Rousseau

toc =__**Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-78)**__=

= = =**Major Works**= The Social Contract//**
 * //[|Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts]//**
 * //Discourse on Inequality//**
 * //Heloise//**
 * [|Emile]**
 * //[|Discourse on Political Economy]
 * //Dialogues//**
 * //Confessions//**
 * //Reveries of a Solitary//** **//Walker//**

= = =Biography=

Jean-Jacques Rousseau was born in [|Geneva], Switzerland on June 28, 1712. His mother died 9 days after his birth due to complications and he was left to his father. His father, Isaac, got into a quarrel with a French Captain and left Geneva for the rest of his life for fear of imprisonment in 1722. Rousseau was placed in the hands of a pastor at Bossey near Geneva. Eventually Rousseau left Geneva in 1728 at the age of sixteen for Annecy. It was there that he met [|Francoise-Louise de Warens]and soon converted to Catholicism. In 1742 Rousseau moved to Paris in order to present his new invention, the [|numbered musical quotation]. From 1743 to 1744 he was secretary to the French Ambassador in [|Venice]. In 1745 Rousseau met linen-maid named Therese Levasseur, who would become his lifelong companion (they eventually married in 1768). They had five children together, all of whom were left at the Paris orphanage.

Rousseau converted to Calvinism upon his return to Geneva in 1754. In 1755, Rosseau completes his second major work, //The Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Amoung Men.// In 1762, //The Social Contract// was published. Rousseau then suffers a decline in mental health but does not give up writing. He flees back to France in 1767 due to criticisms. While taking a morning, walk Rousseau suffers a hemorrhage and dies in 1778. http://www.iep.utm.edu/r/rousseau.htm

Rousseau's crypt in Paris

=Rousseau's Philosophy= = = Nature vs. Society > > >
 * Rousseau saw a fundamental divide between society and [|human nature]. Rousseau contended that [|man] was good by nature, a "[|noble savage]" when in the state of nature (the state of all the "other animals", and the condition humankind was in before the creation of [|civilization] and [|society]), but is corrupted by society. He viewed society as artificial and held that the development of society, especially the growth of social interdependence, has been inimical to the well-being of human beings.
 * His Discourse on Inequality tracked the progress and degeneration of mankind from a primitive state of nature to modern society. He suggested that the earliest human beings were isolated semi-apes who were differentiated from animals by their capacity for free will and their perfectibility. **(What do we mean by perfectibility? 1159324645)** He also argued that these primitive humans were possessed of a basic drive to care for themselves and a natural disposition to [|compassion] or pity. As humans were forced to associate together more closely by the pressure of population growth, they underwent a psychological transformation and came to value the opinion of others as an essential component of their own well being.
 * Rousseau associated this new self-awareness with a golden age of human flourishing. However, the development of agriculture and metallurgy, private property and the [|division of labour] led to increased interdependence and [|inequality]. The resulting state of conflict led Rousseau to suggest that the first state was invented as a kind of [|social contract] made at the suggestion of the rich and powerful. This original contract was deeply flawed as the wealthiest and most powerful members of society tricked the general population, and thus instituted inequality as a fundamental feature of human society. As the social contract recognized property rights it also recognized the right of some citizens to own enourmous amounts of property.
 * 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, which originated in the golden age, comes to undermine personal integrity and authenticity in a society marked by interdependence, [|hierarchy], and inequality. from [|http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Jacques_Rousseau>>]
 * Examples of Inequality created by the social contract: **(should this material be put in the page on the second discourse, or the page on equality and inequality? Does it really belong here? 1159324645)**
 * 1) The division of labor gave increased bargining power to the owner of the means of production. For example, an expert at making car windows has very little bargining power with the car company because his or her work is not valuble without being paired with the car manufacturer. While this change may have increased efficiency it also increased inequality.
 * 2) Land ownership was protected by the social contract. As some families amassed large pieces of land others were marginalized into extreme poverty and forced to work for the wealthy individuals. Because desparate individuals have very little bargining power it was difficult for poor workers to obtain a fair wage after the rights of the wealthy had been stregnthened. **(There are also other kinds of inequalities that might be mentioned: political inequalities, for example 1159324645)**

=Timeline of Rousseau's Life=

__**1722**__ His father is exiled from Geneva after a fight and moves to Lyons. Rousseau stays in Geneva in the charge of his mother's relations. __**1724**__ Apprenticed to his uncle a lawyer who finds him incapable and sends him back. __**1725**__ Apprenticed to an engraver. __**1728**__ Runs away from his apprenticeship and wanders about Italy France and Switzerland. Meets Madame de Warens after converting to Catholicism in Turin. __**1733**__ Madam de Warens becomes his mistress. __**1738**__ Becomes ill and goes to Montpellier which facilitates a liason with Madame de Larange. Loses his relationship to Madam de Warens. __**1741**__ Goes to Paris after discovering he neither likes teaching nor is very good at it. __**1742**__ Unsuccessfully presents a new system of music to the Academy of Sciences. Becomes secretary to the ambassador to Venice, M. de Montaigu. __**1743**__ Meets Therese le Vasseur who will become his mistress, bearing him five children, and whom he marries near the end of his life. __**1745**__ Returns to Paris. Collaborates on the //Encyclopedia//. __**1751**__ Publishes //Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts//. __**1752**__ Production of his opera //the Village Soothsayer//. __**1754**__ Returns to Geneva and abjures his abjuration of the Protestant religion. __**1757**__ Leaves Montmorency for nearby Montlouis after a quarrel with Diderot. __**1761**__ Publication of //Heloise//. __**1762**__ Publication of //Emile// and //The Social Contract// which forces him to leave France to avoid arrest. Lives briefly in Neuchatel. __**1763**__ Renounces citizenship of Geneva. __**1765**__ Driven from Motiers to the Island of Saint-Pierre. __**1766**__ [|David Hume] offers him asylum in England. Begins work on //Confessions//.
 * __1712__** June 12, born in Geneva to a watchmaker and the daughter of a minister who died after giving birth to him.
 * __1731__** Lives in Chambery protected by the widow Madame de Warens.
 * __1740__** Tutors at Lyon.
 * __1755__** Publishes //Discourse on Inequality//.
 * __1756__** April moves back to Paris in a cottage at Montmorency. Writes //Heloise//.
 * __1758__** Publication of //Letter to d'Alembert// and final rupture in his relations with Diderot.
 * __1767__** Returns to live in various provinces of France.
 * __1770__** Returns to live in Paris. Writes many of his most important works while in Paris over the next eight years including his D//ialogues// and //Reveries//.
 * __1778__** Moves to Ermenonville where he dies suddenly on July 2.

Citation:[| http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl302/philosophers/rousseau.html]