Download Jean-Jacques Rousseau

BY
RINA MUKHOPADHAYAY
MAHESHTALA COLLEGE
DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
*
• Jean Jacques Rousseau (17121778)
• Born in Geneva
• Runs away at 16 and lives on his
own
• Hooked up with various women
for support
• Was a tutor, civil servant,
composer, music teacher,
botanist, linguist, novelist,
memoirist, and philosopher
*
*In 1762 publishes “On Social
Contract” and “Emile”
*Both are condemned, books
burned, leaves Paris for Saint
Pierre, then on to England
with David Hume (1766)
*Returns to France (1767)
*Publishes a series of
autobiographical works,
including Confessions (1782)
*“Man is born free but
everywhere is in chains”
* Rousseau from- “The Social Contract”
*
The General Will
The Natural State of Man
*
*In order for men to abstain from society’s
corruption, and truly abide by political rules,
they must agree to “The Social Contract”
*In this contract, they agree to live under the laws
created by themselves and the people, or the
“General Will”
*
*Life in society was corrupting – people are born kind, without
impulse to do bad, but are changed from this ‘natural’ and superior
‘state of man’ by society’s oppression, private ownership and
inequality
• In ‘Discourse’, Rousseau challenged and refuted France’s Estate
system by naming two types of inequality:
• Natural Inequality – of strength, intelligence, etc.
• Artificial Inequality – of which the French system was
based
• Rousseau states we cannot return to our natural state, and hence
must reform our current system according to the General Will
*According to Rousseau the ‘only
reason human beings were willing to
give up individual freedom and be
ruled by others was that they saw
that their rights, happiness, and
property would be better protected
under a formal government rather
than an every-person-for-themselves
type of society’.
*He argued that ‘we have rights and
individual liberties because the rest
of society agrees that you have
those rights and liberties’.