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Jean-Jacques Rousseau | HearLore
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Jean-Jacques Rousseau was born almost dying, a fragile infant whose survival was never guaranteed, yet he would grow to become the most influential thinker of the eighteenth century. He entered the world on the 28th of June 1712 in the Republic of Geneva, a city-state that functioned as a Protestant associate of the Swiss Confederacy. His father, Isaac Rousseau, was a watchmaker who had once been a dance teacher, and his mother, Suzanne Bernard, came from an upper-class family. Tragically, his mother died of puerperal fever just nine days after his birth, an event Rousseau later described as the first of his misfortunes. The young boy and his older brother François were raised by their father and a paternal aunt named Suzanne. When Rousseau was five, his father sold the family home, moving them into a neighborhood of craftsmen where Rousseau would spend his formative years. This environment exposed him to class politics and the struggles of artisans against the privileged ruling class. Rousseau's father, an avid hunter, eventually moved away to Nyon after a legal quarrel, leaving Rousseau to be raised by his maternal uncle. At age thirteen, he was apprenticed to an engraver who beat him, and at fifteen, he ran away from Geneva, beginning a life of wandering that would shape his entire worldview.
The Village Soothsayer
At the age of twenty, Rousseau entered a complex relationship with Françoise-Louise de Warens, a noblewoman of Protestant background who was separated from her husband. She became his mentor, his lover, and the mother figure he had lost, calling him 'petit' while he called her 'maman'. Their relationship was a ménage à trois that confused Rousseau, yet he always considered de Warens the greatest love of his life. During this period, he applied himself to the study of philosophy, mathematics, and music, eventually developing a system of musical notation that he presented to the Académie des Sciences in 1742. Although the Academy rejected his system, they praised his mastery of the subject. In 1752, he wrote the words and music for his opera Le devin du village, which was performed for King Louis XV. The king was so pleased that he offered Rousseau a lifelong pension, but Rousseau turned down the honor, bringing him notoriety as the man who had refused a king's pension. This decision marked a turning point in his life, as he began to reject the comforts of society in favor of his own principles. His opera contained the duet Non, Colette n'est point trompeuse, which was later rearranged as a standalone song by Beethoven, and the gavotte in scene no. 8 is the source of the tune of the folk song Go Tell Aunt Rhody.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau was born on the 28th of June 1712 in the Republic of Geneva. He was born into a family where his mother died of puerperal fever nine days after his birth.
What major works did Jean-Jacques Rousseau publish in the 1750s?
Jean-Jacques Rousseau won the first prize of an essay competition in 1750 with his Discourse on the Arts and Sciences. He completed his second major work, the Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men, in 1755.
What happened during the dispute between Jean-Jacques Rousseau and David Hume?
Jean-Jacques Rousseau accepted an invitation from David Hume to go to England in 1766 but the relationship deteriorated into a public quarrel. The dispute involved a hoax letter published in a daily newspaper and accusations that Hume tampered with Rousseau's mail.
How did Jean-Jacques Rousseau die and when was he buried?
Jean-Jacques Rousseau died of cerebral bleeding resulting in an apoplectic stroke on the 1st of July 1778. He was buried on the 4th of July 1778 on the Île des Peupliers in a lake at Ermenonville.
What was the significance of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's book The Social Contract?
Jean-Jacques Rousseau published The Social Contract in 1762 to outline the basis for a legitimate political order within a framework of classical republicanism. The book argued that individuals could preserve themselves and remain free by submitting to the authority of the general will of the people.
In 1750, Rousseau won the first prize of an essay competition sponsored by the Académie de Dijon with his Discourse on the Arts and Sciences, which argued that the development of the arts and sciences had led to the moral degeneration of mankind. This work laid the foundation for his later ideas, including his belief that private property was the source of inequality. In 1755, he completed his second major work, the Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men, which elaborated on these arguments. Rousseau believed that in the state of nature, humans were free and equal, but the development of society, private property, and the division of labor had led to inequality and conflict. He argued that the savage lived within himself, while sociable man lived outside himself, always in the opinion of others. This psychological transformation led to the corruption of humankind, producing combinations fatal to innocence and happiness. Rousseau's ideas were highly interconnected with forms of mediation or the processes that individual humans use to interact with themselves and others while using an alternate perspective or thought process. He believed that human development was a result of the ability to choose in a way that improved their condition, but there was no guarantee that this evolution would be for the better.
The Social Contract
In 1762, Rousseau published The Social Contract, which outlined the basis for a legitimate political order within a framework of classical republicanism. The book became one of the most influential works of political philosophy in the Western tradition, developing ideas mentioned in an earlier work, the article Économie Politique. Rousseau claimed that the state of nature was a primitive condition without law or morality, which human beings left for the benefits and necessity of cooperation. He argued that by joining together into civil society through the social contract and abandoning their claims of natural right, individuals could both preserve themselves and remain free. This was because submission to the authority of the general will of the people as a whole guaranteed individuals against being subordinated to the wills of others and also ensured that they obeyed themselves because they were, collectively, the authors of the law. Although Rousseau argued that sovereignty should be in the hands of the people, he also made a sharp distinction between the sovereign and the government. The government was composed of magistrates, charged with implementing and enforcing the general will, while the sovereign was the rule of law, ideally decided on by direct democracy in an assembly. Rousseau opposed the idea that the people should exercise sovereignty via a representative assembly, approving instead the form of republican government of the city-state, for which Geneva provided a model.
The Confessions
Rousseau began writing his Confessions in 1765 to defend his reputation against hostile gossip, and he completed the work in November 1770. Although he did not wish to publish them at this time, he began to offer group readings of certain portions of the book. Between December 1770 and May 1771, Rousseau made at least four group readings of his book, with the final reading lasting seventeen hours. A witness to one of these sessions, Claude Joseph Dorat, wrote that the readings were so powerful that they moved the audience to tears. The Confessions were finally published posthumously in 1782, initiating the modern autobiography. In the book, Rousseau revealed his deepest secrets, including his decision to place his children in a foundling hospital, a decision that had been used by his critics, including Voltaire and Edmund Burke, as the basis for arguments ad hominem. He wrote that he trembled at the thought of intrusting them to a family ill brought up, to be still worse educated, and that the risk of the education of the foundling hospital was much less. The Confessions also revealed his feelings of paranoia and anxiety, as well as his belief that he was the victim of a conspiracy against him. Rousseau's friend Corancez described the appearance of certain symptoms which indicate that Rousseau started suffering from epileptic seizures after an accident involving a nobleman's carriage and a Great Dane.
The Quarrel with Hume
In 1766, Rousseau accepted an invitation from David Hume to go to England, where he was to be lodged in the house of Madam Adams. However, the relationship between the two men quickly deteriorated, leading to a public quarrel that would ruin Rousseau's reputation in England. The dispute began with a daily newspaper that published a letter constituting Horace Walpole's hoax on Rousseau, without mentioning Walpole as the actual author. Rousseau felt that Hume, as his host, ought to have defended him, and he was aggrieved to find that Hume had been lodging in London with François Tronchin, son of Rousseau's enemy in Geneva. Rousseau also became concerned that Hume might be tampering with his mail, and he denounced him to his Parisian friends. Hume, in turn, sent a copy of Rousseau's long letter to Madame de Boufflers, who replied stating that Hume's alleged participation in the composition of Horace Walpole's faux letter was the reason for Rousseau's anger. The dispute became public, and Hume's version of the quarrel was translated into French and published in France, and in November it was published in England. Grimm included it in his Correspondance littéraire, and ultimately, Walpole told Hume that quarrels such as this only end up becoming a source of amusement for Europe. Diderot took a charitable view of the mess, saying that he could write a play about them that would make you weep, and it would excuse them both.
The Solitary Walker
In the spring of 1778, the Marquis Girardin invited Rousseau to live in a cottage in his château at Ermenonville. Rousseau and Thérèse went there on the 20th of May, and he spent his time at the château in collecting botanical specimens and teaching botany to Girardin's son. He ordered books from Paris on grasses, mosses and mushrooms and made plans to complete his unfinished Emile and Sophie and Daphnis and Chloe. On the 1st of July, a visitor commented that men are wicked, to which Rousseau replied with men are wicked, yes, but man is good. In the evening there was a concert in the château in which Rousseau played on the piano his own composition of the Willow Song from Othello. On this day also, he had a hearty meal with Girardin's family. The next morning, as he was about to go teach music to Girardin's daughter, he died of cerebral bleeding resulting in an apoplectic stroke. It is now believed that repeated falls, including the accident involving the Great Dane, may have contributed to his stroke. Following his death, Grimm, Madame de Staël and others spread the false news that Rousseau had committed suicide, but all those who met him in his last days agree that he was in a serene frame of mind at this time. On the 4th of July 1778, Rousseau was buried on the Île des Peupliers, a tiny, wooded island in a lake at Ermenonville, which became a place of pilgrimage for his many admirers. On the 11th of October 1794, his remains were moved to the Panthéon, where they were placed near those of Voltaire.