Jean-Jacques Rousseau

1712-1778 · Genevan (Citoyen de Genève; the self-signature he insisted on across the published writings) · Political philosophy, philosophy of education, philosophical anthropology, philosophy of religion, autobiography, French moralism

Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.

The turn came on a road outside Paris in 1749. Walking to Vincennes to visit Diderot in prison, Rousseau read a prize question — had the sciences and arts improved morals? — and felt a conviction that civilization was corruption, not progress. Born in Geneva to a watchmaker who left him young, largely self-educated, he had spent years on the margins of Parisian life. His answer made him the Enlightenment's great heretic.

Topics Jean-Jacques Rousseau addresses

• the general will
• the social contract
• natural goodness
• amour-propre
• amour de soi
• pitié
• the state of nature
• perfectibility
• the genealogy of inequality
• negative education
• forced to be free
• civil religion
• the lawgiver
• critique of representation
• sovereignty and popular will
• the will of all
• the corruption of the sciences and arts
• property and inequality
• direct democracy
• the small republic
• dependence and domination
• the profession of faith of the Savoyard Vicar
• natural religion
• the education of women

Converse with Jean-Jacques Rousseau on Symposium. Every reply is grounded in Jean-Jacques Rousseau's own writing and cites the page it came from. The corpus is public-domain text.