EARLY LIFE
Jean Jacques Rousseau was born on June 28, 1712 at 40, Grand Rue, Geneva. At the time Geneva was a city-state and a Protestant associate of the Swiss Confederacy.
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| The house where Rousseau was born at number 40, Grand-Rue. |
Jean Jacques' father Isaac Rousseau, followed his grandfather, father and brothers into the watchmaking business. Isaac, notwithstanding his artisan status, was well educated and a lover of music.
Jean Jacques' mother, Suzanne Bernard Rousseau, died of puerperal fever a week after his birth, He and his older brother François were brought up by their father and a paternal aunt, also named Suzanne.
When Rousseau was 10, his father got into trouble with the civil authorities by brandishing the sword that his upper-class pretentions prompted him to wear. To avoid certain defeat in the courts, he moved away to Nyon in the territory of Bern. Jean-Jacques was left with his maternal uncle where he lived for six years as a poor relation, patronized and humiliated.
His maternal uncle packed him away to board for two years with a Calvinist minister in a hamlet outside Geneva. Here, Jean Jacques picked up the elements of mathematics and drawing.
Jean Jacques left Geneva aged 16 and traveled around France, where he met his benefactress, the Baronnesse de Warens. She furthered his education to such a degree that the boy who had arrived on her doorstep having never been to school developed into a philosopher, a man of letters, and a musician.
CAREER
At age 13, Rousseau was apprenticed first to a notary and then to an engraver who beat him heavily for his childish pranks.
One Sunday evening on March 28, 1728, Rousseau returned late from an evening walk and found Geneva's city gates closed due to the curfew. Instead of waiting there till morning and resuming his duties with the engraver, Rousseau decided to try his luck elsewhere and ran away.
Rousseau was fortunate in finding in the province of Savoy his benefactor, the baroness de Warens, who provided him with a refuge in her home and employed him as her steward. Rousseau lived with Mdm. de Warens until 1742, where under her guidance, he developed his political and social philosophy.
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. Believing the system was impractical, the Academy rejected it.
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. Rousseau's employer routinely received his stipend as much as a year late and paid his staff irregularly. After 11 months, Rousseau left the job, taking from the experience a profound distrust of government bureaucracy.
Rousseau returned to Paris, where he became friends with the French philosopher Diderot and contributed several articles to his Encyclopédie, including an important article on political economy.
During 1745-1751, Louise Dupin, the wife of a rich farmer, appointed Jean-Jacques Rousseau as secretary and tutor of her son.
In 1762 Rousseau's treatise Émile; ou, de l’education (Emile; or, On Education), was published. It propagated controversial views on religion and monarchy. and Rousseau was forced into exile. He became a fugitive, spending the rest of his life moving from one refuge to another.
Rousseau returned to France under the name "Renou," although officially he was not allowed back in until 1770. As a condition of his return, he was not allowed to publish any books, but after completing his Confessions, Rousseau began to offer group readings of certain portions of the work. In 1771 he was forced to stop this, and the book was not published until after his death in 1782.
BELIEFS
Rousseau was brought up a Protestant, converted in his teens to Catholicism but later became a deist, and part of the Enlightenment movement teaching trust in the power of human reason.
The deist philosopher once admitted, "I must confess to you that the majesty of the Scriptures astonishes me, the holiness of the Evangelists speaks to my heart and has such striking characters of truth and is moreover, so perfectly inimitable that if it had been the invention of men, the inventors would be greater than the greatest heroes."
Rousseau was part of the Enlightenment movement teaching trust in the power of human reason. A free thinker with heretical views at the time, he felt the two most valuable things in life are liberty and equality. His advocation of romanticism included being influenced by ones desires.
His dismissal of the social order in favor of a simple return to nature annoyed many of the French chattering classes.
Rousseau recommended the keeping of children away from the corrupting influence of society and letting them learn naturally what they want to learn by asking questions. He felt a youngster's intellect did not begin to develop until they'd reached their teens and until then they should stick to the cultivation of their body and senses (writing and drawing. The cultivation of their intellect (science etc) should be from 12 onwards. Rousseau's theories left their lasting mark on modern progressive education.
RELATIONSHIPS
Rousseau left Geneva in 1728 and lived with and was supported by Françoise-Louise de Warens, a French Catholic woman. Although she was twelve years older than him and married, they became lovers, and Rousseau converted to Catholicism. He called Madame de Warens his first love of his life. He nicknamed her "Mama" and she called him "Little Cat".
At the age of 31, while in Paris, Rousseau began his association with illiterate seamstress Therese La Vaseur who had been an inn servant. She was apparently without beauty, education or intelligence and was hopelessly vulgar and immoral as well as a taker of many liberties. Therese became Rousseau's mistress before marrying him at Bourgoin on August 29, 1768. The Swiss philosopher treated her well and she lived to be 79.
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| Portrait of Marie-Thérèse Le Vasseur by E. Charryère |
Jean-Jacques Rousseau gave all five of his children by Therese to a foundling hospital so they wouldn’t interfere with his work. As a result of his theories on education and child-rearing, Rousseau has often been criticized by Voltaire and modern commentators for putting his offspring in an orphanage as soon as they were weaned. In his defense, Rousseau explained that he would have been a poor father, and that the children would have a better life at the foundling home.
After returning to Geneva in 1754, Rousseau pursued an unconsummated romantic attachment with the 25-year-old Sophie d'Houdetot. Sophie was the cousin and houseguest of Rousseau's patroness and landlady Madame d'Épinay, whom he treated rather highhandedly. Letters between them were carried by Rousseau's concubine servant Therese and were intercepted by the jealous but married Mme d'Epinay.
WRITINGS
In 1750, Rousseau published his first major work, Discours sur les sciences et les arts (A Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts). In it he established that man had become corrupted by society and civilization. It was the first expression of his influential views about nature vs. society, to which Rousseau would dedicate the rest of his intellectual life.
Discours sur l'origine et les fondements de l'inégalité parmi les hommes (Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men), also commonly known as the "Second Discourse" was written by Rousseau in 1754 in response to a prize competition of the Academy of Dijon answering the prompt: What is the origin of inequality among people, and is it authorized by natural law? Rousseau did not win with his treatise but it now recognized as his second major work. Having returned to Geneva, he realized that he would not be able to publish his works under his own name freely in the city, therefore, in 1755, he had Second Discourse published from Holland.
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| Discourse on Inequality, Holland, frontispiece and title page. |
Rousseau's unconsummated romantic attachment with Sophie d'Houdetot, partly inspired his 1761 epistolary novel, Julie, ou la nouvelle Héloïse. It was also based on memories of his idyllic youthful relationship with Mme de Warens).
Julie; or, the New Heloise was one of the best-selling novels of the 1700s. It was immensely popular and had a significant impact on European literature and culture during the Enlightenment period. The novel explores themes of love, virtue, and societal conventions, and its emotional intensity resonated deeply with readers of the time.
In 1762, Jean Jacques Rousseau published A Treatise on the Social Contract or the Principles of Political Law in which he demanded a democratic society, where the will of the people is paramount. In his book Rousseau stated his belief that man in his primitive state was basically good but civilization has corrupted him, therefore it is better to go back to his old ways. He wrote, "Everything is good when it leaves the creator's hand. Everything degenerates in the hands of man."
Rousseau begun writing his autobiographical Confessions in 1765. In November 1770, these were completed, and although he did not wish to publish them at this time, though he began to read excerpts of his manuscript publicly at various salons and other meeting places.
Jean Jacques Rousseau's Confessions was not published until 1782, four years after Rousseau's death. The personal writings initiated the modern autobiography.
Jean Jacques Rousseau invented a new system of musical notation. His system, intended to be compatible with typography, was based on a single line, displaying numbers representing intervals between notes and dots and commas indicating rhythmic values. It was rejected by the Académie des Sciences as useless and unoriginal.
Rousseau wrote various arias and songs as well as prose. In 1752, he determined to compose an opera about people with dirty hands-the working class. His opera, Le Devin du village (“The Village Soothsayer”), which premiered on October 18, 1752, attracted much admiration from King Louis XV and remained popular in Paris until the mid 1800s. Mozart parodied it in his "Bastien and Bastienne."
Rouseeau wrote: "The French singing is endless squawking unbearable to the unbiased ear." Lettre sur la musique Francaise.
A snob with a genius for quarrelling, Rousseau. behaved childishly and meanly and was as full of joie de vivre as an arthritic aardvark. On top of that he had an increasingly progressive persecution mania. Rousseau was so amazingly touchy and easily offended that many believed he was probably insane.
Between 1712-22 and 1724-28 Rousseau lived at 28 Rue due Coutance, Geneva after which he abandoned the city in disgust.
Les Charmettes, in Savoy, where Rousseau lived with Mme. de Warens in 1735–36, is now a museum dedicated to the philosopher.
He lived during the late 1740s at Chenonceaux Chateau in the Loire Valley as the cosseted guest of Mme Dupin.
After returning to Geneva in 1754, Rousseau lived on the grounds of his protectess Mme d'Epinais. and after he fell out with her, his accommodation was mainly supplied by the Marechal de Luxembourg all the time denouncing the evils of rank and wealth.
Once Rousseau's Emile had outraged the French parliament in 1762, he was forced to live in exile until his death. At first he stayed in Switzerland then in January of 1766, he took refuge with the philosopher David Hume in Great Britain, but after 18 months he returned to France because he believed Hume was plotting against him.
In his last years Rousseau continued to write, producing works such as Reveries of the Solitary Walker. In order to support himself he also returned to copying music.
Rousseau spent his last days at Marquis Girardin’s cottage in his chateau in Ermenonville. He spent his time collecting botanical specimen, teaching botany to his host’s son and music to his daughter.
While taking a morning walk on the estate of the Marquis de Giradin at Ermenonville, Rousseau suffered a hemorrhage and died on July 2, 1778.
Rousseau was interred in The Panthéon in Paris in 1794, sixteen years after his death. The tomb was designed to resemble a rustic temple, to recall Rousseau's theories of nature.
Sources Encyclopedia Britannica, FanousPeople
In 1762, Jean Jacques Rousseau published A Treatise on the Social Contract or the Principles of Political Law in which he demanded a democratic society, where the will of the people is paramount. In his book Rousseau stated his belief that man in his primitive state was basically good but civilization has corrupted him, therefore it is better to go back to his old ways. He wrote, "Everything is good when it leaves the creator's hand. Everything degenerates in the hands of man."
Rousseau begun writing his autobiographical Confessions in 1765. In November 1770, these were completed, and although he did not wish to publish them at this time, though he began to read excerpts of his manuscript publicly at various salons and other meeting places.
Jean Jacques Rousseau's Confessions was not published until 1782, four years after Rousseau's death. The personal writings initiated the modern autobiography.
MUSIC
Jean Jacques Rousseau invented a new system of musical notation. His system, intended to be compatible with typography, was based on a single line, displaying numbers representing intervals between notes and dots and commas indicating rhythmic values. It was rejected by the Académie des Sciences as useless and unoriginal.
Rousseau wrote various arias and songs as well as prose. In 1752, he determined to compose an opera about people with dirty hands-the working class. His opera, Le Devin du village (“The Village Soothsayer”), which premiered on October 18, 1752, attracted much admiration from King Louis XV and remained popular in Paris until the mid 1800s. Mozart parodied it in his "Bastien and Bastienne."
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| Title page of Le Devin du village (libretto), words and music by Jean-Jacques Rousseau |
Rouseeau wrote: "The French singing is endless squawking unbearable to the unbiased ear." Lettre sur la musique Francaise.
APPEARANCE AND CHARACTER
A snob with a genius for quarrelling, Rousseau. behaved childishly and meanly and was as full of joie de vivre as an arthritic aardvark. On top of that he had an increasingly progressive persecution mania. Rousseau was so amazingly touchy and easily offended that many believed he was probably insane.
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| Rousseau in 1753, by Maurice Quentin de La Tour |
HOMES
Between 1712-22 and 1724-28 Rousseau lived at 28 Rue due Coutance, Geneva after which he abandoned the city in disgust.
Les Charmettes, in Savoy, where Rousseau lived with Mme. de Warens in 1735–36, is now a museum dedicated to the philosopher.
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| Les Charmettes, where Rousseau lived with Mme. de Warens. By Chris Bertram |
After returning to Geneva in 1754, Rousseau lived on the grounds of his protectess Mme d'Epinais. and after he fell out with her, his accommodation was mainly supplied by the Marechal de Luxembourg all the time denouncing the evils of rank and wealth.
Once Rousseau's Emile had outraged the French parliament in 1762, he was forced to live in exile until his death. At first he stayed in Switzerland then in January of 1766, he took refuge with the philosopher David Hume in Great Britain, but after 18 months he returned to France because he believed Hume was plotting against him.
LAST YEARS, DEATH AND LEGACY
In his last years Rousseau continued to write, producing works such as Reveries of the Solitary Walker. In order to support himself he also returned to copying music.
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| A Portrait of Rousseau in later life |
While taking a morning walk on the estate of the Marquis de Giradin at Ermenonville, Rousseau suffered a hemorrhage and died on July 2, 1778.
Rousseau was interred in The Panthéon in Paris in 1794, sixteen years after his death. The tomb was designed to resemble a rustic temple, to recall Rousseau's theories of nature.
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| The statue of Rousseau on the Île Rousseau, Geneva. |
Sources Encyclopedia Britannica, FanousPeople
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