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Jean-Jacques Rousseau was born on June 28, 1712 in
Geneva, Switzerland. His mother died shortly after his birth. When Rousseau was
10 his father fled from Geneva to avoid imprisonment for a minor offense,
leaving young Jean-Jacques to be raised by an aunt and uncle. Rousseau left
Geneva at 16, wandering from place to place, finally moving to Paris in 1742. He
earned his living during this period, working as everything from footman to
assistant to an ambassador.
Rousseau's profound insight can be found in almost every trace of modern
philosophy
today. Somewhat complicated and ambiguous, Rousseau's general philosophy tried
to grasp an emotional and passionate side of man which he felt was left out of
most previous philosophical thinking.
In his early writing, Rousseau contended that man is essentially good, a "noble
savage" when in the "state of nature" (the state of all the other animals, and
the condition man was in before the creation of civilization and society), and
that good people are made unhappy and corrupted by their experiences in society.
He viewed society as "artificial" and "corrupt" and that the furthering of
society results in the continuing unhappiness of man.
Rousseau's essay, "Discourse on the Arts and Sciences" (1750), argued that the
advancement of art and science had not been beneficial to mankind. He proposed
that the progress of knowledge had made governments more powerful, and crushed
individual liberty. He concluded that material progress had actually undermined
the possibility of sincere friendship, replacing it with jealousy, fear and
suspicion.
Perhaps Rousseau's most important work is "The Social Contract" that describes
the relationship of man with society. Contrary to his earlier work, Rousseau
claimed that the state of nature is brutish condition without law or morality,
and that there are good men only a result of society's presence. In the state of
nature, man is prone to be in frequent competition with his fellow men. Because
he can be more successful facing threats by joining with other men, he has the
impetus to do so. He joins together with his fellow men to form the collective
human presence known as "society." "The Social Contract" is the "compact" agreed
to among men that sets the conditions for membership in society.
Rousseau was one of the first modern writers to seriously attack the institution
of private property, and therefore is considered a forebear of modern socialism
and Communism. Rousseau also questioned the assumption that the will of the
majority is always correct. He argued that the goal of government should be to
secure freedom, equality, and justice for all within the state, regardless of
the will of the majority.
One of the primary principles of Rousseau's political philosophy is that
politics and morality should not be separated. When a state fails to act in a
moral fashion, it ceases to function in the proper manner and ceases to exert
genuine authority over the individual. The second important principle is
freedom, which the state is created to preserve.
Rousseau's ideas about education have profoundly influenced modern educational
theory. He minimizes the importance of book learning, and recommends that a
child's emotions should be educated before his reason. He placed a special
emphasis on learning by experience.
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