Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–78) was a Swiss-born French philosopher, author, political theorist, and composer. In many respects an original and contentious thinker, Rousseau’s significant works raised deep-seated questions in the fields of ethics, education, politics, and aesthetics. He ranks as one of the greatest intellectuals of the French Enlightenment and the Romantic generation.
Rousseau’s original thinking was that humans are by nature good, but are soiled by society. He endorsed a humanistic and progressive educational system that would develop the natural interests and potential of the child.
Born in Geneva, Switzerland, Rousseau had no formal education. In 1741, he moved to Paris to make a living from clerical work and music-copying. He became acquainted with Voltaire and Denis Diderot and contributed articles on music and political economy to the Encyclopédie.
In the 1750s, Rousseau came to fame with his Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men (1754) and other essays that were highly critical of the existing social order. He expressed his belief in the fundamental goodness of human nature, summarized in the concept of the “noble savage,” and the warping effects of civilization.
In 1762, Rousseau published his masterpiece, Du contrat social (A Treatise on the Social Contract, 1764,) which anticipated much of the thinking of the French Revolution. Social Contract argues for a version of the sovereignty of the whole citizen body over itself, expressing its legislative intent through the general will. One of Rousseau’s most notable axioms, “Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains,” comes from the Social Contract and has been a rallying-cry for rebels and reformers ever since.
In his novel Émile (1762,) Rousseau formulated new educational philosophies giving the child full scope for individual development in natural surroundings, protected from the corrupting influences of civilization.
Rousseau is also noted for his Les Confessions (1782–89; Confessions, 1783–91,) one of the earliest autobiographies. In 1794, his remains were placed alongside those of Voltaire in Paris’s Pantheon.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Had I no other proof of the immortality of the soul than the oppression of the just and the triumph of the wicked in this world, this alone would prevent my having the least doubt of it. So shocking a discord amidst a general harmony of things would make me naturally look for a cause; I should say to myself we do not cease to exist with this life; everything reassumes its order after death.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Soul
God is intelligent; but in what manner? Man is intelligent by the act of reasoning, but the supreme intelligence lies under no necessity to reason. He requires neither premise nor consequences; nor even the simple form of a proposition. His knowledge is purely intuitive. He beholds equally what is and what will be. All truths are to Him as one idea, as all places are but one point, and all times one moment.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Knowledge
I also realized that the philosophers, far from ridding me of my vain doubts, only multiplied the doubts that tormented me and failed to remove any one of them. So I chose another guide and said, Let me follow the Inner Light; it will not lead me so far astray as others have done, or if it does it will be my own fault, and I shall not go so far wrong if I follow my own illusions as if I trusted to their deceits
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Philosophy
Taste is, so to speak, the microscope of the judgment.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Taste
Accent is the soul of language; it gives to it both feeling and truth.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
All of my misfortunes come from having thought too well of my fellows.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Fortune, Misfortunes
The person who is slowest in making a promise is most faithful in its performance.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Integrity
It is to law alone that men owe justice and liberty. It is this salutary organ, of the will of all which establishes in civil rights the natural equality between men. It is this celestial voice which dictates to each citizen the precepts of public reason, and teaches him to act according to the rules of his own judgment and not to behave inconsistently with himself. It is with this voice alone that political leaders should speak when. they command.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Equality
Every man has the right to risk his own life in order to preserve it. Has it ever been said that a man who throws himself out the window to escape a fire is guilty of suicide?
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Life and Living, Risk
Not all the subtleties of metaphysics can make me doubt a moment of the immortality of the soul, and of a beneficent providence. I feel it, I believe it, I desire it, I hope it, and will defend it to my last breath.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Immortality
The English are predisposed to pride, the French to vanity.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Nation, Nationality, Nationalities, Nationalism
The money you have gives you freedom; the money you pursue enslaves you.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Money
Money is the seed of money, and the first guinea is sometimes more difficult to acquire than the second million.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Money
Men and women are made for each other, but their mutual dependence differs in degrees; man is dependent on woman through his desires; woman is dependent on man through her desires and also through her needs; he could do without her better than she can do without him. She cannot fulfill her purpose in life without his aid, without his goodwill, without his respect…..Nature herself has decreed that woman, both for herself and her children, should be at the mercy of man s judgment.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Men & Women
The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying This is mine, and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not anyone have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows, “Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody”.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Property
We should not teach children the sciences; but give them a taste for them.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Motivation, Motivational
We are born, so to speak, twice over; born into existence, and born into life; born a human being, and born a man.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Birth
As long as there are rich people in the world, they will be desirous of distinguishing themselves from the poor.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Wealth
Reading, solitude, idleness, a soft and sedentary life, intercourse with women and young people, these are perilous paths for a young man, and these lead him constantly into danger.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Men, Youth
It is not our wrong actions which it requires courage to confess, so much as those which are ridiculous and foolish.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Man is born free, yet he is everywhere in chains.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Freedom
To endure is the first thing that a child ought to learn, and that which he will have the most need to know.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Adversity
I have always said and felt that true enjoyment cannot be described.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Enjoyment
Peruse the works of our philosophers; with all their pomp of diction, how mean, how contemptible, are they, compared with the Scriptures! Is it possible that a book at once so simple and sublime should be merely the work of man? The Jewish authors were incapable of the diction, and strangers to the morality contained in the Gospel, the marks of whose truths are so striking and inimitable that the inventor would be a more astonishing character than the hero.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Bible
Whoever blushes, is already guilty; true innocence is ashamed of nothing.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
To live is not merely to breathe, it is to act; it is to make use of our organs, senses, faculties, of all those parts of ourselves which give us the feeling of existence. The man who has lived longest is not the man who has counted most years, but he who has enjoyed life most. Such a one was buried a hundred years old, but he was dead from his birth. He would have gained by dying young; at least he would have lived till that time.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Life
No man has any natural authority over his fellow men.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Authority, One liners
Philosophy can do nothing which religion cannot do better than she; and religion can do a great many other things which philosophy cannot do at all.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Religion
The features come insensibly to be formed and assume their shape from the frequent and habitual expression of certain affections of the soul. These affections are marked on the countenance; nothing is more certain than this; and when they turn into habits, they must leave on it durable impressions.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
As soon as any man says of the affairs of State, What does it matter to me? that State may be given up for lost.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Topics: Self-Discovery
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