Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712 – 1778) was a French writer, composer and philosopher. Born in Geneva to a Huguenot family, Rousseau ran to Savory at age 15 since his mother died in childbirth and his father was forced out of Geneva after getting into some legal trouble. In Savory Rousseau was taken in by a Catholic priest and introduced to Françoise-Louise de Warens, a rich matron/lover who would support him and his education for years to come. Many of his works are considered precursors to other monumental movements and ideas in society. His novel Julie is thought to have inspired what would become romanticism in fiction, and his Confessions is similar to Augustine in the influence it had in the autobiographical genre. He believed his most important work was Emile, or On Education. Rousseau was a key figure in the French Revolution, being one of the most influential leaders of the Jacobin Club. His philosophy centers around the idea that man is inherently good, and claims that the material world is hindering human relationships and morality.

Children and Civic Education from Emile (1762)

In this excerpt, Rousseau discusses the importance of childhood. Rather than teaching children how to reason before they are capable of understanding such things, he argues, teach them the most basic of skills so that when they are developed enough to learn how to reason they will have the tools necessary to do so. Rousseau implores his audience to “cherish childhood, look with favor on its games, its pleasures, its friendly instincts” (231). This surprised me a bit, since I view the Enlightenment as a time where reason and inquiry are valued very highly. But I suppose it is also a time in which life itself was celebrated, at every stage and in every way. Enlightenment thinkers like Rousseau recognized the process involved in development.

Duties of Women from Emile (1762)

In this piece, Rousseau proves that he is similar in mind to most other men we have read in our three semesters in HUST. He presents the rather unoriginal idea that women have sexual power over men, that “women so easily stir a man’s senses and fan ashes of a dying passion” (570). Rousseau scoffs at the idea of men and women being equal, saying that “women do wrong to complain of the inequality of man-made laws; this inequality is not of man’s making, or at any rate it is not the result of mere prejudice, but of reason” (571). He stresses the woman’s role as weak and passive, as a compliment to the man’s strong and aggressive role. He encourages the education of girls, but also explains how naturally vain they are. Women’s natural duty is to bear children and care for the home. An adulterous male is “cruel and unjust” but “the faithless wife is worse…her crime is not infidelity but treason” (572). I must say, his argument is rather impressive in the sense that he words everything cleverly. Rousseau presents every argument as either a back-handed compliment or as if it were a law of nature that he is just stating. I’m sure he truly believed that women were the weaker sex that should be admired for their contributions to society. Those contributions just seem sexist and offensive today.