Jean - Jacques Rousseau - wikipedia Jean - Jacques Rousseau This is the latest accepted revision, reviewed on 11 August 2018. This article is about the philosopher. For the director, see Jean - Jacques Rousseau ( director ). `` Rousseau '' redirects here. For other uses, see Rousseau ( disambiguation ). Jean - Jacques Rousseau Rousseau by Maurice Quentin de La Tour, 1753 ( 1712 - 06 - 28 ) 28 June 1712 Geneva, Republic of Geneva 2 July 1778 ( 1778 - 07 - 02 ) ( aged 66 ) Ermenonville, France Era 18th - century philosophy ( Modern philosophy ) Region Western philosophy School Social contract Romanticism Main interests Political philosophy, music, education, literature, autobiography Notable ideas General will, amour de soi, amour - propre, moral simplicity of humanity, child - centered learning, civil religion, popular sovereignty, positive liberty, public opinion Influences Plato, Hobbes, Spinoza, Locke, Montesquieu, Diderot, Voltaire, D'Alembert, D'Épinay Influenced Kant, French Revolution, Robespierre, Saint - Just, Counter-Enlightenment, Romanticism, Hume, Paine, Smith, Wollstonecraft, Marx, Engels, Derrida, de Sade, Strauss, Montessori, Goethe, Tolstoy, Dewey, Dimitri Kitsikis Signature Jean - Jacques Rousseau ( UK : / ˈruːsoʊ /, US : / ruːˈsoʊ / ; French : ( ʒɑ̃ʒak ʁuso ) ; 28 June 1712 -- 2 July 1778 ) was a Genevan philosopher, writer and composer. Born in Geneva, his political philosophy influenced the progress of the Enlightenment throughout Europe, as well as aspects of the French Revolution and the development of modern political and educational thought. Rousseau 's novel Emile, or On Education is a treatise on the education of the whole person for citizenship. His sentimental novel Julie, or the New Heloise was of importance to the development of pre-romanticism and romanticism in fiction. Rousseau 's autobiographical writings -- his Confessions, which initiated the modern autobiography, and his Reveries of a Solitary Walker -- exemplified the late 18th - century movement known as the Age of Sensibility, and featured an increased focus on subjectivity and introspection that later characterized modern writing. His Discourse on Inequality and The Social Contract are cornerstones in modern political and social thought. During the period of the French Revolution, Rousseau was the most popular of the philosophers among members of the Jacobin Club. He was interred as a national hero in the Panthéon in Paris, in 1794, 16 years after his death. Contents 1 Biography 1.1 Youth 1.2 Adulthood 1.2. 1 Return to Paris 1.2. 2 Return to Geneva ( 1754 ) 1.2. 3 Rousseau, Voltaire, and Frederick the Great 1.2. 4 Fugitive 1.2. 5 Back in Paris 1.2. 6 In Britain ( 1766 -- 1767 ) 1.2. 6.1 Quarrel with Hume 1.2. 6.2 Return to France 1.2. 7 In Grenoble 1.2. 8 Final years 2 Philosophy 2.1 Theory of Natural Human 2.1. 1 Stages of human development 2.2 Political theory 2.3 Education and child rearing 3 Religion 4 Legacy 4.1 General will 4.2 French Revolution 4.3 Effect on the United States of America 4.4 Criticisms of Rousseau 4.5 Appreciation and influence 5 Composer 6 Works 6.1 Major works 6.2 Editions in English 7 See also 7.1 External links 8 Notes 9 References 10 Bibliography 11 External links Biography Youth Rousseau was born in Geneva, which was at the time a city - state and a Protestant associate of the Swiss Confederacy. Since 1536, Geneva had been a Huguenot republic and the seat of Calvinism. Five generations before Rousseau, his ancestor Didier, a bookseller who may have published Protestant tracts, had escaped persecution from French Catholics by fleeing to Geneva in 1549, where he became a wine merchant. The house where Rousseau was born at number 40, Grand - Rue. Rousseau was proud that his family, of the moyen order ( or middle - class ), had voting rights in the city. Throughout his life, he generally signed his books `` Jean - Jacques Rousseau, Citizen of Geneva ''. Geneva, in theory, was governed `` democratically '' by its male voting `` citizens ''. The citizens were a minority of the population when compared to the immigrants, referred to as `` inhabitants '', whose descendants were called `` natives '' and continued to lack suffrage. In fact, rather than being run by vote of the `` citizens '', the city was ruled by a small number of wealthy families that made up the `` Council of Two Hundred '' ; these delegated their power to a twenty - five member executive group from among them called the `` Little Council ''. There was much political debate within Geneva, extending down to the tradespeople. Much discussion was over the idea of the sovereignty of the people, of which the ruling class oligarchy was making a mockery. In 1707, a democratic reformer named Pierre Fatio protested this situation, saying `` a sovereign that never performs an act of sovereignty is an imaginary being ''. He was shot by order of the Little Council. Jean - Jacques Rousseau 's father, Isaac, was not in the city at this time, but Jean - Jacques 's grandfather supported Fatio and was penalized for it. The trade of watchmaking had become a family tradition by the time of Rousseau 's father, Isaac Rousseau. Isaac followed his grandfather, father and brothers into the business, except for a short stint teaching dance as a dance master. Isaac, notwithstanding his artisan status, was well educated and a lover of music. `` A Genevan watchmaker '', Rousseau wrote, `` is a man who can be introduced anywhere ; a Parisian watchmaker is only fit to talk about watches ''. In 1699, Isaac ran into political difficulty by entering a quarrel with visiting English officers, who in response drew their swords and threatened him. After local officials stepped in, it was Isaac who was punished, as Geneva was concerned with maintaining its ties to foreign powers. Rousseau 's mother, Suzanne Bernard Rousseau, was from an upper - class family. She was raised by her uncle Samuel Bernard, a Calvinist preacher. He cared for Suzanne after her father Jacques ( who had run into trouble with the legal and religious authorities for fornication and having a mistress ) died in his early thirties. In 1695, Suzanne had to answer charges that she had attended a street theater disguised as a peasant woman so she could gaze upon M. Vincent Sarrasin, whom she fancied despite his continuing marriage. After a hearing, she was ordered by the Genevan Consistory to never interact with him again. She married Rousseau 's father at the age of 31. Isaac 's sister had married Suzanne 's brother eight years earlier, after she had become pregnant and they had been chastised by the Consistory. The child died at birth. Later, the young Rousseau was told a romantic fairy - tale about the situation by the adults in his family -- a tale where young love was denied by a disapproving patriarch but that prevailed by sibling loyalty that, in the story, resulted in love conquering all and two marriages uniting the families on the same day. Rousseau never learnt the truth. Rousseau was born on 28 June 1712, and he would later relate : `` I was born almost dying, they had little hope of saving me ''. He was baptized on 4 July 1712, in the great cathedral. His mother died of puerperal fever nine days after his birth, which he later described as `` the first of my misfortunes ''. He and his older brother François were brought up by their father and a paternal aunt, also named Suzanne. When Rousseau was five, his father sold the house that the family had received from his mother 's relatives. While the idea was that his sons would inherit the principal when grown up and he would live off the interest in the meantime, in the end the father took most of the substantial proceeds. With the selling of the house, the Rousseau family moved out of the upper - class neighborhood and moved into an apartment house in a neighborhood of craftsmen -- silversmiths, engravers, and other watchmakers. Growing up around craftsmen, Rousseau would later contrast them favorably to those who produced more aesthetic works, writing `` those important persons who are called artists rather than artisans, work solely for the idle and rich, and put an arbitrary price on their baubles ''. Rousseau was also exposed to class politics in this environment, as the artisans often agitated in a campaign of resistance against the privileged class running Geneva. Rousseau had no recollection of learning to read, but he remembered how when he was 5 or 6 his father encouraged his love of reading : Every night, after supper, we read some part of a small collection of romances ( adventure stories ), which had been my mother 's. My father 's design was only to improve me in reading, and he thought these entertaining works were calculated to give me a fondness for it ; but we soon found ourselves so interested in the adventures they contained, that we alternately read whole nights together and could not bear to give over until at the conclusion of a volume. Sometimes, in the morning, on hearing the swallows at our window, my father, quite ashamed of this weakness, would cry, `` Come, come, let us go to bed ; I am more a child than thou art. '' ( Confessions, Book 1 ) Rousseau 's reading of escapist stories ( such as L'Astrée by Honoré d'Urfé ) had an effect on him ; he later wrote that they `` gave me bizarre and romantic notions of human life, which experience and reflection have never been able to cure me of ''. After they had finished reading the novels, they began to read a collection of ancient and modern classics left by his mother 's uncle. Of these, his favorite was Plutarch 's Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans, which he would read to his father while he made watches. Rousseau saw Plutarch 's work as another kind of novel -- the noble actions of heroes -- and he would act out the deeds of the characters he was reading about. Witnessing the local townsfolk participate in militias made a big impression on Rousseau. Throughout his life, he would recall one scene where, after the volunteer militia had finished its manoeuvres, they began to dance around a fountain and most of the people from neighboring buildings came out to join them, including him and his father. Rousseau would always see militias as the embodiment of popular spirit in opposition to the armies of the rulers, whom he saw as disgraceful mercenaries. When Rousseau was 10, his father, an avid hunter, got into a legal quarrel with a wealthy landowner on whose lands he had been caught trespassing. To avoid certain defeat in the courts, he moved away to Nyon in the territory of Bern, taking Rousseau 's aunt Suzanne with him. He remarried, and from that point Jean - Jacques saw little of him. Jean - Jacques was left with his maternal uncle, who packed him, along with his own son, Abraham Bernard, away to board for two years with a Calvinist minister in a hamlet outside Geneva. Here, the boys picked up the elements of mathematics and drawing. Rousseau, who was always deeply moved by religious services, for a time even dreamed of becoming a Protestant minister. Les Charmettes, where Rousseau lived with Françoise - Louise de Warens from 1735 to 1736, now a museum dedicated to Rousseau Virtually all our information about Rousseau 's youth has come from his posthumously published Confessions, in which the chronology is somewhat confused, though recent scholars have combed the archives for confirming evidence to fill in the blanks. At age 13, Rousseau was apprenticed first to a notary and then to an engraver who beat him. At 15, he ran away from Geneva ( on 14 March 1728 ) after returning to the city and finding the city gates locked due to the curfew. In adjoining Savoy he took shelter with a Roman Catholic priest, who introduced him to Françoise - Louise de Warens, age 29. She was a noblewoman of Protestant background who was separated from her husband. As professional lay proselytizer, she was paid by the King of Piedmont to help bring Protestants to Catholicism. They sent the boy to Turin, the capital of Savoy ( which included Piedmont, in what is now Italy ), to complete his conversion. This resulted in his having to give up his Genevan citizenship, although he would later revert to Calvinism in order to regain it. In converting to Catholicism, both De Warens and Rousseau were likely reacting to Calvinism 's insistence on the total depravity of man. Leo Damrosch writes : `` An eighteenth - century Genevan liturgy still required believers to declare ' that we are miserable sinners, born in corruption, inclined to evil, incapable by ourselves of doing good ' ''. De Warens, a deist by inclination, was attracted to Catholicism 's doctrine of forgiveness of sins. Adulthood Finding himself on his own, since his father and uncle had more or less disowned him, the teenage Rousseau supported himself for a time as a servant, secretary, and tutor, wandering in Italy ( Piedmont and Savoy ) and France. During this time, he lived on and off with De Warens, whom he idolized and called his `` maman ''. Flattered by his devotion, De Warens tried to get him started in a profession, and arranged formal music lessons for him. At one point, he briefly attended a seminary with the idea of becoming a priest. When Rousseau reached 20, De Warens took him as her lover, while intimate also with the steward of her house. The sexual aspect of their relationship ( in fact a ménage à trois ) confused Rousseau and made him uncomfortable, but he always considered De Warens the greatest love of his life. A rather profligate spender, she had a large library and loved to entertain and listen to music. She and her circle, comprising educated members of the Catholic clergy, introduced Rousseau to the world of letters and ideas. Rousseau had been an indifferent student, but during his 20s, which were marked by long bouts of hypochondria, he applied himself in earnest to the study of philosophy, mathematics, and music. At 25, he came into a small inheritance from his mother and used a portion of it to repay De Warens for her financial support of him. At 27, he took a job as a tutor in Lyon. In 1742, Rousseau moved to Paris in order to present the Académie des Sciences with a new system of numbered musical notation he believed would make his fortune. His system, intended to be compatible with typography, is based on a single line, displaying numbers representing intervals between notes and dots and commas indicating rhythmic values. Believing the system was impractical, the Academy rejected it, though they praised his mastery of the subject, and urged him to try again. Palazzo belonging to Tommaso Querini at 968 Cannaregio Venice that served as the French Embassy during Rousseau 's period as Secretary to the Ambassador From 1743 to 1744, Rousseau had an honorable but ill - paying post as a secretary to the Comte de Montaigue, the French ambassador to Venice. This awoke in him a lifelong love for Italian music, particularly opera : I had brought with me from Paris the prejudice of that city against Italian music ; but I had also received from nature a sensibility and niceness of distinction which prejudice can not withstand. I soon contracted that passion for Italian music with which it inspires all those who are capable of feeling its excellence. In listening to barcaroles, I found I had not yet known what singing was... -- Confessions Rousseau 's employer routinely received his stipend as much as a year late and paid his staff irregularly. After 11 months, Rousseau quit, taking from the experience a profound distrust of government bureaucracy. Return to Paris Returning to Paris, the penniless Rousseau befriended and became the lover of Thérèse Levasseur, a seamstress who was the sole support of her mother and numerous ne'er - do - well siblings. At first, they did not live together, though later Rousseau took Thérèse and her mother in to live with him as his servants, and himself assumed the burden of supporting her large family. According to his Confessions, before she moved in with him, Thérèse bore him a son and as many as four other children ( there is no independent verification for this number ). Rousseau wrote that he persuaded Thérèse to give each of the newborns up to a foundling hospital, for the sake of her `` honor ''. `` Her mother, who feared the inconvenience of a brat, came to my aid, and she ( Thérèse ) allowed herself to be overcome '' ( Confessions ). In his letter to Madame de Francueil in 1751, he first pretended that he was n't rich enough to raise his children, but in Book IX of the Confessions he gave the true reasons of his choice : `` I trembled at the thought of intrusting them to a family ill brought up, to be still worse educated. The risk of the education of the foundling hospital was much less ''. Ten years later, Rousseau made inquiries about the fate of his son, but no record could be found. When Rousseau subsequently became celebrated as a theorist of education and child - rearing, his abandonment of his children was used by his critics, including Voltaire and Edmund Burke, as the basis for ad hominem attacks. While in Paris, Rousseau became a close friend of French philosopher Diderot and, beginning with some articles on music in 1749, contributed numerous articles to Diderot and D'Alembert 's great Encyclopédie, the most famous of which was an article on political economy written in 1755. Rousseau 's ideas were the result of an almost obsessive dialogue with writers of the past, filtered in many cases through conversations with Diderot. In 1749, Rousseau was paying daily visits to Diderot, who had been thrown into the fortress of Vincennes under a lettre de cachet for opinions in his `` Lettre sur les aveugles '', that hinted at materialism, a belief in atoms, and natural selection. According to science historian Conway Zirkle, Rousseau saw the concept of natural selection `` as an agent for improving the human species. '' Rousseau had read about an essay competition sponsored by the Académie de Dijon to be published in the Mercure de France on the theme of whether the development of the arts and sciences had been morally beneficial. He wrote that while walking to Vincennes ( about three miles from Paris ), he had a revelation that the arts and sciences were responsible for the moral degeneration of mankind, who were basically good by nature. Rousseau 's 1750 Discourse on the Arts and Sciences was awarded the first prize and gained him significant fame. Rousseau continued his interest in music. He wrote both the words and music of his opera Le devin du village ( The Village Soothsayer ), which was performed for King Louis XV in 1752. The king was so pleased by the work that he offered Rousseau a lifelong pension. To the exasperation of his friends, Rousseau turned down the great honor, bringing him notoriety as `` the man who had refused a king 's pension ''. He also turned down several other advantageous offers, sometimes with a brusqueness bordering on truculence that gave offense and caused him problems. The same year, the visit of a troupe of Italian musicians to Paris, and their performance of Giovanni Battista Pergolesi 's La serva padrona, prompted the Querelle des Bouffons, which pitted protagonists of French music against supporters of the Italian style. Rousseau as noted above, was an enthusiastic supporter of the Italians against Jean - Philippe Rameau and others, making an important contribution with his Letter on French Music. Return to Geneva ( 1754 ) On returning to Geneva in 1754, Rousseau reconverted to Calvinism and regained his official Genevan citizenship. In 1755, Rousseau completed his second major work, the Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men ( the Discourse on Inequality ), which elaborated on the arguments of the Discourse on the Arts and Sciences. He also pursued an unconsummated romantic attachment with the 25 - year - old Sophie d'Houdetot, which partly inspired his epistolary novel, Julie, ou la nouvelle Héloïse ( also based on memories of his idyllic youthful relationship with Mme de Warens ). Sophie was the cousin and houseguest of Rousseau 's patroness and landlady Madame d'Épinay, whom he treated rather highhandedly. He resented being at Mme. d'Épinay's beck and call and detested the insincere conversation and shallow atheism of the Encyclopedistes whom he met at her table. Wounded feelings gave rise to a bitter three - way quarrel between Rousseau and Madame d'Épinay ; her lover, the journalist Grimm ; and their mutual friend, Diderot, who took their side against Rousseau. Diderot later described Rousseau as being `` false, vain as Satan, ungrateful, cruel, hypocritical, and wicked... He sucked ideas from me, used them himself, and then affected to despise me ''. Pierre Alexandre du Peyrou, rich inhabitant of Neufchâtel, plantation owner, writer, friend and publisher of some of Rousseau 's oeuvre. His mansion was Le Palais du Peyrou. Rousseau 's break with the Encyclopedistes coincided with the composition of his three major works, in all of which he emphasized his fervent belief in a spiritual origin of man 's soul and the universe, in contradistinction to the materialism of Diderot, La Mettrie and D'Holbach. During this period, Rousseau enjoyed the support and patronage of Charles François Frédéric de Montmorency - Luxembourg and the Prince de Conti, two of the richest and most powerful nobles in France. These men truly liked Rousseau and enjoyed his ability to converse on any subject, but they also used him as a way of getting back at Louis XV and the political faction surrounding his mistress, Madame de Pompadour. Even with them, however, Rousseau went too far, courting rejection when he criticized the practice of tax farming, in which some of them engaged. Rousseau 's 800 - page novel of sentiment, Julie, ou la nouvelle Héloïse, was published in 1761 to immense success. The book 's rhapsodic descriptions of the natural beauty of the Swiss countryside struck a chord in the public and may have helped spark the subsequent nineteenth - century craze for Alpine scenery. In 1762, Rousseau published Du Contrat Social, Principes du droit politique ( in English, literally Of the Social Contract, Principles of Political Right ) in April. Even his friend Antoine - Jacques Roustan felt impelled to write a polite rebuttal of the chapter on Civil Religion in the Social Contract, which implied that the concept of a Christian republic was paradoxical since Christianity taught submission rather than participation in public affairs. Rousseau helped Roustan find a publisher for the rebuttal. Rousseau published Emile, or On Education in May. A famous section of Emile, `` The Profession of Faith of a Savoyard Vicar '', was intended to be a defense of religious belief. Rousseau 's choice of a Catholic vicar of humble peasant background ( plausibly based on a kindly prelate he had met as a teenager ) as a spokesman for the defense of religion was in itself a daring innovation for the time. The vicar 's creed was that of Socinianism ( or Unitarianism as it is called today ). Because it rejected original sin and divine revelation, both Protestant and Catholic authorities took offense. Ramsay, Allan ( 1766 ), Rousseau wearing an Armenian costume ( portrait ) Moreover, Rousseau advocated the opinion that, insofar as they lead people to virtue, all religions are equally worthy, and that people should therefore conform to the religion in which they have been brought up. This religious indifferentism caused Rousseau and his books to be banned from France and Geneva. He was condemned from the pulpit by the Archbishop of Paris, his books were burned and warrants were issued for his arrest. Former friends such as Jacob Vernes of Geneva could not accept his views, and wrote violent rebuttals. A sympathetic observer, David Hume `` professed no surprise when he learned that Rousseau 's books were banned in Geneva and elsewhere ''. Rousseau, he wrote, `` has not had the precaution to throw any veil over his sentiments ; and, as he scorns to dissemble his contempt for established opinions, he could not wonder that all the zealots were in arms against him. The liberty of the press is not so secured in any country... as not to render such an open attack on popular prejudice somewhat dangerous. '' Rousseau, Voltaire, and Frederick the great After Rousseau 's Emile had outraged the French parliament, an arrest order was issued by parliament against him, causing him to flee to Switzerland. Subsequently, when the Swiss authorities also proved unsympathetic to him -- condemning both Emile, and also The Social Contract -- Voltaire issued an invitation to Rousseau to come and reside with him, commenting that : `` I shall always love the author of the ' Vicaire savoyard ' whatever he has done, and whatever he may do... Let him come here ( to Ferney ) ! He must come ! I shall receive him with open arms. He shall be master here more than I. I shall treat him like my own son. '' Rousseau later expressed regret that he had not replied to Voltaire 's invitation. In July 1762, after Rousseau was informed that he could not continue to reside in Bern, d'Alembert advised him to move to the Principality of Neuchâtel, ruled by Frederick the Great of Prussia. Subsequently, Rousseau accepted an invitation to reside in Môtiers, fifteen miles from Neuchâtel. On 11 July 1762, Rousseau wrote to Frederick, describing how he had been driven from France, from Geneva, and from Bern ; and seeking Frederick 's protection. He also mentioned that he had criticized Frederick in the past and would continue to be critical of Frederick in the future, stating however : `` Your Majesty may dispose of me as you like. '' Frederick, still in the middle of the Seven Years ' War, then wrote to the local governor of Neuchatel, Marischal Keith who was a mutual friend of theirs : We must succor this poor unfortunate. His only offense is to have strange opinions which he thinks are good ones. I will send a hundred crowns, from which you will be kind enough to give him as much as he needs. I think he will accept them in kind more readily than in cash. If we were not at war, if we were not ruined, I would build him a hermitage with a garden, where he could live as I believe our first fathers did... I think poor Rousseau has missed his vocation ; he was obviously born to be a famous anchorite, a desert father, celebrated for his austerities and flagellations... I conclude that the morals of your savage are as pure as his mind is illogical. Rousseau, touched by the help he received from Frederick, stated that from then onwards he took a keen interest in Frederick 's activities. As the Seven Years ' War was about to end, Rousseau wrote to Frederick again, thanking him for the help received and urging him to put an end to military activities and to endeavor to keep his subjects happy instead. Frederick made no known reply, but commented to Keith that Rousseau had given him a `` scolding ''. Fugitive For more than two years ( 1762 - 1765 ) Rousseau lived at Môtiers, spending his time in reading and writing and meeting visitors such as James Boswell ( December 1764 ). In the meantime, the local ministers had become aware of the apostasies in some of his writings, and resolved not to let him stay in the vicinity. The Neuchâtel Consistory summoned Rousseau to answer a charge of blasphemy. He wrote back asking to be excused due to his inability to sit for a long time due to his ailment. Subsequently, Rousseau 's own pastor, Frédéric - Guillaume de Montmollin, started denouncing him publicly as the Antichrist. In one inflammatory sermon, Montmollin quoted Proverbs 15 : 8 : `` The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to the Lord, but the prayer of the upright is his delight '' ; this was interpreted by everyone to mean that Rousseau 's taking communion was detested by the Lord. The ecclesiastical attacks inflamed the parishioners, who proceeded to pelt Rousseau with stones when he would go out for walks. Around midnight of 6 -- 7 September 1765, stones were thrown at the house Rousseau was staying in, and some glass windows were shattered. When a local official, Martinet, arrived at Rousseau 's residence he saw so many stones on the balcony that he exclaimed `` My God, it 's a quarry ! '' At this point, Rousseau 's friends in Môtiers advised him to leave the town. Since he wanted to remain in Switzerland, Rousseau decided to accept an offer to move to a tiny island, the Ile de St. - Pierre, having a solitary house. Although it was within the Canton of Bern, from where he had been expelled two years previously, he was informally assured that he could move into this island house without fear of arrest, and he did so ( 10 September 1765 ). However, on 17 October 1765, the Senate of Bern ordered Rousseau to leave the island and all Bernese territory within fifteen days. He replied, requesting permission to extend his stay, and offered to be incarcerated in any place within their jurisdiction with only a few books in his possession and permission to walk occasionally in a garden while living at his own expense. The Senate 's response was to direct Rousseau to leave the island, and all Bernese territory, within twenty four hours. On 29 October 1765 he left the Ile de St. - Pierre and moved to Strasbourg. At this point : He had invitations to Potsdam from Frederick, to Corsica from Paoli, to Lorraine from Saint - Lambert, to Amsterdam from Rey the publisher, and to England from David Hume. He subsequently decided to accept Hume 's invitation to go to England. Back in Paris On 9 December 1765, having secured a passport from the French government to come to Paris, Rousseau left Strasbourg for Paris where he arrived after a week, and lodged in a palace of his friend, the Prince of Conti. Here he met Hume, and also numerous friends, and well wishers, and became a very conspicuous figure in the city. At this time, Hume wrote : It is impossible to express or imagine the enthusiasm of this nation in Rousseau 's favor... No person ever so much enjoyed their attention... Voltaire and everybody else are quite eclipsed. One significant meeting could have taken place at this time : Diderot wanted to reconcile and make amends with Rousseau. However, since both Diderot and Rousseau wanted the other person to take the initiative in this respect, no meeting between the two took place. Walpole 's Letter On 1 January 1766, Grimm wrote a report to his clientele, in which he included a letter said to have been written by Frederick the Great to Rousseau. This letter had actually been composed by Horace Walpole as a playful hoax. Walpole had never met Rousseau, but he was well acquainted with Diderot and Grimm. The letter soon found wide publicity ; Hume is believed to have been present, and to have participated in its creation. On 16 February 1766, Hume wrote to the Marquise de Brabantane : `` The only pleasantry I permitted myself in connection with the pretended letter of the King of Prussia was made by me at the dinner table of Lord Ossory. '' This letter was one of the reasons for the later rupture in Hume 's relations with Rousseau. In britain ( 1766 -- 1767 ) On 4 January 1766, Rousseau left Paris along with Hume, the merchant de Luze who was an old friend of Rousseau, and Rousseau 's pet dog Sultan. After a four - day journey to Calais, where they stayed for two nights, the travelers embarked on a ship to Dover. On 13 January 1766 they arrived in London. Soon after their arrival, David Garrick arranged a box at the Drury Lane Theatre for Hume and Rousseau on a night when the King and Queen were also present. Garrick was himself performing in a comedy by himself, and also a tragedy by Voltaire. Rousseau became so excited during the performance that he leaned too far and almost fell out of the box ; Hume observed that the King and Queen were looking at Rousseau more than at the performance. Afterwards, Garrick served supper for Rousseau who commended Garrick 's acting : `` Sir, you have made me shed tears at your tragedy, and smile at your comedy, though I scarce understood a word of your language. '' At this time, Hume had a favorable opinion of Rousseau ; in a letter to Madame De Brabantane, Hume wrote that after observing Rousseau carefully he had concluded that he had never met a more affable and virtuous person. According to Hume, Rousseau was `` gentle, modest, affectionate, disinterested, of extreme sensitivity. '' Initially, Rousseau was lodged by Hume in the house of Madam Adams in London, but he began receiving so many visitors that he soon wanted to move to a quieter location. An offer came to lodge him in a Welsh monastery, and he was inclined to accept it, but Hume persuaded him to move to Chiswick. He now asked for Therese to rejoin him. Meanwhile, James Boswell was in Paris, and offered to escort Thérèse to Rousseau. ( Boswell had earlier met Rousseau and Therese at Motiers ; he had subsequently also sent Therese a garnet necklace and written to Rousseau seeking permission to occasionally communicate with her ). Hume foresaw what was going to happen : `` I dread some event fatal to our friend 's honor. '' Boswell and Therese were together for more than a week, and as per notes in Boswell 's diary they consummated the relationship, having intercourse several times. On one occasion, Therese told Boswell : `` Do n't imagine you are a better lover than Rousseau. '' Since Rousseau was keen to relocate to a more remote location, Richard Davenport -- a wealthy and elderly widower who spoke French -- offered to accommodate Therese and Rousseau at Wootton Hall. On 22 March, Rousseau and Therese set forth for Wootton, against Hume 's advice. Hume and Rousseau would never meet again. Initially Rousseau was pleased with his new accommodation at Wootton Hall, and wrote favorably about the natural beauty of the place, and how he was feeling reborn, forgetting past sorrows. Quarrel with Hume On 3 April, the letter featuring Horace Walpole 's hoax on Rousseau was published in a British daily without mention of Walpole being the actual author ; that the editor of the publication was Hume 's personal friend compounded Rousseau 's grief. Gradually articles critical of Rousseau started appearing in the British press ; Rousseau felt that Hume, as his host, ought to have defended him. Moreover, in Rousseau 's estimate, some of the public criticism contained details which only Hume was privy to. Further, Rousseau was aggrieved to find that Hume had been lodging in London with Francois Tronchin, son of Rousseau 's enemy in Geneva. About this time, Voltaire anonymously published his Letter to Dr. J. - J. Pansophe in which he gave extracts from many of Rousseau 's prior statements critical of the British ; the most damaging portions of Voltaire 's writeup were reprinted in a London periodical. Rousseau now decided that there was a conspiracy afoot to defame him. A further cause for Rousseau 's displeasure was his concern that Hume was tampering with his mail. The misunderstanding had arisen because Rousseau tired of receiving voluminous correspondence whose postage he had to pay. Hume offered to open Rousseau 's mail himself and forward the important letters to Rousseau ; this offer was accepted. However, there is some evidence of Hume intercepting even Rousseau 's outgoing mail. After some correspondence with Rousseau, which included an eighteen - page letter from Rousseau describing the reasons for his resentment, Hume concluded that Rousseau was losing his mental balance. On learning that Rousseau had denounced him to his Parisian friends, Hume sent a copy of Rousseau 's long letter to Madame de Boufflers. She replied stating that Hume 's alleged participation in the composition of Horace Walpole 's faux letter was the reason for Rousseau 's anger in her estimate. When Hume learnt that Rousseau was writing the Confessions, he assumed that the present dispute would feature in the book. Adam Smith, Turgot, Marischal Keith, Horace Walpole, and Mme de Boufflers advised Hume not to make his quarrel with Rousseau public ; however, many members of D'Holbach's Coterie -- particularly, d'Alembert -- urged him to reveal his version of the events. In October 1766, Hume 's version of the quarrel was translated into French and published in France ; in November it was published in England. Grimm included it in his correspondance ; ultimately, the quarrel resounded in Geneva, Amsterdam, Berlin, and St. Petersburg. A dozen pamphlets redoubled the bruit. Walpole printed his version of the dispute ; Boswell attacked Walpole ; Mme. de La Tour 's Precis sur M. Rousseau called Hume a traitor ; Voltaire sent him additional material on Rousseau 's faults and crimes, on his frequentation of `` places of ill fame, '' and on his seditious activities in Switzerland. George III `` followed the battle with intense curiosity. '' After the dispute became public, due in part to comments from notable publishers like Andrew Millar, 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 : `` I knew these two philosophers well. I could write a play about them that would make you weep, and it would excuse them both. '' Return to France Amidst the controversy surrounding his quarrel with Hume, Rousseau maintained a public silence ; but, he resolved now to return to France. To encourage him to do so swiftly, Therese advised him that the servants at Wootton Hall sought to poison him. On 22 May 1767, Rousseau and Therese embarked from Dover to Calais. In Grenoble On 22 May 1767, Rousseau reentered France even though an arrest warrant against him was still in place. He had taken an assumed name, but was recognized, and a banquet in his honor was held by the city of Amiens. Many French nobles offered him a residence at this time. Initially, Rousseau decided to stay in an estate near Paris belonging to Mirabeau. Subsequently, on 21 June 1767, he moved to a chateau of the Prince of Conti in Trie. Around this time, Rousseau started developing feelings of paranoia, anxiety, and of a conspiracy against him. Most of this was just his imagination at work, but on 29 January 1768, the theatre at Geneva was destroyed through burning, and Voltaire mendaciously accused Rousseau of being the culprit. In June 1768, Rousseau left Trie, leaving Therese behind, and went first to Lyon, and subsequently to Bourgoin. He now invited Therese to this place and `` married '' her under his alias `` Renou '' in a faux civil ceremony in Bourgoin on 30 August 1768. In January 1769, Rousseau and Thérèse went to live in a farmhouse near Grenoble. Here he practiced botany and completed the Confessions. At this time he expressed regret for placing his children in an orphanage. On 10 April 1770, Rousseau and Therese left for Lyon where he befriended Horace Coignet, a fabric designer and amateur musician. At Rousseau 's suggestion, Coignet composed musical interludes for Rousseau 's prose poem Pygmalion ; this was performed in Lyon together with Rousseau 's romance The Village Soothsayer to public acclaim. On 8 June, Rousseau and Therese left Lyon for Paris ; they reached Paris on 24 June. In Paris, Rousseau and Therese lodged in an unfashionable neighborhood of the city, the Rue Platrière -- now called the Rue Jean - Jacques Rousseau. He now supported himself financially by copying music, and continued his study of botany. At this time also, he wrote his Letters on the Elements of Botany. These consisted of a series of letters Rousseau wrote to Mme Delessert in Lyon to help her daughters learn the subject. These letters received widespread acclaim when they were eventually published posthumously. `` It 's a true pedagogical model, and it complements Emile, '' commented Goethe. For defending his reputation against hostile gossip, Rousseau had begun writing the Confessions in 1765. In November 1770, these were completed, and 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 : I expected a session of seven or eight hours ; it lasted fourteen or fifteen.... The writing is truly a phenomenon of genius, of simplicity, candor, and courage. How many giants reduced to dwarves ! How many obscure but virtuous men restored to their rights and avenged against the wicked by the sole testimony of an honest man ! After May 1771, there were no more group readings because Madame d'Épinay wrote to the chief of police, who was her friend, to put a stop to Rousseau 's readings so as to safeguard her privacy. The police called on Rousseau, who agreed to stop the readings. The Confessions were finally published posthumously in 1782. In 1772, Rousseau was invited to present recommendations for a new constitution for the Polish -- Lithuanian Commonwealth, resulting in the Considerations on the Government of Poland, which was to be his last major political work. Also in 1772, Rousseau began writing his Dialogues : Rousseau, Judge of Jean - Jacques, which was another attempt to reply to his critics. He completed writing it in 1776. The book is in the form of three dialogues between two characters ; a Frenchman and Rousseau who argue about the merits and demerits of a third character -- an author called Jean - Jacques. It has been described as his most unreadable work ; in the foreword to the book, Rousseau admits that it may be repetitious and disorderly, but he begs the reader 's indulgence on the grounds that he needs to defend his reputation from slander before he dies. Final years In 1766, Rousseau had impressed Hume with his physical prowess by spending ten hours at night on the deck in severe weather during the journey by ship from Calais to Dover while Hume was confined to his bunk. `` When all the seamen were almost frozen to death... he caught no harm... He is one of the most robust men I have ever known, '' Hume noted. By 1770, Rousseau 's urinary disease had also been greatly alleviated after he stopped listening to the advice of doctors. At that time, notes Damrosch, it was often better to let nature take its own course rather than subject oneself to medical procedures. his general health had also improved. However, on 24 October 1776, as he was walking on a narrow street in Paris a nobleman 's carriage came rushing by from the opposite direction ; flanking the carriage was a galloping Great Dane belonging to the nobleman. Rousseau was unable to dodge both the carriage and the dog, and was knocked down by the Great Dane. He seems to have suffered a concussion and neurological damage. His health began to decline ; Rousseau 's friend Corancez described the appearance of certain symptoms which indicate that Rousseau started suffering from epileptic seizures after the accident. The tomb of Rousseau in the crypt of the Panthéon, Paris In 1777, Rousseau received a royal visitor, when the Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II came to meet him. His free entry to the Opera had been renewed by this time and he would go there occasionally. At this time also ( 1777 -- 78 ), he composed one of his finest works, Reveries of a 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 20 May. Rousseau 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 1 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 Rousseau 's stroke. Following his death, Grimm, Madame de Staël and others spread the false news that Rousseau had committed suicide ; according to other gossip, Rousseau was insane when he died. All those who met him in his last days agree that he was in a serene frame of mind at this time. On 4 July 1778, Rousseau was buried on the Île des Peupliers, which became a place of pilgrimage for his many admirers. On 11 October 1794, his remains were moved to the Panthéon, where they were placed near the remains of Voltaire. Philosophy Theory of natural human Statue of Rousseau on the Île Rousseau, Geneva The first man who, having fenced in a piece of land, said ' This is mine ', and found people naïve enough to believe him, that man was the true founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars, and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows : Beware of listening to this impostor ; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody. -- Rousseau 1754 In common with other philosophers of the day, Rousseau looked to a hypothetical State of Nature as a normative guide. Rousseau criticized Hobbes for asserting that since man in the `` state of nature... has no idea of goodness he must be naturally wicked ; that he is vicious because he does not know virtue ''. On the contrary, Rousseau holds that `` uncorrupted morals '' prevail in the `` state of nature '' and he especially praised the admirable moderation of the Caribbeans in expressing the sexual urge despite the fact that they live in a hot climate, which `` always seems to inflame the passions ''. Rousseau asserted that the stage of human development associated with what he called `` savages '' was the best or optimal in human development, between the less - than - optimal extreme of brute animals on the one hand and the extreme of decadent civilization on the other. ``... ( N ) othing is so gentle as man in his primitive state, when placed by nature at an equal distance from the stupidity of brutes and the fatal enlightenment of civil man ''. Referring to the stage of human development which Rousseau associates with savages, Rousseau writes : Hence although men had become less forebearing, and although natural pity had already undergone some alteration, this period of the development of human faculties, maintaining a middle position between the indolence of our primitive state and the petulant activity of our egocentrism, must have been the happiest and most durable epoch. The more one reflects on it, the more one finds that this state was the least subject to upheavals and the best for man, and that he must have left it only by virtue of some fatal chance happening that, for the common good, ought never to have happened. The example of savages, almost all of whom have been found in this state, seems to confirm that the human race had been made to remain in it always ; that this state is the veritable youth of the world ; and that all the subsequent progress has been in appearance so many steps toward the perfection of the individual, and in fact toward the decay of the species. '' The perspective of many of today 's environmentalists can be traced back to Rousseau who believed that the more men deviated from the state of nature, the worse off they would be. Espousing the belief that all degenerates in men 's hands, Rousseau taught that men would be free, wise, and good in the state of nature and that instinct and emotion, when not distorted by the unnatural limitations of civilization, are nature 's voices and instructions to the good life. Rousseau 's `` noble savage '' stands in direct opposition to the man of culture. Stages of human development Rousseau believed that the savage stage was not the first stage of human development, but the third stage. Rousseau held that this third savage stage of human societal development was an optimum, between the extreme of the state of brute animals and animal - like `` ape - men '' on the one hand and the extreme of decadent civilized life on the other. This has led some critics to attribute to Rousseau the invention of the idea of the noble savage, which Arthur Lovejoy conclusively showed misrepresents Rousseau 's thought. The expression `` the noble savage '' was first used in 1672 by British poet John Dryden in his play The Conquest of Granada. Rousseau wrote that morality was not a societal construct, but rather `` natural '' in the sense of `` innate '', an outgrowth from man 's instinctive disinclination to witness suffering, from which arise the emotions of compassion or empathy. These were sentiments shared with animals, and whose existence even Hobbes acknowledged. Rousseau ( 1755 ), Discourse on Inequality, Holland, frontispiece and title page Contrary to what many detractors have claimed, Rousseau never suggests that humans in the state of nature act morally ; in fact, terms such as `` justice '' or `` wickedness '' are inapplicable to prepolitical society as Rousseau understands it. Morality proper, self - restraint, can only develop through careful education in a civil state. Humans `` in a state of Nature '' may act with all of the ferocity of an animal. They are good only in a negative sense, insofar as they are self - sufficient and thus not subject to the vices of political society. In fact, Rousseau 's natural man is virtually identical to a solitary chimpanzee or other ape, such as the orangutan as described by Buffon ; and the `` natural '' goodness of humanity is thus the goodness of an animal, which is neither good nor bad. Rousseau, a deteriorationist, proposed that, except perhaps for brief moments of balance, at or near its inception, when a relative equality among men prevailed, human civilization has always been artificial, creating inequality, envy, and unnatural desires. Rousseau 's ideas of human development 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. According to Rousseau, these were developed through the innate perfectibility of humanity. These include a sense of self, morality, pity, and imagination. Rousseau 's writings are purposely ambiguous concerning the formation of these processes to the point that mediation is always intrinsically part of humanity 's development. An example of this is the notion that as an individual, one needs an alternative perspective to come to the realization that they are a ' self '. In Rousseau 's philosophy, society 's negative influence on men centers on its transformation of amour de soi, a positive self - love, into amour - propre, or pride. Amour de soi represents the instinctive human desire for self - preservation, combined with the human power of reason. In contrast, amour - propre is artificial and encourages man to compare himself to others, thus creating unwarranted fear and allowing men to take pleasure in the pain or weakness of others. Rousseau was not the first to make this distinction. It had been invoked by Vauvenargues, among others. In the Discourse on the Arts and Sciences Rousseau argues that the arts and sciences have not been beneficial to humankind, because they arose not from authentic human needs but rather as a result of pride and vanity. Moreover, the opportunities they create for idleness and luxury have contributed to the corruption of man. He proposed that the progress of knowledge had made governments more powerful and had crushed individual liberty ; and he concluded that material progress had actually undermined the possibility of true friendship by replacing it with jealousy, fear, and suspicion. In contrast to the optimistic view of other Enlightenment figures, for Rousseau, progress has been inimical to the well - being of humanity, that is, unless it can be counteracted by the cultivation of civic morality and duty. Only in civil society can man be ennobled -- through the use of reason : The passage from the state of nature to the civil state produces a very remarkable change in man, by substituting justice for instinct in his conduct, and giving his actions the morality they had formerly lacked. Then only, when the voice of duty takes the place of physical impulses and right of appetite, does man, who so far had considered only himself, find that he is forced to act on different principles, and to consult his reason before listening to his inclinations. Although in this state he deprives himself of some advantages which he got from nature, he gains in return others so great, his faculties are so stimulated and developed, his ideas so extended, his feelings so ennobled, and his whole soul so uplifted, that, did not the abuses of this new condition often degrade him below that which he left, he would be bound to bless continually the happy moment which took him from it for ever, and, instead of a stupid and unimaginative animal, made him an intelligent being and a man. Society corrupts men only insofar as the Social Contract has not de facto succeeded, as we see in contemporary society as described in the Discourse on Inequality ( 1754 ). In this essay, which elaborates on the ideas introduced in the Discourse on the Arts and Sciences, Rousseau traces man 's social evolution from a primitive state of nature to modern society. The earliest solitary humans possessed a basic drive for self - preservation and a natural disposition to compassion or pity. They differed from animals, however, in their capacity for free will and their potential perfectibility. As they began to live in groups and form clans they also began to experience family love, which Rousseau saw as the source of the greatest happiness known to humanity. As long as differences in wealth and status among families were minimal, the first coming together in groups was accompanied by a fleeting golden age of human flourishing. The development of agriculture, metallurgy, private property, and the division of labour and resulting dependency on one another, however, led to economic inequality and conflict. As population pressures forced them to associate more and more closely, they underwent a psychological transformation : they began to see themselves through the eyes of others and came to value the good opinion of others as essential to their self - esteem. Rousseau posits that the original, deeply flawed Social Contract ( i.e., that of Hobbes ), which led to the modern state, was made at the suggestion of the rich and powerful, who tricked the general population into surrendering their liberties to them and instituted inequality as a fundamental feature of human society. Rousseau 's own conception of the Social Contract can be understood as an alternative to this fraudulent form of association. At the end of the Discourse on Inequality, Rousseau explains how the desire to have value in the eyes of others comes to undermine personal integrity and authenticity in a society marked by interdependence, and hierarchy. In the last chapter of the Social Contract, Rousseau would ask ' What is to be done ? ' He answers that now all men can do is to cultivate virtue in themselves and submit to their lawful rulers. To his readers, however, the inescapable conclusion was that a new and more equitable Social Contract was needed. Like other Enlightenment philosophers, Rousseau was critical of the Atlantic slave trade. Political Theory Part of the Politics series on Republicanism Central concepts Anti-monarchism Liberty as non-domination Popular sovereignty Republic Res publica Social contract Schools Classical republicanism Neo-republicanism Important thinkers Hannah Arendt Cicero James Harrington Thomas Jefferson John Locke James Madison Montesquieu Philip Pettit Polybius Jean Jacques Rousseau Michael J. 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Sandel Charles Taylor Michael Walzer Related topics Christian democracy Radical centrism Republicanism Social democracy Politics portal Île Rousseau, Geneva The Social Contract outlines the basis for a legitimate political order within a framework of classical republicanism. Published in 1762, it became one of the most influential works of political philosophy in the Western tradition. It developed some of the ideas mentioned in an earlier work, the article Économie Politique ( Discourse on Political Economy ), featured in Diderot 's Encyclopédie. The treatise begins with the dramatic opening lines, `` Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains. Those who think themselves the masters of others are indeed greater slaves than they. '' 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. As society developed, the division of labor and private property required the human race to adopt institutions of law. In the degenerate phase of society, man is prone to be in frequent competition with his fellow men while also becoming increasingly dependent on them. This double pressure threatens both his survival and his freedom. According to Rousseau, by joining together into civil society through the social contract and abandoning their claims of natural right, individuals can both preserve themselves and remain free. This is because submission to the authority of the general will of the people as a whole guarantees individuals against being subordinated to the wills of others and also ensures that they obey themselves because they are, collectively, the authors of the law. Although Rousseau argues that sovereignty ( or the power to make the laws ) should be in the hands of the people, he also makes a sharp distinction between the sovereign and the government. The government is composed of magistrates, charged with implementing and enforcing the general will. The `` sovereign '' is 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 ( Book III, Chapter XV ). He approved the kind of republican government of the city - state, for which Geneva provided a model -- or would have done if renewed on Rousseau 's principles. France could not meet Rousseau 's criterion of an ideal state because it was too big. Much subsequent controversy about Rousseau 's work has hinged on disagreements concerning his claims that citizens constrained to obey the general will are thereby rendered free : The notion of the general will is wholly central to Rousseau 's theory of political legitimacy.... It is, however, an unfortunately obscure and controversial notion. Some commentators see it as no more than the dictatorship of the proletariat or the tyranny of the urban poor ( such as may perhaps be seen in the French Revolution ). Such was not Rousseau 's meaning. This is clear from the Discourse on Political Economy, where Rousseau emphasizes that the general will exists to protect individuals against the mass, not to require them to be sacrificed to it. He is, of course, sharply aware that men have selfish and sectional interests which will lead them to try to oppress others. It is for this reason that loyalty to the good of all alike must be a supreme ( although not exclusive ) commitment by everyone, not only if a truly general will is to be heeded but also if it is to be formulated successfully in the first place ``. Education and child rearing Jean - Jacques Rousseau on a Romanian stamp, 1962 Main article : Emile, or On Education The noblest work in education is to make a reasoning man, and we expect to train a young child by making him reason ! This is beginning at the end ; this is making an instrument of a result. If children understood how to reason they would not need to be educated. -- Rousseau, Emile Rousseau 's philosophy of education concerns itself not with particular techniques of imparting information and concepts, but rather with developing the pupil 's character and moral sense, so that he may learn to practice self - mastery and remain virtuous even in the unnatural and imperfect society in which he will have to live. The hypothetical boy, Émile, is to be raised in the countryside, which, Rousseau believes, is a more natural and healthy environment than the city, under the guardianship of a tutor who will guide him through various learning experiences arranged by the tutor. Today we would call this the disciplinary method of `` natural consequences ''. Rousseau felt that children learn right and wrong through experiencing the consequences of their acts rather than through physical punishment. The tutor will make sure that no harm results to Émile through his learning experiences. Rousseau became an early advocate of developmentally appropriate education ; his description of the stages of child development mirrors his conception of the evolution of culture. He divides childhood into stages : the first to the age of about 12, when children are guided by their emotions and impulses during the second stage, from 12 to about 16, reason starts to develop finally the third stage, from the age of 16 onwards, when the child develops into an adult Rousseau recommends that the young adult learn a manual skill such as carpentry, which requires creativity and thought, will keep him out of trouble, and will supply a fallback means of making a living in the event of a change of fortune ( the most illustrious aristocratic youth to have been educated this way may have been Louis XVI, whose parents had him learn the skill of locksmithing ). The sixteen - year - old is also ready to have a companion of the opposite sex. Although his ideas foreshadowed modern ones in many ways, in one way they do not : Rousseau was a believer in the moral superiority of the patriarchal family on the antique Roman model. Sophie, the young woman Émile is destined to marry, as his representative of ideal womanhood, is educated to be governed by her husband while Émile, as his representative of the ideal man, is educated to be self - governing. This is not an accidental feature of Rousseau 's educational and political philosophy ; it is essential to his account of the distinction between private, personal relations and the public world of political relations. The private sphere as Rousseau imagines it depends on the subordination of women, in order for both it and the public political sphere ( upon which it depends ) to function as Rousseau imagines it could and should. Rousseau anticipated the modern idea of the bourgeois nuclear family, with the mother at home taking responsibility for the household and for childcare and early education. Feminists, beginning in the late 18th century with Mary Wollstonecraft in 1792 have criticized Rousseau for his confinement of women to the domestic sphere -- unless women were domesticated and constrained by modesty and shame, he feared `` men would be tyrannized by women... For, given the ease with which women arouse men 's senses -- men would finally be their victims... '' His contemporaries saw it differently because Rousseau thought that mothers should breastfeed their children. Marmontel wrote that his wife thought, `` One must forgive something, '' she said, `` in one who has taught us to be mothers. '' Rousseau 's ideas have influenced progressive `` child - centered '' education. John Darling 's 1994 book Child - Centered Education and its Critics portrays the history of modern educational theory as a series of footnotes to Rousseau, a development he regards as bad. Good or bad, the theories of educators such as Rousseau 's near contemporaries Pestalozzi, Mme. de Genlis and, later, Maria Montessori and John Dewey, which have directly influenced modern educational practices, do have significant points in common with those of Rousseau. Religion Having converted to Roman Catholicism early in life and returned to the austere Calvinism of his native Geneva as part of his period of moral reform, Rousseau maintained a profession of that religious philosophy and of John Calvin as a modern lawgiver throughout the remainder of his life. His views on religion presented in his works of philosophy, however, may strike some as discordant with the doctrines of both Catholicism and Calvinism. At the time, however, Rousseau 's strong endorsement of religious toleration, as expounded by the Savoyard vicar in Émile, was interpreted as advocating indifferentism, a heresy, and led to the condemnation of the book in both Calvinist Geneva and Catholic Paris. Although he praised the Bible he was disgusted by the Christianity of his day. His assertion in The Social Contract that true followers of Jesus would not make good citizens may have been another reason for Rousseau 's condemnation in Geneva. Unlike many of the more radical Enlightenment philosophers, Rousseau affirmed the necessity of religion. But he repudiated the doctrine of original sin, which plays so large a part in Calvinism ( in On Philosophy, Morality, and Religion, Rousseau writes `` there is no original perversity in the human heart '' ). In the 18th century, many deists viewed God merely as an abstract and impersonal creator of the universe, which they likened to a giant machine. Rousseau 's deism differed from the usual kind in its intense emotionality. He saw the presence of God in his creation, including mankind, which, apart from the harmful influence of society, is good, because God is good. Rousseau 's attribution of a spiritual value to the beauty of nature anticipates the attitudes of 19th - century Romanticism towards nature and religion. Rousseau was upset that his deistic views were so forcefully condemned, while those of the more atheistic philosophes were ignored. He defended himself against critics of his religious views in his `` Letter to Christophe de Beaumont, the Archbishop of Paris in which he insists that freedom of discussion in religious matters is essentially more religious than the attempt to impose belief by force. '' Legacy This section may be unbalanced towards certain viewpoints. Please improve the article by adding information on neglected viewpoints, or discuss the issue on the talk page. ( September 2011 ) Bicentenary of Rousseau 's birth ( plaque ), Geneva, 28 June 1912, Jean - Jacques, aime ton pays ( love your country ), showing Rousseau 's father gesturing towards the window. The scene is drawn from a footnote to the Letter to d'Alembert where Rousseau recalls witnessing the popular celebrations following the exercises of the St Gervais regiment. General will Rousseau 's idea of the volonté générale ( `` general will '' ) was not original with him but rather belonged to a well - established technical vocabulary of juridical and theological writings in use at the time. The phrase was used by Diderot and also by Montesquieu ( and by his teacher, the Oratorian friar Nicolas Malebranche ). It served to designate the common interest embodied in legal tradition, as distinct from and transcending people 's private and particular interests at any particular time. It displayed a rather democratic ideology, as it declared that the citizens of a given nation should carry out whatever actions they deem necessary in their own sovereign assembly. The concept was also an important aspect of the more radical 17th - century republican tradition of Spinoza, from whom Rousseau differed in important respects, but not in his insistence on the importance of equality : While Rousseau 's notion of the progressive moral degeneration of mankind from the moment civil society established itself diverges markedly from Spinoza 's claim that human nature is always and everywhere the same... for both philosophers the pristine equality of the state of nature is our ultimate goal and criterion... in shaping the `` common good '', volonté générale, or Spinoza 's mens una, which alone can ensure stability and political salvation. Without the supreme criterion of equality, the general will would indeed be meaningless. (... ) When in the depths of the French Revolution the Jacobin clubs all over France regularly deployed Rousseau when demanding radical reforms. and especially anything -- such as land redistribution -- designed to enhance equality, they were at the same time, albeit unconsciously, invoking a radical tradition which reached back to the late seventeenth century. French Revolution Robespierre and Saint - Just, during the Reign of Terror, regarded themselves to be principled egalitarian republicans, obliged to do away with superfluities and corruption ; in this they were inspired most prominently by Rousseau. According to Robespierre, the deficiencies in individuals were rectified by upholding the ' common good ' which he conceptualized as the collective will of the people ; this idea was derived from Rousseau 's General Will. The revolutionaries were also inspired by Rousseau to introduce Deism as the new official civil religion of France : Ceremonial and symbolic occurrences of the more radical phases of the Revolution invoked Rousseau and his core ideas. Thus the ceremony held at the site of the demolished Bastille, organized by the foremost artistic director of the Revolution, Jacques - Louis David, in August 1793 to mark the inauguration of the new republican constitution, an event coming shortly after the final abolition of all forms of feudal privilege, featured a cantata based on Rousseau 's democratic pantheistic deism as expounded in the celebrated `` Profession de foi d'un vicaire savoyard '' in Book Four of Émile. Effect on the United states of America According to some scholars, Rousseau exercised minimal influence on the American founders like Thomas Jefferson despite the similarities between their ideas, such as shared beliefs regarding the self - evidence of the claim that `` all men are created equal, '' their shared conviction that citizens of a republic be educated at public expense, and the evident parallel between the United States Constitution framers ' concept of the `` general welfare '' and Rousseau 's concept of the `` general will '' ; and the parallels between Jeffersonian democracy, and Rousseau 's praise of Switzerland and Corsica 's economies of isolated and self - sufficient independent homesteads and his endorsement of a well - regulated citizen militia, such as those of the Swiss cantons. However, Will and Ariel Durant have opined that Rousseau had definite political influence on America. According to the Durants : The first sign of ( Rousseau 's ) political influence was in the wave of public sympathy that supported active French aid to the American Revolution. Jefferson derived the Declaration of Independence from Rousseau as well as from Locke and Montesquieu. As ambassador to France ( 1785 -- 89 ) he absorbed much from both Voltaire and Rousseau... The success of the American Revolution raised the prestige of Rousseau 's philosophy. One of Rousseau 's most important American followers was textbook - writer Noah Webster ( 1758 -- 1843 ), who was influenced by Rousseau 's ideas on pedagogy in Emile ( 1762 ). Webster structured his Speller in accord with Rousseau 's ideas about the stages of a child 's intellectual development. Rousseau 's writings perhaps had an indirect influence on American literature through the writings of Wordsworth and Kant, whose works were important to the New England Transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson, as well as on such Unitarians as theologian William Ellery Channing. American novelist James Fennimore Cooper 's Last of the Mohicans and other novels reflect republican and egalitarian ideals present alike in Thomas Paine and in English Romantic primitivism. Criticisms of Rousseau A portrait of Rousseau in later life The first to criticize Rousseau were his fellow Philosophes, above all, Voltaire. According to Jacques Barzun, Voltaire was annoyed by the first discourse, and outraged by the second. Voltaire 's reading of the second discourse was that Rousseau would like the reader to `` walk on all fours '' befitting a savage. Samuel Johnson told Boswell, `` I think him one of the worst of men ; a rascal, who ought to be hunted out of society, as he has been ''. Jean - Baptiste Blanchard was his leading Catholic opponent. Blanchard rejects Rousseau 's negative education, in which one must wait until a child has grown to develop reason. The child would find more benefit from learning in his earliest years. He also disagreed with his ideas about female education, declaring that women are a dependent lot. So removing them from their motherly path is unnatural, as it would lead to the unhappiness of both men and women. Barzun states that, contrary to myth, Rousseau was no primitivist ; for him : The model man is the independent farmer, free of superiors and self - governing. This was cause enough for the philosophes ' hatred of their former friend. Rousseau 's unforgivable crime was his rejection of the graces and luxuries of civilized existence. Voltaire had sung `` The superfluous, that most necessary thing. '' For the high bourgeois standard of living Rousseau would substitute the middling peasant 's. It was the country versus the city -- an exasperating idea for them, as was the amazing fact that every new work of Rousseau 's was a huge success, whether the subject was politics, theater, education, religion, or a novel about love. As early as 1788, Madame de Staël published her Letters on the works and character of J. - J. Rousseau. In 1819, in his famous speech `` On Ancient and Modern Liberty '', the political philosopher Benjamin Constant, a proponent of constitutional monarchy and representative democracy, criticized Rousseau, or rather his more radical followers ( specifically the Abbé de Mably ), for allegedly believing that `` everything should give way to collective will, and that all restrictions on individual rights would be amply compensated by participation in social power. '' Frederic Bastiat severely criticized Rousseau in several of his works, most notably in `` The Law '', in which, after analyzing Rousseau 's own passages, he stated that : And what part do persons play in all this ? They are merely the machine that is set in motion. In fact, are they not merely considered to be the raw material of which the machine is made ? Thus the same relationship exists between the legislator and the prince as exists between the agricultural expert and the farmer ; and the relationship between the prince and his subjects is the same as that between the farmer and his land. How high above mankind, then, has this writer on public affairs been placed ? Bastiat strongly believed that Rousseau wished to ignore those forms of social order, that are created by people themselves, as people are just a thoughtless mass for philosophers to shape. Bastiat, who is considered by the thinkers associated with the Austrian School of Economics to be one of the precursors of the `` spontaneous order '', presented his own vision of what he considered to be the `` Natural Order ''. He presented a simple economic chain in which multiple parties who might live in different states and most likely will not even know each other, cooperate and fulfill each other 's needs in accordance with the basic economic laws, such as the laws of supply and demand. In such a chain, in order to produce clothing, multiple parties have to act independently - from the farmers who fertilize and cultivate the land in order to produce fodder for the sheep, another person has to shear them, several different persons have to transport the wool, turn it into cloth, and yet another have to tailor it and sell. Those persons engage in economic exchange by nature, and they do n't need to be ordered to, nor do their efforts need to be centrally coordinated. Such chains are present in every branch of human activity, in which individuals produce or exchange goods and services, and together, naturally create a very complex social order that does not require external inspiration, central coordination of efforts, or any form of bureaucratic control to benefit the society as a whole. This, according to Bastiat, is a proof that humanity itself is capable of creating a complex socioeconomic order that might, and most likely is, superior to an arbitrary vision of a philosopher. Bastiat also believed that Rousseau contradicted himself when presenting his views concerning the human nature - if nature is `` sufficiently invincible to regain its empire '', why then would it need philosophers to direct it back to what is natural ? Conversely, he believed that the humanity, in accordance with the natural instincts, would choose what it would have chosen if left alone, in accordance with the laws of economy and human nature itself. Another point of criticism raised by Bastiat was whether men can be better off in the state of nature, working in isolation. Bastiat provided an example of a day laborer of his time, who, thanks to the division of labor in a free society, can easily obtain several pieces of clothing, bread, a cot, and a shelter. The division of labor, which leaves some men producing cots, others bread, and yet others building shelters, benefits him more than having to go through the pain of obtaining all these things alone, without cooperation. As such, Bastiat concluded, returning to the illusionary `` state of nature '', by which, in economic sense, Rousseau means essentially the isolation of efforts, would doom mankind and force it to suffer unncesessary hardships. Rousseau 's sociological and political concepts in the Discourse on Inequality and The Social Contract, such as the state of nature, civilization being the catalyst for corruption and evil, and humans `` signing '' a contract to mutually give up freedoms for the protection of rights, were in part implicitly parodied by and inspiration for the Marquis de Sade, particularly in Justine, or the Misfortunes of Virtue ( 1791 ). The Comte de Gernande in Justine, for instance, after Thérèse asks him how he justifies abusing and torturing women, states : The necessity mutually to render one another happy can not legitimately exist save between two persons equally furnished with the capacity to do one another hurt and, consequently, between two persons of commensurate strength : such an association can never come into being unless a contract ( un pacte ) is immediately formed between these two persons, which obligates each to employ against each other no kind of force but what will not be injurious to either... ( W ) hat sort of a fool would the stronger have to be in order to subscribe to such an agreement ? Edmund Burke formed an unfavorable impression of Rousseau when the latter visited England with Hume and later drew a connection between Rousseau 's egoistic philosophy and his personal vanity, saying Rousseau `` entertained no principle... but vanity. With this vice he was possessed to a degree little short of madness ''. In 1919, Irving Babbitt, founder of a movement called the `` New Humanism '', wrote a critique of what he called `` sentimental humanitarianism '', for which he blamed Rousseau. Babbitt 's depiction of Rousseau was countered in a celebrated and much reprinted essay by A.O. Lovejoy in 1923. In France, fascist theorist Charles Maurras, founder of Action Française, `` had no compunctions in laying the blame for both Romantisme et Révolution firmly on Rousseau in 1922. '' During the Cold War, Rousseau was criticized for his association with nationalism and its attendant abuses, for example in Talmon, Jacob Leib ( 1952 ), The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy. This came to be known among scholars as the `` totalitarian thesis ''. Political scientist J.S. Maloy states that `` the twentieth century added Nazism and Stalinism to Jacobinism on the list of horrors for which Rousseau could be blamed. (... ) Rousseau was considered to have advocated just the sort of invasive tampering with human nature which the totalitarian regimes of mid-century had tried to instantiate. '' But he adds that `` The totalitarian thesis in Rousseau studies has, by now, been discredited as an attribution of real historical influence. '' Arthur Melzer, however, while conceding that Rousseau would not have approved of modern nationalism, observes that his theories do contain the `` seeds of nationalism '', insofar as they set forth the `` politics of identification '', which are rooted in sympathetic emotion. Melzer also believes that in admitting that people 's talents are unequal, Rousseau therefore tacitly condones the tyranny of the few over the many. Others counter, however, that Rousseau was concerned with the concept of equality under the law, not equality of talents. For Stephen T. Engel, on the other hand, Rousseau 's nationalism anticipated modern theories of `` imagined communities '' that transcend social and religious divisions within states. On similar grounds, one of Rousseau 's strongest critics during the second half of the 20th century was political philosopher Hannah Arendt. Using Rousseau 's thought as an example, Arendt identified the notion of sovereignty with that of the general will. According to her, it was this desire to establish a single, unified will based on the stifling of opinion in favor of public passion that contributed to the excesses of the French Revolution. Appreciation and influence The book Rousseau and Revolution, by Will and Ariel Durant, begins with the following words about Rousseau : How did it come about that a man born poor, losing his mother at birth and soon deserted by his father, afflicted with a painful and humiliating disease, left to wander for twelve years among alien cities and conflicting faiths, repudiated by society and civilization, repudiating Voltaire, Diderot, the Encyclopédie and the Age of Reason, driven from place to place as a dangerous rebel, suspected of crime and insanity, and seeing, in his last months, the apotheosis of his greatest enemy -- how did it come about that this man, after his death, triumphed over Voltaire, revived religion, transformed education, elevated the morals of France, inspired the Romantic movement and the French Revolution, influenced the philosophy of Kant and Schopenhauer, the plays of Schiller, the novels of Goethe, the poems of Wordsworth, Byron, and Shelley, the socialism of Marx, the ethics of Tolstoy, and, altogether, had more effect upon posterity than any other writer or thinker of that eighteenth century in which writers were more influential than they had ever been before ? The German writers Goethe, Schiller, and Herder have stated that Rousseau 's writings inspired them. Herder regarded Rousseau to be his `` guide '', and Schiller compared Rousseau to Socrates. Goethe, in 1787, stated : `` Emile and its sentiments had a universal influence on the cultivated mind. '' The elegance of Rousseau 's writing is held to have inspired a significant transformation in French poetry and drama -- freeing them from rigid literary norms. Other writers who were influenced by Rousseau 's writings included Leopardi in Italy ; Pushkin and Tolstoy in Russia ; Wordsworth, Southey, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, and Keats in England ; and Hawthorne and Thoreau in America. According to Tolstoy : `` At fifteen I carried around my neck, instead of the usual cross, a medallion with Rousseau 's portrait. '' Rousseau 's Discourse on the Arts and Sciences, emphasizing individualism and repudiating `` civilization '', was appreciated by, among others, Thomas Paine, William Godwin, Shelley, Tolstoy, and Edward Carpenter. Rousseau 's contemporary Voltaire appreciated the section in Emile titled Profession of Faith of the Savoyard Vicar. Modern admirers of Rousseau include John Dewey and Claude Lévi - Strauss. According to Matthew Josephson, Rousseau has remained controversial for more than two centuries, and has continued to gain admirers and critics down to the present time. However, in their own way, both critics and admirers have served to underscore the significance of the man, while those who have evaluated him with fairness have agreed that he was the finest thinker of his time on the question of civilization. Composer Rousseau was a successful composer of music, who wrote seven operas as well as music in other forms, and made contributions to music as a theorist. As a composer, his music was a blend of the late Baroque style and the emergent Classical fashion, and he belongs to the same generation of transitional composers as Christoph Willibald Gluck and C.P.E. Bach. One of his more well - known works is the one - act opera Le devin du village, containing the duet `` Non, Colette n'est point trompeuse '' which was later rearranged as a standalone song by Beethoven. He also composed several noted motets, some of which were sung at the Concert Spirituel in Paris. Music of piece Avril, p. 2 Works : Le Devin du village ( 1752 ) - opera in 1 act Salve Regina ( 1752 ) - antiphone Pygmalion ( 1762 ) - melodrama Avril - aire a poesía de Rémy Belleau Les consolations Daphnis et Chloé Que le jour me dure ! Works Major works Dissertation sur la musique moderne, 1736 Discourse on the Arts and Sciences ( Discours sur les sciences et les arts ), 1750 Narcissus, or The Self - Admirer : A Comedy, 1752 Le devin du village : an opera, 1752, `` score '' ( PDF ). ( 21.7 MB ) Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men ( Discours sur l'origine et les fondements de l'inégalité parmi les hommes ), 1754 Discourse on Political Economy, 1755 Letter to M. D'Alembert on Spectacles, 1758 ( Lettre à d'Alembert sur les spectacles ) Julie, or the New Heloise ( Julie, ou la nouvelle Héloïse ), 1761 Emile, or On Education ( Émile, ou de l'éducation ), 1762 The Creed of a Savoyard Priest, 1762 ( in Émile ) The Social Contract, or Principles of Political Right ( Du contrat social ), 1762 Four Letters to M. de Malesherbes, 1762 Pygmalion : a Lyric Scene, 1762 Letters Written from the Mountain, 1764 ( Lettres de la montagne ) Confessions of Jean - Jacques Rousseau ( Les Confessions ), 1770, published 1782 Constitutional Project for Corsica, 1772 Considerations on the Government of Poland, 1772 Letters on the Elements of Botany Essay on the Origin of Languages, published 1781 ( Essai sur l'origine des langues ) Dialogues : Rousseau, Judge of Jean - Jacques, published 1782 Reveries of a Solitary Walker, incomplete, published 1782 ( Rêveries du promeneur solitaire ) Editions in English Basic Political Writings, trans. Donald A. Cress. Indianapolis : Hackett Publishing, 1987. Collected Writings, ed. Roger Masters and Christopher Kelly, Dartmouth : University Press of New England, 1990 -- 2010, 13 vols. The Confessions, trans. Angela Scholar. Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2000. Emile, or On Education, trans. with an introd. by Allan Bloom, New York : Basic Books, 1979. `` On the Origin of Language '', trans. John H. Moran. In On the Origin of Language : Two Essays. Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1986. Reveries of a Solitary Walker, trans. Peter France. London : Penguin Books, 1980. ' The Discourses ' and Other Early Political Writings, trans. Victor Gourevitch. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1997. ' The Social Contract ' and Other Later Political Writings, trans. Victor Gourevitch. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1997. ' The Social Contract, trans. Maurice Cranston. Penguin : Penguin Classics Various Editions, 1968 -- 2007. The Political writings of Jean - Jacques Rousseau, edited from the original MCS and authentic editions with introduction and notes by C.E. Vaughan, Blackwell, Oxford, 1962. ( In French but the introduction and notes are in English ). Rousseau on Women, Love, and Family ( 2009 ), an anthology of Rosseau 's writings some of which were translated by the editors for this volume See also Switzerland portal French and Francophone literature portal Biography portal Anarchism Anarcho - primitivism Eat the Rich ( disambiguation ), a saying attributed to Rousseau Georges Hébert, a physical culturist influenced by Rousseau 's teachings Let them eat cake, a saying of Rousseau 's List of abolitionist forerunners Rousseau Institute Rousseau 's educational philosophy Schutterij -- civil militia External links Works by Jean - Jacques Rousseau at Project Gutenberg Works by or about Jean - Jacques Rousseau at Internet Archive Works by Jean - Jacques Rousseau at LibriVox ( public domain audiobooks ) A Discourse on the Moral Effects of the Arts and Sciences English translation Confessions of Jean - Jacques Rousseau English translation, as published by Project Gutenberg, 2004 ( EBook # 3913 ) Considerations on the Government of Poland English translation Constitutional Project for Corsica English translation Discourse on Political Economy English translation Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men English translation The Social Contract, Or Principles of Political Right English translation ' Elementary Letters on Botany ', 1771 -- 3 at the Internet Archive PDF ( 4.23 MB ) English translation Full Ebooks of Rousseau in French on the website ' La philosophie ' Mondo Politico Library 's presentation of Jean - Jacques Rousseau 's book, The Social Contract ( G.D.H. Cole translation ; full text ) Narcissus, or The Self - Admirer : A Comedy English translation Project Concerning New Symbols for Music at the Wayback Machine ( archived 20 December 2008 ) French text and English translation, archived from the original on 2008 - 12 - 20 ( in French ) Texts of J. - J. Rousseau and biography at athena.unige.ch ( in French ) Full Text of J. - J. Rousseau Notes Jump up ^ And indeed, a British visitor commented, ' Even the lower class of people ( of Geneva ) are exceedingly well informed, and there is perhaps no city in Europe where learning is more universally diffused ' ; another at mid-century noticed that Genevan workmen were fond of reading the works of Locke and Montesquieu. -- Leo Damrosch Jump up ^ Rousseau 's biographer Leo Damrosch believes that the authorities chose to condemn him on religious rather than political grounds for tactical reasons. Jump up ^ My present fame is owing to a very trifling composition, but which has made incredible noise. I was one evening at Mme Geoffrin 's joking on Rousseau 's affectations and contradictions, and said some things that diverted them. When I came home I put them in a letter, and showed it next day to Helvetius and the Duc de Nivernois ; who were so pleased with it that, after telling me some faults in the language,... they encouraged me to let it be seen. As you know, I willingly laugh at mountebanks, political or literary, let their talents be ever so great ; I was not averse. The copies have spread like wildfire, et me voice a la mode ( and behold, I am in fashion )... Here is the letter : The King of Prussia to M. Rousseau : My dear Jean Jacques : You have renounced Geneva, your fatherland ; you have had yourself chased from Switzerland, a country so much praised in your writings ; France has issued a warrant against you. Come, then, to me ; I admire your talents ; I am amused by your dreams, which ( be it said in passing ) occupy you too much and too long. You must at last be wise and happy. You have had yourself talked of enough for peculiarities hardly fitting to a truly great man. Show your enemies that you can sometimes have common sense ; this will annoy them without doing you harm. My states offer you a peaceful retreat ; I wish you well, and would like to help you if you can find it good. But if you continue to reject my aid, be assured that I shall tell no one. If you persist in racking your brains to find new misfortunes, choose such as you may desire ; I am king, and can procure any to suit your wishes ; and -- what surely will never happen to you among your enemies -- I shall cease to persecute you when you cease to find your glory in being persecuted. Your good friend, Frederick -- Horace Walpole 's letter to H.S. Conway, dated 12 January 1766 Jump up ^ In those days in Europe the recipient had to pay for the postage for any mail received. Jump up ^ Rousseau 's letter is atrocious ; it is to the last degree extravagant and inexcusable... But do not believe him capable of any falsehood or artifice ; nor imagine that he is either an impostor or a scoundrel. His anger has no just cause, but it is sincere ; of that I feel no doubt. Here is what I imagine to be the cause of it. I have heard it said, and he has perhaps been told, that one of the best phrases in Mr Walpole 's letter was by you, and that you had said in jest, speaking in the name of the King of Prussia, `` If you wish for persecutions, I am a king, and can procure them for you of any sort you like, '' and that Mr Walpole... had said you were its author. If this be true, and Rousseau knows of it, do you wonder that, sensitive, hot - headed, melancholy, and proud,... he has become enraged ? -- Madame de Boufflers 's letter to David Hume, written in 1766 Jump up ^ From that haven of neighborly peace their spirits rose to renew their war for the soul of the Revolution, of France, and of Western man -- Will and Ariel Durant. Jump up ^ Some writers still use the term `` noble savage '' in describing race relations in New France, for example Garraway, Doris, The Libertine Colony, Peabody, Sue, There are No Slaves in France, Dubois, Laurent, The Avengers of the New World, and Miller, Christopher, The French Atlantic Triangle ; for information about the relationship between the French and English colonial contexts, see Festa, Lynn, Sentimental Figures of Empire. Jump up ^ In locating the basis of ethics in emotions rather than reason Rousseau agreed with Smith, Adam ( 1759 ), Theory of Moral Sentiments. Jump up ^ Cooper was a follower of Tom Paine, who in turn was an admirer of Rousseau. For the classical origins of American ideals of liberty, see also Sibi Imperiosus : Cooper 's Horatian Ideal of Self - Governance in The Deerslayer, Villa Julie College, July 2005. Jump up ^ Talmon 's thesis is rebutted by Leigh, Ralph A ( 1963 ), `` Liberté et autorité dans le Contrat Social '', Jean - Jacques Rousseau et son oeuvre ( Jean - Jacques Rousseau & his work ) ( in French ), Paris. Another tenacious proponent of the totalitarian thesis was Crocker, Lester C ( 1968 ), Rousseau 's Social Contract, An interpretive Essay, Cleveland : Case Western Reserve Press. Two reviews of the debate are : Chapman, J.W. ( 1968 ), Rousseau : Totalitarian or Liberal ?, New York : AMS Press and Fralin, Richard ( 1978 ), Rousseau and Representation, NY : Columbia University Press. Jump up ^ For more than two centuries since Rousseau 's writings were first published, controversy over the man and his ideas has continued virtually unabated. In their diverse ways his admirers and his opponents both have affirmed his importance in world history : the supporting party has seen him as the Friend of Man, the prophet of the new democratic ages that were to come after him, and one of the fathers of the French Revolution ; his antagonists have pronounced him as a dangerous heretic who scorned organized religion, and as the inspirer of romanticism in literature and an unbridled libertarianism in politics. Indeed, they have somehow attributed to him the origin of many of the alleged evils of modern times, ranging from the restiveness of `` hippie '' youth to the rigors of totalitarian societies. However, those who have tried to judge Rousseau fairly have generally agreed that among the philosophical writers of his century he was the one who stated the problem of civilization with more clarity and force than any of his contemporaries... His works as a moralist and political philosopher influenced and fascinated minds as different as those of Hume, Kant, Goethe, Byron, Schiller, and, in recent times, the American behaviorist philosopher John Dewey. New opponents of conservative bias have continued to write against him in the present century, but he has also won new admirers, such as the great French anthropologist Claude Lévi - Strauss. -- Matthew Josephson, in his introduction to The Essential Rousseau References Jump up ^ Webster, `` Rousseau '', Random House Webster 's Unabridged Dictionary, Random House Jump up ^ `` Preromanticism Criticism ''. Enotes. Retrieved 23 February 2009. Jump up ^ Darnton, Robert, `` 6. Readers Respond to Rousseau : The Fabrication of Romantic Sensitivity '', The Great Cat Massacre for some interesting examples of contemporary reactions to this novel. ^ Jump up to : Damrosch 2005. Jump up ^ Damrosch, Leo ( 2005 - 10 - 30 ). `` Jean - Jacques Rousseau ''. The New York Times. ISSN 0362 - 4331. Retrieved 2016 - 12 - 22. ^ Jump up to : Damrosch 2005, p. 31. Jump up ^ Damrosch 2005, p. 24. Jump up ^ Damrosch 2005, p. 121. Jump up ^ Damrosch 2005, p. 168 : the count was `` a virtual parody of a parasitic aristocrat, incredibly stupid, irascible, and swollen with self importance. '' He spoke no Italian, a language in which Rousseau was fluent. Although Rousseau did most of the work of the embassy, he was treated like a valet. Jump up ^ Some of Rousseau 's contemporaries believed the babies were not his. George Sand has written an essai, `` Les Charmettes '' ( 1865. Printed in the same volume as `` Laura '' from the same year ) in which she explains why Rousseau may have accused himself falsely. She quotes her grandmother, in whose family Rousseau had been a tutor, and who stated that Rousseau could not get children. Jump up ^ Rousseau in his musical articles in the Encyclopédie engaged in lively controversy with other musicians, e.g. with Rameau, as in his article on Temperament, for which see Encyclopédie : Tempérament ( English translation ), also Temperament Ordinaire. Jump up ^ Zirkle, Conway ( 25 April 1941 ), `` Natural Selection before the Origin of Species '', Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia : American Philosophical Society, 84 ( 1 ) : 71 -- 123, doi : 10.2307 / 984852 ( inactive 2017 - 10 - 11 ), JSTOR 984852 Jump up ^ Damrosch 2005, p. 304. Jump up ^ Damrosch 2005, p. 357. Jump up ^ Rosenblatt, Helena ( 1997 ). Rousseau and Geneva : from the first discourse to the social contract, 1749 -- 1762. Cambridge University Press. pp. 264 -- 65. ISBN 0 - 521 - 57004 - 2. Jump up ^ `` Protestantism in Geneva ''. Blackwood 's magazine. 51 : 165. 1842. Jump up ^ Peter Gay, The Enlightenment, The Science of Freedom, p. 72. ^ Jump up to : Durant & Durant 1967, p. 190. ^ Jump up to : Durant & Durant 1967, p. 191. Jump up ^ Durant & Durant 1967, p. 192. ^ Jump up to : Durant & Durant 1967, p. 205. ^ Jump up to : Durant & Durant 1967, p. 206. Jump up ^ Damrosch 2005, p. 392. Jump up ^ Damrosch 2005, p. 393. Jump up ^ Maurice Cranston ( 2005 ). The Solitary Self : Jean - Jacques Rousseau in Exile and Adversity. University of Chicago Press. p. 113. Jump up ^ Damrosch 2005, p. 394. ^ Jump up to : Damrosch 2005, p. 395. ^ Jump up to : Durant & Durant 1967, p. 207. Jump up ^ Damrosch 2005, p. 404. Jump up ^ Damrosch 2005, p. 405. ^ Jump up to : Damrosch 2005, p. 406. ^ Jump up to : Durant & Durant 1967, p. 208. ^ Jump up to : Damrosch 2005, p. 420. ^ Jump up to : Damrosch 2005, p. 421. ^ Jump up to : Durant & Durant 1967, p. 209. ^ Jump up to : Damrosch 2005, p. 407. Jump up ^ Damrosch 2005, p. 408. ^ Jump up to : Damrosch 2005, p. 409. ^ Jump up to : Durant & Durant 1967, p. 210. ^ Jump up to : Damrosch 2005, p. 410. Jump up ^ Damrosch 2005, p. 411. ^ Jump up to : Durant & Durant 1967, p. 211. ^ Jump up to : Durant & Durant 1967, p. 212. Jump up ^ Damrosch 2005, p. 412. ^ Jump up to : Damrosch 2005, p. 419. ^ Jump up to : Durant & Durant 1967, p. 213. Jump up ^ Damrosch 2005, p. 418. Jump up ^ Damrosch 2005, p. 431. ^ Jump up to : Durant & Durant 1967, p. 214. Jump up ^ Damrosch 2005, p. 426. ^ Jump up to : Damrosch 2005, p. 427. Jump up ^ `` The manuscripts, Letter from Andrew Millar to Andrew Mitchell, 26 August 1766. Andrew Millar Project. University of Edinburgh ''. www.millar-project.ed.ac.uk. Retrieved 2016 - 06 - 02. Jump up ^ Damrosch 2005, p. 447. Jump up ^ Durant & Durant 1967, p. 881. ^ Jump up to : Durant & Durant 1967, p. 882. Jump up ^ Damrosch 2005, p. 448. Jump up ^ Damrosch 2005, p. 451. Jump up ^ Damrosch 2005, p. 452. Jump up ^ Damrosch 2005, p. 453. Jump up ^ Damrosch 2005, p. 454. ^ Jump up to : Damrosch 2005, p. 455. Jump up ^ Rousseau and Thérèse le Vasseur were not legally married nor married in church. A faux marriage took place instead in Bourgoin in 1768. Rousseau himself writes in his Confessions : ``... je lui ai déclaré que je ne l'épouserais jamais ; et même un mariage public nous eut été impossible à cause de la différence de religion... '' Eyewitnesses have declared that he did n't even use his own name, but `` Renou, '' which was his alias when he was on the run. He neither conformed to the official formalities of a legal marriage. There were two `` witnesses '' present : mr. de Champagneux, mayor of Bourgoin en a Mr. de Rosières, both were artillery officers ( Musset - Pathay, V. - D. : Histoire de J.J. Rousseau, Bruxelles 1827 ). Read more at : http://www.notablebiographies.com/Ro-Sc/Rousseau-Jean-Jacques.html#Comments_form#ixzz3qcpQYMYt Jump up ^ Damrosch 2005, p. 456. Jump up ^ Damrosch 2005, p. 462. Jump up ^ Damrosch 2005, p. 463. Jump up ^ Damrosch 2005, p. 464. ^ Jump up to : Durant & Durant 1967, p. 883. Jump up ^ Damrosch 2005, p. 465. Jump up ^ Jean Jacques Rousseau and ( trans. ) Thomas Martyn ( 2015 ). Letters on the Elements of Botany : Addressed to a Lady. Cambridge University Press. Jump up ^ Damrosch 2005, p. 472. ^ Jump up to : Damrosch 2005, p. 474. Jump up ^ Damrosch 2005, p. 475. ^ Jump up to : Damrosch 2005, p. 476. Jump up ^ Durant & Durant 1967, p. 885. ^ Jump up to : Durant & Durant 1967, p. 886. Jump up ^ Victor Gourevitch, ed. ( 1997 ). Rousseau : ' The Social Contract ' and Other Later Political Writings. Cambridge University Press. p. ix. ISBN 978 - 0 - 521 - 42446 - 2. Jump up ^ Damrosch 2005, p. 477. Jump up ^ Damrosch 2005, p. 478. Jump up ^ Damrosch 2005, p. 479. Jump up ^ Damrosch 2005, p. 480. Jump up ^ Bruce, Alexander, ed. ( 1908 ). Review of Neurology and Psychiatry, Volume 6. T.N. Foulis. p. 437. ^ Jump up to : Damrosch 2005, p. 467. Jump up ^ Damrosch 2005, p. 485. Jump up ^ Damrosch 2005, p. 486. ^ Jump up to : Damrosch 2005, p. 487. Jump up ^ Damrosch 2005, p. 481. ^ Jump up to : Damrosch 2005, p. 488. ^ Jump up to : Damrosch 2005, p. 489. ^ Jump up to : Durant & Durant 1967, p. 887. Jump up ^ Rousseau, pp. 72 -- 73. Jump up ^ Rousseau 1754, p. 78. Jump up ^ Rousseau, Jean - Jacques ( 1754 ), `` Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, part two '', The Basic Political Writings, Hackett, p. 64 Jump up ^ Rousseau 1754, p. 65. Jump up ^ `` Rousseau 's ' General Will ' & well - ordered society ''. Québecois libre. Jump up ^ An early recorded use in French language of a specific expression explicitly associating the words ' savage ' and ' noble ' is Lescarbot, Marc ( 1609 ), `` Sauvages sont vrayement nobles '', Histoire de la Nouvelle France ( History of the New France ) ( in French ), p. 786,... revenons à notre Nouvelle - France, ou les hommes sont plus humains et ne vivent que de ce que Dieu a donné à l'homme, sans devorer leurs semblables. Aussi faut - il dire d'eux qu'ils sont vrayment Nobles... ' Jump up ^ Lovejoy, Arthur Oncken ( 1960 ) ( 1923, 1948 ), `` The Supposed Primitivism of Rousseau 's Discourse on Inequality '', Essays in the History of Ideas, Baltimore : Johns Hopkins Press Jump up ^ Einaudi, Mario ( 1967 ), The Early Rousseau, Cornell University Press, p. 5, Arthur Lovejoy 's crucial role in dispelling the myth cultivated with such care by many eighteenth - century philosophes Jump up ^ For a history of how the phrase became associated with Rousseau, Ellingson, Ter ( 2001 ), The Myth of the Noble Savage, Berkeley, CA : University of California Press Jump up ^ Babbitt 1919, `` Legacy : Criticisms of Rousseau ''. Jump up ^ Miner, Earl ( 1972 ), `` The Wild Man Through the Looking Glass '', in Dudley, Edward ; Novak, Maximillian E, The Wild Man Within : An Image in Western Thought from the Renaissance to Romanticism, University of Pittsburgh Press, p. 106, ISBN 9780822975991 Jump up ^ Ellingson 2001, pp. 8 and passim. Jump up ^ Gay, Peter ( April -- May 2009 ), `` Breeding is Fundamental '', Book Forum, As far as the noble savage is concerned, that phrase is from Dryden and does not appear in Rousseau 's writings. In the years I taught the history of political theory at Columbia to a sizable class of undergraduates, I would offer students a hundred dollars if they could find `` Noble Savage '' anywhere in Rousseau. I never had to pay up Jump up ^ Einspahr, Jennifer ( 2010 ). `` The Beginning that Never Was : Mediation and Freedom in Rousseau 's Political Thought ''. Review of Politics. 72 ( 3 ) : 437 -- 61. doi : 10.1017 / S0034670510000318. Retrieved 5 March 2015. Jump up ^ Rousseau, `` Book I, Chapter 8 '', Social Contract, Constitution Jump up ^ Ed., Gibney ( 2012 ). Evolutionary philosophy. Lulu Com. p. 147. ISBN 978 - 1105696602. OCLC 936029793. Jump up ^ `` The Abolition of The Slave Trade ''. Abolitionism. NYPL. Jump up ^ Entry, `` Rousseau '' in the Routelege Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Edward Craig, editor, Volume Eight, p. 371 Jump up ^ Jordan, Michael. `` Famous Locksmiths ''. American Chronicle. Archived from the original on 2010 - 08 - 25. Retrieved 14 July 2010. Jump up ^ Wollstonecraft, Mary ( 2004 ) ( 1792 ). `` V ''. In Brody, Miriam. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Penguin. ISBN 978 - 0 - 14 - 144125 - 2. Jump up ^ Tuana, Nancy ( 1993 ). The Less Noble Sex : Scientific, Religious and Philosophical Conceptions of Women 's Nature. Indiana University Press. p. 161. ISBN 0 - 253 - 36098 - 6. Jump up ^ Rousseau, `` book V '', Emile, p. 359 Jump up ^ Damrosch, pp. 341 -- 42. Jump up ^ Marmontel, Jean François ( 1826 ). Memoirs of Marmontel, written by himself : containing his literary and political life, and anecdotes of the principal characters of the eighteenth century. Whittaker via Google Books. pp. 125 -- 26. Jump up ^ Darling, John ( January 1986 ). `` Child ‐ centred, Gender ‐ centred : a criticism of progressive curriculum theory from Rousseau to Plowden ''. Oxford Review of Education. 12 ( 1 ) : 31 -- 40. doi : 10.1080 / 0305498860120103. Jump up ^ R., Curren, Randall ( 2003 ). A companion to the philosophy of education. Blackwell. p. 235. ISBN 978 - 1405140515. OCLC 53333817. Jump up ^ Jean - Jacques Rousseau. Encyclopædia Britannica Jump up ^ `` There remains therefore the religion of man or Christianity -- not the Christianity of to - day, but that of the Gospel, which is entirely different. By means of this holy, sublime, and real religion all men, being children of one God, recognise one another as brothers, and the society that unites them is not dissolved even at death. Book IV, Chapter 8 : Civil Religion Jump up ^ https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=cwINIt5H8i4C&pg=PA170&lpg=PA170&dq=%22there+is+no+original+perversity+in+the+human+heart%22&source=bl&ots=RGFKULIFTE&sig=Bkf1_F-dLqzYKb0ATGwUPfR4rcI&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiw853sm-jZAhWGGuwKHZKQBvYQ6AEIKTAA#v=onepage&q=%22there%20is%20no%20original%20perversity%20in%20the%20human%20heart%22&f=false Jump up ^ The full text of the letter is available online only in the French original : `` Lettre à Mgr De Beaumont Archevêque de Paris ( 1762 ) '' ( PDF ). Archived from the original on 4 July 2007. Retrieved 2007 - 05 - 23. CS1 maint : BOT : original - url status unknown ( link ) Jump up ^ Bertram, Christopher ( 2012 ). Zalta, Edward N., ed. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy ( Winter 2012 ed. ). Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University. Jump up ^ Israel, Jonathan I ( 2002 ), Radical Enlightenment : Philosophy and the Making of Modernity, Oxford University Press, p. 274 Jump up ^ Israel 2002, p. 717. Jump up ^ Schachner, Nathan ( 1957 ), Thomas Jefferson : A Biography, p. 47 Jump up ^ Durant & Durant 1967, p. 890. ^ Jump up to : Durant & Durant 1967, p. 891. Jump up ^ Rollins, Richard ( 1980 ), `` 2 '', The Long Journey of Noah Webster Jump up ^ Temmer, Mark J ( 1961 ), `` Rousseau and Thoreau '', Yale French Studies ( 28 : Jean - Jacques Rousseau ) : 112 -- 21, doi : 10.2307 / 2928950, JSTOR 2928950 Jump up ^ From Dawn to Decadence : 500 Years of Western Cultural Life : 1500 to the Present ( Harper Collins, 2001 ), p. 384 Jump up ^ James Boswell ( 1791 ). The Life of Samuel Johnson. p. 127. Jump up ^ http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02592c.htm Jump up ^ Jacques Barzun, From Dawn to Decadence ( 2001 ) p. 384 Jump up ^ Historical & literary memoirs and anecdotes by Friedrich Melchior Grimm ( Freiherr von ), Denis Diderot, p. 353. ( 1 ) Jump up ^ F. Bastiat, `` The Law '' Jump up ^ Norman Barry, The Tradition of Spontaneous Order Jump up ^ F. Bastiat, The Law Jump up ^ F. Bastiat, The Law Jump up ^ F. Bastiat, Economic Harmonies, p. 65 Jump up ^ Sade, Marquis de, ( 1990 ) ( 1791 ), Justine, Philosophy in the Bedroom, & Other Writings, Grove Press, p. 645 Jump up ^ Burke, Edmund ( 1791 ), A Letter to a Member of the National Assembly Jump up ^ Rousseau and Romanticism, Boston : Houghton Mifflin, 1919 Jump up ^ Lovejoy 1948. Jump up ^ Harvey, R Simon ( 1980 ), Reappraisals of Rousseau : studies in honor of R.A. Leigh, Manchester University press, and mere concern for the facts has not inhibited others from doing likewise. Irving Babbitt 's Rousseau & Romanticism still remains the only general work on this subject though printed as long ago as 1919, but it is grossly inaccurate, discursive and biased Jump up ^ Maloy, J.S. ( 2005 ), `` The Very Order of Things : Rousseau 's Tutorial Republicanism '', Polity, 37 ( 2 ) : 235 -- 61, doi : 10.1057 / palgrave. polity. 2300011 Jump up ^ Melzer, Arthur ( 2000 ), `` Rousseau, Nationalism, and the Politics of Sympathetic Identification '', in Kristol, Mark ; Blitz, William, Educating the Prince : Essays in Honor of Harvey C. Mansfield, Rowman & Littlefield Jump up ^ Engel, Steven T ( Summer 2005 ), `` Rousseau and Imagined Communities '', The Review of Politics, 67 ( 3 ) : 515 -- 37, doi : 10.1017 / s0034670500034690 Jump up ^ Arendt, Hannah ( 1990 ), On revolution, p. 76 Jump up ^ Durant & Durant 1967, p. 3. Jump up ^ Durant & Durant 1967, p. 889. ^ Jump up to : Lowell Bair ( trans ) and Matthew Josephson ( introduction ) ( 1983 ). The Essential Rousseau. Meridian. pp. vii, xvi. Jump up ^ Green, Edward ( 2007 ), `` Reconsidering Rousseau 's ' Le devin du village ' : An Opera of Surprising and Valuable Paradox '' ( PDF ), Ars Lyrica, Ed Green music, 16 : 132, retrieved 17 July 2014 Jump up ^ Jean - Jacques Rousseau, Motets, edited by Jean - Paul C. Montagnier ( Zürich : Société Suisse de musicologie, Édition Kunzelmann, 2009 ) Bibliography Abizadeh, Arash ( 2001 ), `` Banishing the Particular : Rousseau on Rhetoric, Patrie, and the Passions '', Political Theory, 29 ( 4 ) : 556 -- 82, doi : 10.1177 / 0090591701029004005. Babbitt, Irving ( 1991 ) ( 1919 ), Rousseau and Romanticism, Library of Conservative Thought, Edison, NJ : Transaction. Bertram, Christopher ( 2003 ), Rousseau and The Social Contract, London : Routledge. Cassirer, Ernst ( 1945 ), Rousseau, Kant, Goethe, Princeton University Press. -- -- -- ( 1989 ) ( 1935 ), Gay, Peter, ed., The Question of Jean - Jacques Rousseau, Series editor, Jacques Barzun, Yale University Press. Conrad, Felicity ( 2008 ), `` Rousseau Gets Spanked, or, Chomsky 's Revenge '', The Journal of POLI 433, 1 ( 1 ) : 1 -- 24. Cooper, Laurence ( 1999 ). Rousseau, Nature and the Problem of the Good Life. Pennsylvania : Pennsylvania State University Press. Cottret, Monique ; Cottret, Bernard ( 2005 ), Jean - Jacques Rousseau en son temps ( John James Rousseau in his times ) ( in French ), Paris : Perrin. Cranston, Maurice ( 1982 ). Jean - Jacques : The Early Life and Work. New York : Norton. -- -- -- ( 1991 ), `` The Noble Savage '', The Scientific Monthly, Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 36 : 250, Bibcode : 1933SciMo... 36... 250M. -- -- -- ( 1997 ), The Solitary Self, Chicago : University of Chicago Press. Damrosch, Leo ( 2005 ). Jean - Jacques Rousseau : Restless Genius. New York : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. p. 566. ISBN 9780618446964... Dent, Nicholas J.H. ( 1988 ). Rousseau : An Introduction to his Psychological, Social, and Political Theory. Oxford : Blackwell. -- -- -- ( 1992 ), A Rousseau Dictionary, Oxford : Blackwell. -- -- -- ( 2005 ), Rousseau, London : Routledge. Derathé, Robert ( 1948 ). Le Rationalism de J. - J. Rousseau. Press Universitaires de France. Derathé, Robert ( 1988 ) ( 1950 ), Jean - Jacques Rousseau et la Science Politique de Son Temps ( John James Rousseau and the Political Science of his times ) ( in French ), Paris : Vrin. Derrida, Jacques ( 1976 ). Of Grammatology, trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Baltimore : Johns Hopkins Press. Durant, Will ; Durant, Ariel ( 1967 ). The Story of Civilization : Rousseau and revolution ; a history of civilization in France, England, and Germany from 1756, and in the remainder of Europe from 1715 to 1789. 10. Simon and Schuster. p. 1091. Einaudi, Mario ( 1968 ). Early Rousseau. Ithaca : Cornell University Press. Ellingson, Ter ( 2001 ). The Myth of the Noble Savage. Berkeley, CA : University of California Press. Farrell, John ( 2006 ). Paranoia and Modernity : Cervantes to Rousseau. New York : Cornell University Press. Faÿ, Bernard ( 1974 ), Jean - Jacques Rousseau ou le Rêve de la vie ( John James Rousseau or the Dream of life ) ( in French ), Paris : Perrin. Garrard, Graeme ( 2003 ). Rousseau 's Counter-Enlightenment : A Republican Critique of the Philosophes. Albany : State University of New York Press. Gauthier, David ( 2006 ). Rousseau : The Sentiment of Existence. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press. Hendel, Charles W. ( 1934 ). Jean - Jacques Rousseau : Moralist. 2 Vols. ( 1934 ) Indianapolis, IN : Bobbs Merrill. Israel, Jonathan I., Radical Enlightenment : Philosophy and the Making of Modernity, ( Oxford University Press, 2002 ). de Jouvenel, Bertrand ( 1962 ). `` Rousseau the Pessimistic Evolutionist ''. Yale French Studies. 27 : 83 -- 96. Kateb, George ( 1961 ). `` Aspects of Rousseau 's Political Thought '', Political Science Quarterly, December 1961. Kitsikis, Dimitri ( 2006 ). Jean - Jacques Rousseau et les origines françaises du fascisme. Nantes : Ars Magna Editions. LaFreniere, Gilbert F. ( 1990 ). `` Rousseau and the European Roots of Environmentalism. '' Environmental History Review 14 ( No. 4 ) : 41 -- 72 Lange, Lynda ( 2002 ). Feminist Interpretations of Jean - Jacques Rousseau. University Park : Penn State University Press. Lovejoy, Arthur O. ( ( 1923 ) 1948 ). `` The Supposed Primitivism of Rousseau 's ' Discourse on Inequality ' ''. Modern Philology : XXI : 165 -- 86. Reprinted in Essays in the History of Ideas ( Baltimore : Johns Hopkins Press ). `` A classic treatment of the Second Discourse '' -- Nicholas Dent. Maguire, Matthew ( 2006 ). The Conversion of the Imagination : from Pascal through Rousseau to Tocqueville. Harvard University Press. Marks, Jonathan ( 2005 ). Perfection and Disharmony in the Thought of Jean - Jacques Rousseau. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press. Roger Masters ( ed. ), 1964. The First and Second Discourses by Jean - Jacques Rousseau, translated by Roger D Masters and Judith R Masters. New York : St. Martin 's Press. ISBN 0 - 312 - 69440 - 7 Roger Masters, 1968. The Political Philosophy of Rousseau. Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press ( ISBN 978 - 0 - 691 - 01989 - 5 ), also available in French ( ISBN 2 - 84788 - 000 - 3 ). McCarthy, Vincent A ( 2009 ), `` Jean - Jacques Rousseau : Presence and Absence '', in Stewart, Kierkegaard and the Renaissance and Modern Traditions editor - first = Jon, Farnham : Ashgate, ISBN 978 - 0 - 7546 - 6818 - 3. Melzer, Arthur ( 1990 ). The Natural Goodness of Man : On the System of Rousseau 's Thought. Chicago : University of Chicago Press. Pateman, Carole ( 1979 ). The Problem of Political Obligation : A Critical Analysis of Liberal Theory. Chichester : John Wiley & Sons. Riley, Patrick ( 1970 ), `` A Possible Explanation of the General Will '', American Political Science Review, 64 : 88, doi : 10.2307 / 1955615, JSTOR 1955615. -- -- -- ( 1978 ), `` General Will Before Rousseau '', Political Theory, 6 ( 4 ) : 485 -- 516, doi : 10.1177 / 009059177800600404. Riley, Patrick ( ed. ) ( 2001 ). The Cambridge Companion to Rousseau. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press. Robinson, Dave & Groves, Judy ( 2003 ). Introducing Political Philosophy. Icon Books. ISBN 1 - 84046 - 450 - X. Rousseau, Jean - Jacques ( 1978 ), Masters, Roger, ed., On the Social Contract, with the Geneva Manuscript and Political Economy, translated by Judith R Masters, New York : St Martin 's Press, ISBN 0 - 312 - 69446 - 6. Scott, John T, ed. ( 2006 ), Jean Jacques Rousseau, 3 : Critical Assessments of Leading Political Philosophers, New York : Routledge. Schaeffer, Denise. ( 2014 ) Rousseau on Education, Freedom, and Judgment. Pennsylvania State University Press. Simpson, Matthew ( 2006 ). Rousseau 's Theory of Freedom. London : Continuum Books. -- -- -- ( 2007 ), Rousseau : Guide for the Perplexed, London : Continuum Books. Starobinski, Jean ( 1988 ). Jean - Jacques Rousseau : Transparency and Obstruction. Chicago : University of Chicago Press. Strauss, Leo ( 1953 ). Natural Right and History. Chicago : University of Chicago Press, chap. 6A. Strauss, Leo ( 1947 ), `` On the Intention of Rousseau '', Social Research, 14 : 455 -- 87. Strong, Tracy B. ( 2002 ). Jean Jacques Rousseau and the Politics of the Ordinary. Lanham, MD : Rowman and Littlefield. Talmon, Jacob R. ( 1952 ). The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy. New York : W.W. Norton. Virioli, Maurizio ( 2003 ) ( 1988 ), Jean - Jacques Rousseau and the `` Well - Ordered Society '', Hanson, Derek, translator, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 978 - 0 - 521 - 53138 - 2. Williams, David Lay ( 2007 ). Rousseau 's Platonic Enlightenment. Pennsylvania State University Press. -- -- -- ( 2014 ), Rousseau 's `` Social Contract '' : An Introduction, Cambridge University Press. Wokler, Robert. ( 1995 ). Rousseau. Oxford : Oxford University Press. Wokler, Robert ( 2012 ), Garsten, Bryan, ed., Rousseau, the Age of Enlightenment, and Their Legacies, introduction by Christopher Brooke. Wraight, Christopher D. ( 2008 ), Rousseau 's The Social Contract : A Reader 's Guide. London : Continuum Books. External links Library resources about Jean - Jacques Rousseau Resources in your library Resources in other libraries By Jean - Jacques Rousseau Resources in your library Resources in other libraries Find more aboutJean - Jacques Rousseauat Wikipedia 's sister projects Media from Wikimedia Commons Quotations from Wikiquote Texts from Wikisource Textbooks from Wikibooks Learning resources from Wikiversity Jean - Jacques Rousseau at Encyclopædia Britannica `` Jean - Jacques Rousseau ''. Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Zalta, Edward N. ( ed. ). `` Jean Jacques Rousseau ''. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Publications by and about Jean - Jacques Rousseau in the catalogue Helveticat of the Swiss National Library Encyclopædia Britannica ( online ed. ). Lane, Professor Melissa, Philosophy Bites ( audio ) ( lecture ), Princeton University. O'Hogan, Professor Timothy, Science Live ( lecture ), Oxford University, archived from the original ( audio ) on 2013 - 01 - 13. Free scores by Jean - Jacques Rousseau at the International Music Score Library Project ( IMSLP ) Rousseau, Jean - Jacques, The Social Contract, Early modern texts, slightly modified for easier reading. -- -- --, His work ( audio ) ( in French ) Anne Davier ( 2005 ). `` Jean - Jacques Rousseau ''. In Andreas Kotte. Theaterlexikon der Schweiz ( TLS ) / Dictionnaire du théâtre en Suisse ( DTS ) / Dizionario Teatrale Svizzero / Lexicon da teater svizzer ( Theater Dictionary of Switzerland ) ( in French ). 3. Zürich : Chronos. p. 1078. ISBN 978 - 3 - 0340 - 0715 - 3. LCCN 2007423414. OCLC 62309181. Rousseau Association ( Association Rousseau ) ( a bilingual association ) ( in French ) devoted to the study of Rousseau 's life and works Works by Jean - Jacques Rousseau at Project Gutenberg Works by or about Jean - Jacques Rousseau at Internet Archive Works by Jean - Jacques Rousseau at LibriVox ( public domain audiobooks ) Jean - Jacques Rousseau Works Discourse on the Arts and Sciences Le devin du village Discourse on Inequality Letter to M. D'Alembert on Spectacles Julie, or the New Heloise Emile, or On Education The Social Contract Constitutional Project for Corsica Pygmalion Confessions Considerations on the Government of Poland Letters on the Elements of Botany Essay on the Origin of Languages Dialogues : Rousseau, Judge of Jean - Jacques Reveries of a Solitary Walker Concepts Amour de soi Amour - propre General will Articles related to Jean - Jacques Rousseau The Age of Enlightenment Topics Atheism Capitalism Civil liberties Counter-Enlightenment Critical thinking Deism Democracy Empiricism Encyclopédistes Enlightened absolutism Free markets Haskalah Humanism Human rights Liberalism Liberté, égalité, fraternité Methodological skepticism Nationalism Natural philosophy Objectivity Rationality Rationalism Reason Reductionism Sapere aude Science Scientific method Socialism Universality Weimar Classicism Thinkers France Jean le Rond d'Alembert Étienne Bonnot de Condillac Marquis de Condorcet Denis Diderot Claude Adrien Helvétius Baron d'Holbach Georges - Louis Leclerc Montesquieu François Quesnay Jean - Jacques Rousseau Marquis de Sade Voltaire Germany Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Johann Georg Hamann Johann Gottfried von Herder Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi Immanuel Kant Gotthold Ephraim Lessing Moses Mendelssohn Friedrich Schiller Thomas Wizenmann Greece Neophytos Doukas Theoklitos Farmakidis Rigas Feraios Theophilos Kairis Adamantios Korais Ireland Robert Boyle Edmund Burke Italy Cesare Beccaria Gaetano Filangieri Antonio Genovesi Pietro Verri The Netherlands Spinoza Hugo Grotius Balthasar Bekker Bernard Nieuwentyt Frederik van Leenhof Christiaan Huygens Antonie van Leeuwenhoek Jan Swammerdam Poland Tadeusz Czacki Hugo Kołłątaj Stanisław Konarski Ignacy Krasicki Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz Stanisław August Poniatowski Jędrzej Śniadecki Stanisław Staszic Józef Wybicki Andrzej Stanisław Załuski Józef Andrzej Załuski Portugal Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo Russia Catherine II Spain Charles III Benito Jerónimo Feijóo y Montenegro United Kingdom ( Scotland ) Francis Bacon Jeremy Bentham Joseph Black James Boswell Adam Ferguson Edward Gibbon Robert Hooke David Hume Francis Hutcheson Samuel Johnson John Locke Isaac Newton Thomas Reid Adam Smith Mary Wollstonecraft United States Benjamin Franklin Thomas Jefferson James Madison George Mason Thomas Paine Romanticism Countries Denmark England ( literature ) France ( literature ) Germany Norway Poland Russia ( literature ) Scotland Movements Bohemianism Counter-Enlightenment Dark romanticism Düsseldorf School Gesamtkunstwerk Gothic fiction Gothic Revival ( architecture ) Hudson River School Indianism Nazarene movement Ossian Romantic hero Romanticism in science Romantic nationalism Opium and Romanticism Transcendentalism Ultra-Romanticism Wallenrodism Writers Abovian Alencar Alfieri Andersen A. v. 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( Jan 1789 ) Réveillon riots ( 28 Apr 1789 ) Convocation of the Estates - General ( 5 May 1789 ) National Assembly ( 17 Jun -- 9 Jul 1790 ) Tennis Court Oath ( 20 Jun 1789 ) National Constituent Assembly ( 9 Jul -- 30 Sep 1791 ) Storming of the Bastille ( 14 Jul 1789 ) Great Fear ( 20 Jul -- 5 Aug 1789 ) Abolition of Feudalism ( 4 - 11 Aug 1789 ) Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen ( 27 Aug 1789 ) Women 's March on Versailles ( 5 Oct 1789 ) 1790 Abolition of the Parlements ( Feb -- Jul 1790 ) Abolition of the Nobility ( 19 Jun 1790 ) Civil Constitution of the Clergy ( 12 Jul 1790 ) Fête de la Fédération ( 14 Jul 1790 ) 1791 Flight to Varennes ( 20 -- 21 Jun 1791 ) Champ de Mars Massacre ( 17 Jul 1791 ) Declaration of Pillnitz ( 27 Aug 1791 ) The Constitution of 1791 ( 3 Sep 1791 ) Legislative Assembly ( 1 Oct 1791 -- Sep 1792 ) 1792 France declares war ( 20 Apr 1792 ) Brunswick Manifesto ( 25 Jul 1792 ) Paris Commune becomes insurrectionary ( Jun 1792 ) 10th of August ( 10 Aug 1792 ) September Massacres ( Sep 1792 ) National Convention ( 20 Sep 1792 -- 26 Oct 1795 ) First republic declared ( 22 Sep 1792 ) 1793 Execution of Louis XVI ( 21 Jan 1793 ) Revolutionary Tribunal ( 9 Mar 1793 -- 31 May 1795 ) Reign of Terror ( 27 Jun 1793 -- 27 Jul 1794 ) Committee of Public Safety Committee of General Security Fall of the Girondists ( 2 Jun 1793 ) Assassination of Marat ( 13 Jul 1793 ) Levée en masse ( 23 Aug 1793 ) The Death of Marat ( painting ) Law of Suspects ( 17 Sep 1793 ) Marie Antoinette is guillotined ( 16 Oct 1793 ) Anti-clerical laws ( throughout the year ) 1794 Danton and Desmoulins guillotined ( 5 Apr 1794 ) Law of 22 Prairial ( 10 Jun 1794 ) Thermidorian Reaction ( 27 Jul 1794 ) Robespierre guillotined ( 28 Jul 1794 ) White Terror ( Fall 1794 ) Closing of the Jacobin Club ( 11 Nov 1794 ) 1795 Constitution of the Year III ( 22 Aug 1795 ) Conspiracy of the Equals ( Nov 1795 ) Directoire ( 1795 -- 99 ) Council of Five Hundred Council of Ancients 13 Vendémiaire 5 Oct 1795 1797 Coup of 18 Fructidor ( 4 Sep 1797 ) Second Congress of Rastatt ( Dec 1797 ) 1799 Coup of 30 Prairial VII ( 18 Jun 1799 ) Coup of 18 Brumaire ( 9 Nov 1799 ) Constitution of the Year VIII ( 24 Dec 1799 ) Consulate Revolutionary campaigns 1792 Verdun Thionville Valmy Royalist Revolts Chouannerie Vendée Dauphiné Lille Siege of Mainz Jemappes Namur ( fr ) 1793 First Coalition Siege of Toulon ( 18 Sep -- 18 Dec 1793 ) War in the Vendée Battle of Neerwinden ) Battle of Famars ( 23 May 1793 ) Expédition de Sardaigne ( 21 Dec 1792 - 25 May 1793 ) Battle of Kaiserslautern Siege of Mainz Battle of Wattignies Battle of Hondschoote Siege of Bellegarde Battle of Peyrestortes ( Pyrenees ) First Battle of Wissembourg ( 13 Oct 1793 ) Battle of Truillas ( Pyrenees ) Second Battle of Wissembourg ( 26 -- 27 Dec 1793 ) 1794 Battle of Villers - en - Cauchies ( 24 Apr 1794 ) Battle of Boulou ( Pyrenees ) ( 30 Apr -- 1 May 1794 ) Battle of Tournay ( 22 May 1794 ) Battle of Fleurus ( 26 Jun 1794 ) Chouannerie Battle of Tourcoing ( 18 May 1794 ) Battle of Aldenhoven ( 2 Oct 1794 ) 1795 Peace of Basel 1796 Battle of Lonato ( 3 -- 4 Aug 1796 ) Battle of Castiglione ( 5 Aug 1796 ) Battle of Theiningen Battle of Neresheim ( 11 Aug 1796 ) Battle of Amberg ( 24 Aug 1796 ) Battle of Würzburg ( 3 Sep 1796 ) Battle of Rovereto ( 4 Sep 1796 ) First Battle of Bassano ( 8 Sep 1796 ) Battle of Emmendingen ( 19 Oct 1796 ) Battle of Schliengen ( 26 Oct 1796 ) Second Battle of Bassano ( 6 Nov 1796 ) Battle of Calliano ( 6 -- 7 Nov 1796 ) Battle of the Bridge of Arcole ( 15 -- 17 Nov 1796 ) The Ireland Expedition ( Dec 1796 ) 1797 Naval Engagement off Brittany ( 13 Jan 1797 ) Battle of Rivoli ( 14 -- 15 Jan 1797 ) Battle of the Bay of Cádiz ( 25 Jan 1797 ) Treaty of Leoben ( 17 Apr 1797 ) Battle of Neuwied ( 18 Apr 1797 ) Treaty of Campo Formio ( 17 Oct 1797 ) 1798 French invasion of Switzerland ( 28 January -- 17 May 1798 ) French Invasion of Egypt ( 1798 -- 1801 ) Irish Rebellion of 1798 ( 23 May -- 23 Sep 1798 ) Quasi-War ( 1798 -- 1800 ) Peasants ' War ( 12 Oct -- 5 Dec 1798 ) 1799 Second Coalition ( 1798 -- 1802 ) Siege of Acre ( 20 Mar -- 21 May 1799 ) Battle of Ostrach ( 20 -- 21 Mar 1799 ) Battle of Stockach ( 25 Mar 1799 ) Battle of Magnano ( 5 Apr 1799 ) Battle of Cassano ( 27 Apr 1799 ) First Battle of Zurich ( 4 -- 7 Jun 1799 ) Battle of Trebbia ( 19 Jun 1799 ) Battle of Novi ( 15 Aug 1799 ) Second Battle of Zurich ( 25 -- 26 Sep 1799 ) 1800 Battle of Marengo ( 14 Jun 1800 ) Battle of Hohenlinden ( 3 Dec 1800 ) League of Armed Neutrality ( 1800 -- 02 ) 1801 Treaty of Lunéville ( 9 Feb 1801 ) Treaty of Florence ( 18 Mar 1801 ) Algeciras Campaign ( 8 Jul 1801 ) 1802 Treaty of Amiens ( 25 Mar 1802 ) Military leaders French Army Eustache Charles d'Aoust Pierre Augereau Alexandre de Beauharnais Jean - Baptiste Bernadotte Louis - Alexandre Berthier Jean - Baptiste Bessières Guillaume - Marie - Anne Brune Jean François Carteaux Jean Étienne Championnet Chapuis de Tourville Adam Philippe, Comte de Custine Louis - Nicolas Davout Louis Desaix Jacques François Dugommier Thomas - Alexandre Dumas Charles François Dumouriez Pierre Marie Barthélemy Ferino Louis - Charles de Flers Paul Grenier Emmanuel de Grouchy Jacques Maurice Hatry Lazare Hoche Jean - Baptiste Jourdan François Christophe de Kellermann Jean - Baptiste Kléber Pierre Choderlos de Laclos Jean Lannes Charles Leclerc Claude Lecourbe François Joseph Lefebvre Jacques MacDonald Jean - Antoine Marbot Jean Baptiste de Marbot François Séverin Marceau - Desgraviers Auguste de Marmont André Masséna Bon - Adrien Jeannot de Moncey Jean Victor Marie Moreau Édouard Mortier, duc de Trévise Joachim Murat Michel Ney Pierre - Jacques Osten ( fr ) Nicolas Oudinot Catherine - Dominique de Pérignon Jean - Charles Pichegru Józef Poniatowski Laurent de Gouvion Saint - Cyr Barthélemy Louis Joseph Schérer Jean - Mathieu - Philibert Sérurier Joseph Souham Jean - de-Dieu Soult Louis - Gabriel Suchet Belgrand de Vaubois Claude Victor - Perrin, Duc de Belluno French Navy Charles - Alexandre Linois Opposition Austria József Alvinczi Archduke Charles, Duke of Teschen Count of Clerfayt ( Walloon ) Karl Aloys zu Fürstenberg Friedrich Freiherr von Hotze ( Swiss ) Friedrich Adolf, Count von Kalckreuth Pál Kray ( Hungarian ) Charles Eugene, Prince of Lambesc ( French ) Maximilian Baillet de Latour ( Walloon ) Karl Mack von Leiberich Rudolf Ritter von Otto ( Saxon ) Prince Josias of Saxe - Coburg - Saalfeld Peter Vitus von Quosdanovich Prince Heinrich XV of Reuss - Plauen Johann Mészáros von Szoboszló ( Hungarian ) Karl Philipp Sebottendorf Dagobert von Wurmser Britain Sir Ralph Abercromby Admiral Sir James Saumarez Admiral Sir Edward Pellew Prince Frederick, Duke of York and Albany Dutch Republic William V, Prince of Orange Prussia Charles William Ferdinand, Duke of Brunswick - Wolfenbüttel Frederick Louis, Prince of Hohenlohe - Ingelfingen Russia Alexander Korsakov Alexander Suvorov Spain Luis Firmin de Carvajal Antonio Ricardos Other significant figures and factions Society of 1789 Jean Sylvain Bailly Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette François Alexandre Frédéric, duc de la Rochefoucauld - Liancourt Isaac René Guy le Chapelier Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, comte de Mirabeau Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès Charles - Maurice de Talleyrand - Périgord Nicolas de Condorcet Feuillants and monarchiens Madame de Lamballe Madame du Barry Louis de Breteuil Loménie de Brienne Charles Alexandre de Calonne de Chateaubriand Jean Chouan Grace Elliott Arnaud de La Porte Jean - Sifrein Maury Jacques Necker François - Marie, marquis de Barthélemy Guillaume - Mathieu Dumas Antoine Barnave Lafayette Alexandre - Théodore - Victor, comte de Lameth Charles Malo François Lameth André Chénier Jean - François Rewbell Camille Jordan Madame de Staël Boissy d'Anglas Jean - Charles Pichegru Pierre Paul Royer - Collard Girondists Jacques Pierre Brissot Roland de La Platière Madame Roland Father Henri Grégoire Étienne Clavière Marquis de Condorcet Charlotte Corday Marie Jean Hérault Jean Baptiste Treilhard Pierre Victurnien Vergniaud Bertrand Barère de Vieuzac Jérôme Pétion de Villeneuve Jean Debry Jean - Jacques Duval d'Eprémesnil Olympe de Gouges Jean - Baptiste Robert Lindet Louis Marie de La Révellière - Lépeaux The Plain Abbé Sieyès de Cambacérès Charles François Lebrun Lazare Nicolas Marguerite Carnot Philippe Égalité Louis Philippe I Mirabeau Antoine Christophe Merlin de Thionville Jean Joseph Mounier Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours François de Neufchâteau Montagnards Maximilien Robespierre Georges Danton Jean - Paul Marat Camille Desmoulins Louis Antoine de Saint - Just Paul Nicolas, vicomte de Barras Louis Philippe I Louis Michel le Peletier de Saint - Fargeau Jacques - Louis David Marquis de Sade Georges Couthon Roger Ducos Jean - Marie Collot d'Herbois Jean - Henri Voulland Philippe - Antoine Merlin de Douai Antoine Quentin Fouquier - Tinville Philippe - François - Joseph Le Bas Marc - Guillaume Alexis Vadier Jean - Pierre - André Amar Prieur de la Côte - d'Or Prieur de la Marne Gilbert Romme Jean Bon Saint - André Jean - Lambert Tallien Pierre Louis Prieur Bertrand Barère de Vieuzac Antoine Christophe Saliceti Hébertists and Enragés Jacques Hébert Jacques Nicolas Billaud - Varenne Pierre Gaspard Chaumette Charles - Philippe Ronsin Antoine - François Momoro François - Nicolas Vincent François Chabot Jean Baptiste Noël Bouchotte Jean - Baptiste - Joseph Gobel François Hanriot Jacques Roux Stanislas - Marie Maillard Charles - Philippe Ronsin Jean - François Varlet Theophile Leclerc Claire Lacombe Pauline Léon Gracchus Babeuf Sylvain Maréchal Others Charles X Louis XVI Louis XVII Louis XVIII Louis Antoine, Duke of Enghien Louis Henri, Prince of Condé Louis Joseph, Prince of Condé Marie Antoinette Napoléon Bonaparte Lucien Bonaparte Joseph Bonaparte Joseph Fesch Joséphine de Beauharnais Joachim Murat Jean Sylvain Bailly Jacques - Donatien Le Ray Guillaume - Chrétien de Malesherbes Talleyrand Thérésa Tallien Gui - Jean - Baptiste Target Catherine Théot List of people associated with the French Revolution Influential thinkers Les Lumières Beaumarchais Edmund Burke Anacharsis Cloots Charles - Augustin de Coulomb Pierre Claude François Daunou Diderot Benjamin Franklin Thomas Jefferson Antoine Lavoisier Montesquieu Thomas Paine Jean - Jacques Rousseau Abbé Sieyès Voltaire Mary Wollstonecraft Cultural impact La Marseillaise French Tricolour Liberté, égalité, fraternité Marianne Bastille Day Panthéon French Republican Calendar Cult of the Supreme Being Cult of Reason Temple of Reason Sans - culottes Metric system Phrygian cap Women in the French Revolution Symbolism in the French Revolution Historiography of the French Revolution Influence of the French Revolution Property By owner Communal land Marital property ( USA ) Cooperative Estate in land Private Public State Crown land By nature Croft Intangible Intellectual indigenous Personal Tangible immovable real Common resources Common land Common - pool resource Digital Global Information Knowledge Theory Bundle of rights Commodity fictitious commodities Common good ( economics ) Excludability First possession appropriation Homestead principle Free - rider problem Game theory Georgism Gift economy Labor theory of property Law of rent rent - seeking Legal plunder Natural rights Ownership common customary self state Property rights primogeniture usufruct women 's Right to property Rivalry Tragedy of the commons anticommons Applications Acequia ( watercourse ) Ejido ( agrarian land ) Forest types Inheritance Land tenure Property law alienation easement restraint on alienation real estate title Rights Air Fishing Forest - dwelling ( India ) Freedom to roam Grazing pannage Hunting Land aboriginal indigenous squatting Littoral Mineral Bergregal Right of way Water prior - appropriation riparian Disposession / redistribution Bioprospecting Collectivization Eminent domain Enclosure Eviction Expropriation Farhud Forced migration population transfer Illegal fishing Illegal logging Land reform Legal plunder Piracy Poaching Primitive accumulation Privatization Regulatory taking Slavery Bride buying Human trafficking wage wife selling Tax inheritance poll progressive property Theft Scholars ( key work ) Frédéric Bastiat Ronald Coase Henry George Garrett Hardin David Harvey John Locke Two Treatises of Government Karl Marx Marcel Mauss The Gift John Stuart Mill Elinor Ostrom Karl Polanyi The Great Transformation Pierre - Joseph Proudhon What Is Property ? David Ricardo Murray N. Rothbard The Ethics of Liberty Jean - Jacques Rousseau The Social Contract Adam Smith The Wealth of Nations Categories : Property Property law by country BIBSYS : 90053125 BNE : XX976371 BNF : cb119228797 ( data ) Botanist : Rousseau CiNii : DA00157716 GND : 118603426 HDS : 9547 ISNI : 0000 0001 2145 1116 KulturNav : 62b4eeff - 837c - 4000 - 8c48 - 995ba35bb8ef LCCN : n79008220 NDL : 00454830 NKC : jn19990007193 NLA : 35465222 ICCU : IT ICCU CFIV 006663 SELIBR : 206561 SNAC : w6r49ps1 SUDOC : 028202368 TLS : Jean - Jacques_Rousseau ULAN : 500250225 VIAF : 100184045 Retrieved from `` https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Jean-Jacques_Rousseau&oldid=854514028 '' Categories : Jean - Jacques Rousseau 1712 births 1778 deaths Writers from the Republic of Geneva 18th - century classical composers 18th - century novelists 18th century in Geneva 18th - century philosophers Baroque composers Burials at the Panthéon, Paris Philosophers from the Republic of Geneva Christian philosophers Classical - 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Question: one of rousseau's important writing on political philosophy
Answer: The Social Contract