French deistic philosopher and author; b. at Geneva June 28, 1712;
d. at Ermenonville (28 m. n.e. of Paris) July 2, 1778. His mother
died at his birth, and his father, a dissipated and violent-tempered
man, paid little attention to the son's training, and finally
deserted him. The latter developed a passion for reading, with
a special fondness for Plutarch's Lives. Apprenticed first
to a notary and then to a coppersmith, he ran away (1728) to escape
the rigid discipline, and, after wandering for several days, he
fell in with Roman Catholic priests at Consignon in Savoy, who
turned him over to Madame de Warens at Annecy, and she sent him
to an educational institution at Turin. Here he duly abjured
Protestantism,
and next served in various households, in one of which he was
charged with theft. After more wanderings he was at Chambery (1730),
from which Madame de Warens had removed. In her household he spent
eight years diverting himself in the enjoyment of nature, the
study of music, the reading of the English, German, and French
philosophers and chemistry, pursuing the study of mathematics
and Latin, and enjoying the playhouse and opera. He next spent
eighteen months at Venice as secretary of the French ambassador,
Comte de Montaignu (1744-45). Up to this time, when he was thirty-nine,
his life, the details of which he publishes in his Confessions
(Geneva, 1782), may be described as subterranean. He now returned
to Paris, where his opera Les Muses galantes failed, copied
music, and was secretary of Madame Dupin. Here he came into association
with Diderot, Grimm, D'Alembert, Holbach, and Madame d'Epinay,
and was admitted as a contributor to the Encyclopedie;
and his gifts of entertainment, reckless manner, and boundless
vanity attracted attention. With the Discours sur les sciences
et les arts (Paris, 1750), a prize essay in which he set forth
the paradox of the superiority of the savage state, he proclaimed
his gospel of "back to nature." His operetta Devin
du village (1752) met with great success. His second sensational
writing appeared: Discours sur l'origine et les fondements de
l'inégalité parmi les hommes
(1753), against the inequalities of society. His fame was then
assured. In 1754 he revisited Geneva, was received with great
acclamation, and called himself henceforth " citizen of Geneva."
In 1756, upon invitation of Madame d'Epinay, he retired to a cottage
(afterward " The Hermitage ") in the woods of Montmorency,
where in the quiet of nature he expected to spend his life; but
domestic troubles, his violent passion for Countess d'Houdetot,
and Ms morbid mistrust and nervous excitability, which lost him
his friends, induced him to change his residence to a chateau
in the park of the duke of Luxembourg, Montmorency (1758-62).
His famous works appeared during this period: Lettre à d'Alembert
(Amsterdam, 1758); Julie ou la nouvelle Heloise (1761);
Du Contrat social (Amsterdam, 1762); and Emile ou de
1'education (Amsterdam, 1762). The last-named work was ordered
to be burned by the French parliament and his arrest was ordered;
but he fled to Neuchatel, then within the jurisdiction of Prussia.
Here he wrote his Lettres ecrites de la Montagne (Amsterdam,
1762), in which, with reference to the Geneva constitution, he
advocated the freedom of religion against the Church and police.
Driven thence by peasant attacks (Sept., 1765), he returned to
the Isle St. Pierre in the Lake of Bienne. The government of Berne
ordered him out of its territory, and he accepted the asylum offered to
him by David Hume in England (Jan., 1766). But his morbid misanthropy,
now goaded to an insane sense of being persecuted, made him suspicious
of plots, and led him to quarrel with his friends for not making
his opponents their own enemies, and he fled to France (1767).
After wandering about and depending on friends he was permitted
to return to Paris (1770), where he finished the Confessions
begun in England, and produced many of his best stories. Here
he copied notes, and studied music and botany. His dread of secret
enemies grew upon his imagination, until he was glad to accept
an invitation to retire to Ermenonville (1778), where his death
came suddenly.
Rousseau reacted against the artificiality and corruption of the
social customs and institutions of the time. He was a keen thinker,
and was equipped with the weapons of the philosophical century
and with an inspiring eloquence. To these qualities were added
a pronounced egotism, self-seeking, and an arrogance that led
to bitter antagonism against his revolutionary views and sensitive
personality, the reaction against which resulted in a growing
misanthropy. Error and prejudice in the name of philosophy, according
to him, had stifled reason and nature, and culture, as he found
it, had corrupted morals. In Emile he presents the ideal
citizen and the means of training the child for the State in accordance
with nature, even to a sense of God. This "nature gospel"
of education, as Goethe called it, was the inspiration, beginning
with Pestalozzi, of world-wide pedagogical methods. The most admirable
part in this is the creed of the vicar of Savoy, in which, in
happy phrase, Rousseau shows a true, natural susceptibility to
religion and to God, whose omnipotence and greatness are published
anew every day. The Social Contract, on the text that all
men are born free and equal, regards the State as a contract in
which individuals surrender none of their natural rights, but
rather agree for the protection of them. Most remarkable in this
projected republic was the provision to banish aliens to the state
religion and to punish dissenters with death. The Social Contract
became the text-book of the French Revolution, and Rousseau's
theories as protests bore fruit in the frenzied bloody orgies
of the Commune as well as in the rejuvenation of France and the
history of the entire Western world.
