Jean-Jacques Rousseau - Emile

Unit 3 - Day 8

Jean-Jacques RousseauJean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778)• Born in Geneva, Switzerland• Mother dies in childbirth, Father abandons JJR• Trains as an apprentice notary and engraver• Becomes involved with French Catholic Baroness who takes him to France as her secretary

•Pays for his education, inspires conversion to Catholicism

•1742 Invents a system of musical notation •Serves as secretary to French ambassador in Venice – lives with a French seamstress, with whom he claims to have five children

•All five given up for adoption at birth•1749 while visiting Diderot in prison, sees a flier for an essay competition asking the question “has the development of the arts and sciences been morally beneficial?” His answer [NO], won and brought him to public attention.

Jean-Jacques RousseauJean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778)• Went on to write a successful opera, as well as the worlds first bestselling novel – Julie, or the New Heloise•1754 – reconverts to Calvinism and returns to Geneva•Begins writing philosophical treatises

•Discourse on the Origin of Inequality•The Social Contract•Emile

•Criticisms of religion get him exiled from both Geneva and France – takes refuge in Switzerland under protection of Frederick the Great•1765 attacked by townspeople and flees to England where he lives for a time with David Hume•While in England becomes paranoid about plots against him – including those involving Hume•1767 Returns to France where he completes the first modern autobiography•1778 dies of a hemorrhage while out walking

The End of Optimism? – Voltaire and Rousseau

As the Enlightenment progressed philosophes became gradually less confident in the ability of reason to bring about real social change

To many, in fact, society itself seemed to be the problem

For Voltaire, civil society could not exist without inequality – someone needs to till the fields, make the shoes, bake the bread and do all the other things that no one wants to do

Rousseau went even further…

The End of Optimism? – Voltaire and Rousseau

The first man who, having fenced in a piece of land, said "This is mine," and found people naive 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 imposter; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody. - Rousseau, Discourse on Origin of Inequality

Romanticism and the Noble Savage Rousseau straddles the intellectual

movements of the Enlightenment and Romanticism

Romanticism is skeptical of the claims of reason to solve social problems and to realize the full potential of human beings

Society seems to be moving away from the basic goodness of human nature

In its place Rousseau and others introduce the concept of the “Noble Savage”

Emile, or On Education (1762) First sentence: “Everything is good in leaving

the hands of the Creator of Things; everything degenerates in the hands of man.”

Rousseau doesn’t entirely give up on society Through proper education, careful

organization of government, the hurtful effects of civil society can be remedied

Emile is the semi-fictional account of his attempts to educate a young boy in a more natural way – to draw on his natural nobility