Rousseau

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) was a Swiss-French philosopher, writer, and composer whose work on society, politics, education, and human nature had enormous influence on the French Revolution, Romanticism, and modern political thought.

Life

Born in Geneva to a watchmaker, Rousseau had a turbulent and often solitary life. He was largely self-educated, worked as a secretary, music copyist, and private tutor, and became famous after winning an essay competition in 1750 with his Discourse on the Sciences and Arts. His works were banned and burned in France and Geneva; he spent much of his life in exile and was eventually given shelter by Hume in England — only to quarrel bitterly with him. He died in Ermenonville, France, and was reburied in the Panthéon during the Revolution alongside Voltaire.

The Natural Goodness of Humans

Rousseau's most radical and influential claim:

Humans are naturally good; it is society that corrupts them.

The "noble savage" — humans in the state of nature — are self-sufficient, free, compassionate, and innocent. It is civilization, property, vanity (amour propre), and social comparison that produce vice, inequality, and misery.

This stands in sharp contrast to Hobbes' view of the natural state as war, and differs importantly from Locke's more benign but still politically structured nature.

Discourse on the Origin of Inequality

In the Second Discourse (1755), Rousseau traces the history of human corruption:

Natural humans are solitary and self-sufficient (natural amour de soi — self-preservation without vanity)
The development of language, family life, and comparison with others introduces amour propre — pride, vanity, dependence
Property is the key turning point: "The first man who enclosed a piece of land and said 'This is mine'… was the true founder of civil society." (A direct challenge to Locke's defense of property.)
Property requires law, law requires government, government consolidates inequality

In Du Contrat Social (1762), Rousseau seeks a legitimate form of political authority:

"Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains."

The Social Contract must transform natural freedom into civil freedom through the general will (volonté générale):

The general will is not the sum of individual private interests ("will of all") but what the community genuinely needs for the common good
Sovereignty belongs to the people and is inalienable and indivisible
To be free under law is to obey a law you have given to yourself — a profound influence on Kant's notion of autonomy

Compare with Locke's version and Hobbes' absolute sovereignty. See Social Contract.

Education: Émile

Rousseau's Émile (1762) is a philosophical novel about natural education:

Children should be allowed to develop naturally, away from corrupting social conventions
Education should follow the child's natural development — not force premature rationality
This "child-centred" pedagogy influenced nearly all subsequent educational theory

Politics and Democracy

Rousseau's influence on the French Revolution was immense — especially his concept of popular sovereignty and the general will. However, his politics are ambiguous: the general will can be "forced to be free," which critics (including Marx and liberals) have seen as a forerunner of totalitarianism.

Influence

The French Revolution invoked Rousseau constantly
Kant was profoundly influenced by Rousseau's notion of moral autonomy
Hegel and Marx engaged with Rousseau's account of alienation and civil society
Romanticism drew on Rousseau's valorization of nature and feeling over reason
Modern democratic theory still grapples with the general will

Social Contract — Rousseau's theory vs. Locke and Hobbes
Political Philosophy — general will, popular sovereignty, democracy
Kant — who extended Rousseau's moral autonomy into transcendental ethics
Hegel — who developed Rousseau's concept of freedom through Dialectics
Marx — who drew on Rousseau's critique of property and alienation
Locke — whose defense of property Rousseau challenged directly
Hume — Rousseau's short-lived English host
Ethics — natural goodness and moral corruption