and anti-privilege, most of the upper-classes and the religious authorities naturally opposed it, and it survived several attempts at banning it, imprisoning some of its leaders, including its main editor Denis Diderot, and censorship. But it eventually saw the light of day.
    
    
  • Like all great Philosophers, Rousseau came upon his unique ideas in a blinding flash of inspiration. In 1749, when he was 37 years old, Rousseau was walking to the town of Vincennes one day to visit his fellow-Philosophe Denis Diderot, who was in prison for criticizing the religious authorities. While walking, Rousseau suddenly came to the decision that the entire history of human Art and Science had been a history of decay, not growth. He was hit by a flash of inspiration that humanity was at its most purest in the "Noble Savage" condition, not in the condition of the cultured suburbanite. All of his subsequent writings would expand on this basic theme.
    
    
  • Rousseau was a musician as well as a Philosopher, and he composed one successful Opera in his career, "Le Devin du village". He also created a new system of musical-notation which he submitted to the Academy of Sciences for approval, but his idea was rejected.
    
    In 1752 Rousseau became involved in a famous public debate over music theory. It dealt with the question of which musical element was of greater importance: melody or harmony. Rousseau argued that melody was of prime importance in creating music, and his main public opponent, Jean-Philippe Rameau, argued that it was harmony that was of prime importance. All of France was abuzz with the question, with many melody-vs-harmony arguments taking place in cafes over cappuccinos banged on tables and croissants tossed in the heat of argument.
    
    The debate took on tabloid proportions, since Rousseau was a mere 40-year-old music amateur with no formal musical education, while Rameau was a 70-year-old professional with many musical successes in his long career and many published books on music theory. The 2 positions were couched in the context of Italian operas versus French operas: the music in Italian operas tended to be heavy on melody, so Rousseau preferred them, and the music in French operas tended to be heavy on harmony, so Rameau preferred them.
    
    The debate also reflected the contemporary controversies regarding tradition versus liberal, anti-authority ideas at the time. Since Rousseau believed in the ideals of personal freedom against inherited traditions, he applied this ideal to music and argued for the priority of free expression of the individual creative instinct - arguing for the individual instrument to express its own inspiration (Rousseau would probably have loved Jazz) - and portrayed it as a struggle for freedom against the stifling tradition represented by the strict adherence to rules and musical traditions of the orchestra as a whole.
    
    Rameau represented the traditional approach to both society and music, and argued that it was rules and tradition that formed the foundation of both music and society and which gives shape and form to the overall musical creation, which is a collective effort, requiring cooperation of all musicians in the interest of the overall creative result. Humans and musicians, Rameau argued, are by nature in a state of chaos and conflict, and must have order imposed on them, like a shepherd keeping watch over his flock. But Rousseau argued that humans and musicians are by nature altruistic and have no need for a shepherd, since the collective application of creative freedom will naturally create a collective state of cohesion. (Does Modern Jazz reflect Communist idealism?)
    
    In the end, Rousseau was declared the unofficial winner, in both music and eventually in his social ideas. But the experience drained him, and he subsequently abandoned music as a hobby and focused instead on the creative discipline of Philosophy.
    
    
  • While Rousseau had liaisons with several upper-class women throughout the years, he maintained a long relationship with a woman named Thérèse Levasseur, a semi-literate laundry-maid that he met in ####. She served as something of a life-long project for Rousseau, since he tried to educate her in his image, a project which she never apparently went along with. He married her when he was 56 years old, after spending ## years with her. During that time she bore him 5 children which, despite all of his progressive ideas about education, he placed in an orphanage. Apparently Rousseau preferred to write about child-rearing rather than actually practicing it, defending the abandonment of his children by saying his lifestyle was ill-suited to giving his children an ideal upbringing. Presumably he held his life-style in a higher priority than accommodating his own children's existence...
    
    
  • Rousseau was not known for his easy-going personality. As he grew older he grew increasingly paranoid, and was eventually banished from the Swiss Canton of Bern due to his anti-Establishment ideas. He fled to England and took up residency with his fellow-Philosopher friend David Hume in London. Hume managed to convince King George III to offer his friend a life-long pension, due to Rousseau's fame. But Rousseau became convinced that there was a vast conspiracy against him and that even his friend Hume was involved. He refused the pension, left the country, and went back to Switzerland. His paranoia only grew worse, and each passing year saw him alienating more and more of his friends.
    
    
  • Jean-Jacques Rousseau died of a brain-hemmorage while taking a walk on the estate of one his last remaining friends, the Marquis de Giradin in France. He is buried in the Pantheon in Paris, in an elaborate tomb built by the leaders of the French Revolution, who looked to him as one of their idealogical leaders. Though Geneva was not fond of its famous son, a statue of Rousseau was erected on the shore of Lake Geneva 56 years later, in 1834, on the small "Ile Rousseau" on the shore of Lake Geneva, near the main Geneva train-station.
    
    
    
• Quotes:
  
  
  • "Man is born free but everywhere he is in chains."
    
    
  • "So now I am alone in the world, with no brother, neighbour or friend, nor any company left me but my own. The most sociable and loving of men has with unanimous accord been cast out by all the rest." (Written towards the end of his life, reflecting on the result of his having alienated most of his friends.)
    
    
  • "Although modesty is natural to man, it is not natural to children. Modesty only begins with the knowledge of evil."
    
    
  • "Childhood is the sleep of reason."
    
    
  • "Whoever blushes is already guilty. True innocence is ashamed of nothing."
    
    
  • "Insults are the arguments employed by those who are in the wrong."
    
    
  • "Slaves loose everything in their chains, even the desire to escaping from them."
    
    
  • "I may not be better than other people, but at least I'm different."
    
    
  • "A feeble body weakens the mind."
    
    
  • "It is too difficult to think nobly when one thinks only of earning a living".
    
    
  • "I prefer liberty with danger than peace with slavery."
    
    
  • "People who know little are usually great talkers, while men who know much say little."
    
    
  • "Happiness is a good bank account, a good cook, and a good digestion."
    
    
  • "The person who has lived the most is not the one who has lived the longest, but the one with the richest experiences."
    
    
  • "Conscience is the voice of the soul. The passions are the voice of the body."
    
    
  • "Plant and your spouse plants with you; weed and you weed alone."
    
    
  • "A man says what he knows, a woman says what will please."
    
    
  • "Provided a man is not mad, he can be cured of every folly but vanity."
    
    
  • "It is unnatural for a majority to rule, for a majority can seldom be organized and united for specific action, and a minority can."
    
    
  • "The English are predisposed to pride, the French to vanity."
    
    
    
  
  
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