Jean-Jacques Rousseau: biography of this Genevan philosopher

Jean-Jacques Rousseau is one of the most important minds of the Enlightenment and, despite the fact that he did not live it, of Romanticism. Although he disagreed with him with certain properly illustrated points of view, there is no doubt that this Swiss philosopher contributed significantly during the Enlightenment.

He expressed his opinion of practically everything that was concern in his time: politics, education, progress, equality between men... perhaps his way of presenting his vision was a controversial and caused him a few problems with the authorities of his time but, without a doubt, his way of thinking would lay the foundations for a new society.

Next we will discover the life and work of this thinker through a biography of Jean-Jacques Rousseauof him, in which we will see his points coinciding and diverging with the Enlightenment, his thinking and the impact it had on the years he lived.

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Short biography of Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, also known as Juan Jacobo Rousseau, was a French-speaking Swiss polymath, and Thanks to this, he was able to establish direct contact with the most outstanding characters of the Enlightenment of his weather. As a good cultured character of his time he did practically everything: he was a writer, pedagogue, philosopher, musician, naturalist and botanist. Although he is considered enlightened, his opinions go against the current with many assumptions of this movement.

Childhood

Jean-Jacques Rousseau was born in Geneva, Switzerland on June 28, 1712. At an early age his mother passes away and his education will be taken care of by his father, a modest watchmaker, and his maternal aunt. Without having received the appropriate training he worked as an apprentice with a notary and with an engraver who He subjected him to such cruel and brutal treatment that the young man ended up leaving his hometown in 1728 at the age of sixteen. years.

In his modest exile, he ended up in Annecy, France, obtaining the protection of the Baroness de Warens., a woman who convinced him to convert to Catholicism by abandoning the Calvinist doctrine of her family. Already being her lover, Jean-Jacques Rousseau settled in the Baroness's residence in Chambéry, beginning there an intense period of intense self-taught training.

Contact with encyclopedists

The year 1742 was the one that ended a stage that Rousseau himself would recognize years later as the one that was the happiest of his life, and really the only one. It was then that he left for Paris, a place where he would have the opportunity to frequent various noble halls and befriended great minds of his time. He went to the Academy of Sciences in that city presenting a new and original system of musical notation that he himself had devised although he did not achieve much fame.

He spent between 1743 and 1744 working as secretary to the French ambassador in Venice, with whom he would end up having a heated argument and would have to return to Paris shortly. On his return to the French capital, Jean-Jacques Rousseau began a relationship with an uneducated dressmaker named Thérèse Levasseur. with whom he would end up marrying in 1768 by civil law after having had five bastard children with her that he would end up giving in hospice.

While in Paris he achieved a certain fame and became friends with several enlightened men, being invited to contribute to the Encyclopedia of Jean le Rond D’Alembert and Denis Diderot with their articles on music. In fact, Diderot himself motivated Rousseau to participate in 1750 in a contest organized by the Academy of Dijon.

In this call Rousseau would be the winner, being awarded the first prize for his text "Discourse on the sciences and the arts". In his writing he answered the question of whether the reestablishment of the sciences and the arts was contributing to purify customs, something that he believed was not the case and that, in fact, contributed to the cultural decline.

In 1754 he returned to his native Geneva and returned to Protestantism to regain his civil rights as a citizen. For him this, more than a conversion to the faith of his family or resignation from Catholicism, was rather a mere legislative procedure. It will be around this time that he will publish his "Discourse on the origin of inequality among men", which he wrote to present at the Dijon Academy competition in 1755.

Here Rousseau exposes his opposition to the enlightened conception of progress considering that men, in their most natural state, are by definition innocent and happy. However, as culture and civilization assimilate them, they cause inequalities to be imposed between them. It is especially because of the emergence of property and the increase in inequalities that human beings are unhappy.

Residence in Montmorency

In 1756 he settled in the residence of her friend Madame d'Épinay in Montmorency. There he would write some of his most important works, among them his "Letter to D'Alembert on spectacles" (1758), a text in which he condemned the theater as a source of immorality. He would also write "Julia or the new Heloise" (1761), a sentimental novel inspired by her unrequited love of hers with her hostess's sister-in-law. In fact, it would be this passion that would cause him to end up arguing with Madame d'Épinay.

One of the most important works of this time and, surely, the one considered the most important of his entire life is “El social contract ”of 1762, a text that is considered the inspiration of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. Basically in this text she argues that human beings should be listened to in their wishes of how they want to be governed and treaties and that the State must guarantee its rights and obligations through laws that emanate from the will popular.

Finally, at this time, a work of special pedagogical importance “Emilio o De la Educación” (1762) would also come to light. Is about a pedagogical novel that, although very revealing, its religious part aroused much controversy. In fact, the Parisian authorities strongly condemned her, causing Rousseau to go to Neuchâtel and even so she was not spared from the criticism of the local authorities.

Last years and death

Pressed by all this Rousseau accepted in 1766 the invitation of his supposed friend David hume to take refuge in England. He would return the following year, convinced that his host had taken him in simply to defame him. It is from then on that Rousseau changed residence incessantly, beset by a persecution mania that eventually led him to return to the French capital. in 1770, the place where he would spend the last years of his life and where he would write his autobiographical writings, "Confessions" (1765-1770).

His death surprised him meditating in the solitude of the gardens of Ermenonville, where he had been invited by the Marquis de Girardin. He passed away on July 2, 1778 of cardiac arrest, having spent his last decade in constant tension with his former colleagues. encyclopedists and being quite unpopular, despite the fact that with the passage of time he would become a crucial figure for the dawn of the New Regime.

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Jean-Jacques Rousseau's work as a philosopher

You cannot talk about Jean-Jacques Rousseau without mentioning his work, his philosophical stance and how important he is to the Enlightenment. In fact, together with Voltaire, Diderot, Montesquieu and Locke, the figure of Rousseau cannot be omitted when speaking of the Age of Enlightenment. Among his main works we can mention the following:

• "Profession of faith of the Savoyard vicar" (1762), in which he theorizes about deism.
• "Emilio or De la Educación" (1762), proposing the creation of a new pedagogy.
• "Discourse on the origin and foundation of inequality among men" (1755)
• "Discourse on the sciences and the arts" (1750), talks about the controversy over the meaning of human progress.
• "Julia or the new Eloísa" (1761), an important precursor of the romantic novel.
• "Confessions" (1765-1770), his fictionalized autobiography with philosophical touches.

Judging from all these works and the subjects he addresses, there is no doubt that Rousseau was involved in the great illustrated philosophical discussions, leaving aside the sentimental question exposed in his novel “Julia o la Nueva Heloise ”. It is especially his views on education, absolutism and inequality among men that marked a before and a later within the Enlightenment itself, arousing the hostility of some philosophers who viewed his views too revolutionary.

This is not surprising since the figure of Rousseau would become an ideological reference in times of the French Revolution, that would appear little more than a decade after the death of the Swiss philosopher. Defender of tolerance, freedom, nature and with a markedly anti-absolutist in his writings, the thought of him was the one that would end causing the revolutionary flames to reach such a profound repercussion that it would shake the regime that had reigned in Europe for centuries.

Rousseau questioned the radical optimism displayed in the Enlightenment. Unlike what many thinkers of his time believed, Rousseau believed that nature represented perfection and that society was corrupt. The enlightened had great confidence that progress and civilization were synonymous with greater perfection, peace and order in society, while Rousseau was rather pessimistic.

Thus Rousseau exposes his idealization of the "good savage", confronting it with the idea defended by many enlightened economists of the "ignoble savage". While the idea of ​​the "good savage" was that of a man who, although uneducated, was happy and lived in peace and harmony with his fellow men, the "ignoble savage" of economists and the Most of the enlightened was a being that, due to not having social norms, behaved as the most aggressive, bloodthirsty and dangerous of animals, only that this one went to two legs.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau's political views and proposals were quite disruptive compared to the thinking of most of the Enlightenment. His vision not only thwarted the illusions placed on the benevolent reformism of many monarchs of his time, that is, enlightened despotism (“everything for the people, but without the the people ”). The Genevan philosopher offered an alternative mode of organization of society and launched a slogan clearly contrary to absolutism, caring rather little if he was enlightened or if he was uneducated.

Absolutism defended the idea that power rested with a single person, usually the king and, at most, his ministers and advisers. Most people held that the king held this title because God had willed it (sovereignty by divine grace). Rousseau does not agree, arguing that the head of state and the form of government must arise from national sovereignty and the general will of the community of citizens, ideas that would be key during the French Revolution and the appearance of nationalisms in times of Romanticism.

Thus, with the thought of him, Rousseau placed himself in a somewhat unorthodox current of the Enlightenment. Although the way in which he presented his ideas was not the most solid or sophisticated, his first important text of his “Discurso sobre las Ciencias y las arts ”(1750) is fundamental to understand his reluctance in the face of rationalist optimism that he firmly believed in the progress of the civilization.

Rousseau did not share this view of the majority of the enlightened. He attached little importance to the improvement of the sciences and attached greater value to the volitional faculties than to reason. For him the technical and material progress of society were not synonymous with greater humanity, and in fact could even harm it to the detriment of moral and cultural progress. More technology does not mean a better society, but it can even make it worse and further accentuate inequalities if it is not managed well.

In his "Discourse on the origin and foundation of inequality between men" (1755) he deals with to elucidate and expose the effects that social organization had had on nature human. In this specific text he focused on describing his conception of the good savage, which as we have commented is a being that despite living in a primitive state In nature, he did not suffer any inequality and lived in peace and equality with the rest of his peers, with only differences derived from the biology.

According to Rousseau, in a natural state men were neither good nor bad by nature, simply "amoral." He also explains that For a series of external causes, human beings had to band together and give each other help in order to survive, which caused that with the passage of time societies, cultures and civilizations were forged as complex exponents of that human social life.

These societies must have arisen at some point beyond the most primitive and idyllic associative stage: the family. The families would go on to associate in communities of nomadic settlers who shared everything hunted and gathered. Later, these societies would become more complex with the discovery of agriculture, at which time private property and inequalities would appear. Whoever had more possessions had more influence in front of the community and more power they could exert.

The process continued with the emergence of servitude and slavery. Those who did not have anything offered their work in exchange for the protection of the powerful, or if they did not have anything or a way to defend themselves, the most powerful made it their property. The abuses perpetrated by those who had the most led to mutual distrust and the need to prevent crime, thus governments were created, the application of their laws and the protection of the private property and privileges of those who most possessed.

Rousseau saw in private property an element that clearly marked the inequalities but this was not why he advocated the abolition of private property. Material goods and their possession were an irreversible fact and were already part of society as an inherent trait, however, Rousseau himself argued that The situation had to be improved by improving political organization and ensuring that those who had less could have something to be able to live in a healthy way. worthy.

In his "The social contract" (1762) he diagnoses the origin of social injustice and unhappiness of the human being, proposing the bases and organization of a new society founded on a covenant freely agreed upon and accepted by all individuals, a general will made law and that would reconcile individual freedom with a just social order and with broad acceptance Social.

The Enlightenment was largely partisan of reason, at which point Rousseau disagreed. In this sense he collaborated by spreading an aesthetic of sentiment with the publication of his novel "La nueva Eloísa" (1761), although it must be said that he is not the only one writer of sentimental novels of the time, nor was he responsible for the melodramas that would appear partially in the Enlightenment and especially in the Romanticism.

In his book "Emilio o De la Educación" (1762) he exposes his ideas on education, promoting that educational work should be carried out outside of society and its institutions. Educating does not consist of imposing norms or directing learning, but promoting the development of the individual by taking advantage of the inclinations or spontaneous interests of the child facilitating his contact with nature, an entity that is truly wise and educational according to the vision of Rousseau.

Finally we have his "Confessions" an autobiographical work that was published posthumously between 1782 and 1789. This text is an exceptional example of the depths of Rousseau's soul and mind, an extreme display of introspection. personal that would only be fully achieved a century later with the arrival of Romanticism and its authors, who would perfect this genre.

All and, especially, this last work, are considered as a "warning" of what would come later with Romanticism, although it can be said that Rousseau was not the only one who contributed to the appearance of this current. Even so, his exacerbation of the sentimentality that he had shown in his novel and the rise of nationalisms and the revaluation of the The Middle Ages, which, rather than a dark age was the origin of modern European peoples, would be aspects that Rousseauian thought would feed.

Bibliographic references:

• Rousseau, Jean-Jacques (1998). Correspondance complète de Rousseau: Édition complète des lettres, documents et index. Oxford: Voltaire Foundation. ISBN 978-0-7294-0685-7.
• Rousseau, Jean-Jacques (1959-1995). Œuvres complètes Paris: Gallimard.
• Rousseau (2011). Sergio Sevilla, ed. Rousseau. Great Thinkers Library. Madrid: Editorial Gredos. ISBN 9788424921286.