Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Jean-Jacques Rousseau was born and raised in the Francophone city-state of Geneva, which is now part of Switzerland. His mother, who was born into Geneva’s upper classes, died in childbirth, so Rousseau was primarily raised by his father, a watchmaker who passed his trade and sense of civic virtue on to his son. Specifically, Rousseau’s father was proud of having Genevan citizenship, which most of the city’s residents lacked, and of belonging to a community of politically active artisans who fought the small council of elites that controlled Genevan politics. When Rousseau was ten, his father was forced out of Geneva because of a political dispute, and he was sent to live with a Protestant minister, and later to work as an apprentice to a notary and then an engraver. He soon got fed up with these apprenticeships, so in March 1728, he decided to run away and convert to Catholicism. This led to him losing his beloved Genevan citizenship but gaining a benefactor in nearby France: the Madame de Warens, an ostentatious and sexually liberated noblewoman who dedicated her life to converting young Protestant men. She took Rousseau in, funding his education and facilitating his travels around France and Italy. They soon became lovers, and while Rousseau completely devoted himself to her, he was also conflicted about her parallel relationship with her butler. Rousseau eventually left for Lyon and then Paris to pursue his intellectual aspirations. When the French Academy of Sciences decided not to adopt his innovative system of musical notation, Rousseau ended up moving to Venice to work for the French ambassador there. He quit after two years and returned to Paris, where he fell in love with a reportedly illiterate chambermaid named Thérèse Levasseur and decided to financially support her entire family, even though he had no money. They had five children between 1746 and 1752, but Rousseau persuaded Levasseur to give them all to an orphanage because he distrusted her family. Still, Rousseau spent the rest of his life living with Levasseur, even though they never married and he remained in love with Madame de Warens. Mostly a composer by 1750, Rousseau had his first major break when he won a prominent essay contest for the work Discourse on the Moral Effects of the Arts and Sciences. Two years later, he wrote The Village Soothsayer, an opera that was performed for the king of France. The king loved Rousseau’s work so much that he offered to pay him a pension for life—but shockingly, Rousseau turned down the king’s offer. The same year, he got into a public fight with the French composer Jean-Philippe Rameau over whether French or Italian opera was superior. In 1754, Rousseau converted back to Protestantism and moved back to Geneva, where he regained his citizenship, fell in love with another noblewoman, and had a falling out with his contemporary Diderot. Then, he left and went back to France. Over the next decade, Rousseau published what are now considered his major works: the Discourse on Inequality (1754), the novel Julie (1761), the novel and educational treatise Emile (1762), and The Social Contract (1762). However, these works were radical for Rousseau’s time, and they were banned and publicly burned in both France and Geneva. Rousseau was forced into hiding. He moved to the nearby town of Môtiers and then to a small island in the middle of a lake, but he was kicked out of both. Fortunately, illustrious figures ranging from the Prussian king Frederick the Great to the Scottish philosopher David Hume offered to house Rousseau, and he soon accepted Hume’s invitation and went to England. However, within a year he had a public falling out with Hume and returned to France, where he was still considered both a criminal and a celebrity. Fortunately, the crown did not pursue him, and he spent the next five years studying botany and writing his autobiography, the Confessions, which was published to acclaim in 1782, after his death. Rousseau’s last decade, the 1770s, was rather scandal-free compared to his earlier life: he helped Poland craft its new constitution and wrote a book slandering his enemies. He suffered from a severe urinary disease, but his health only really began to decline after a nobleman’s large dog ran him over in Paris in 1776. Rousseau started having periodic seizures and finally died of a stroke in July of 1778, approximately a decade before the beginning of the French Revolution, which his work helped inspire. Although he is best remembered for his political theory, Rousseau’s work continues to influence fields ranging from opera to religion to child development.