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Jean-Jacques Rousseau was born in 1712 in the independent city-state of
Geneva. His mother, Suzanne Bernard, was a member of the city’s elite, while his
father, Isaac Rousseau, was a working-class watchmaker. Within a week of his
birth, his mother died and with her death young Jean-Jacques and his father lost
their place in high society.
The Rousseaus’ position fell even further when Isaac was exiled from Geneva
for challenging a superior to a duel. Jean-Jacques was taken from his father and
became a ward of his mother’s brother, sent with his cousin to live outside the
walls of Geneva. As he reached the age to take on a career, Rousseau was appren-
ticed to a low-class engraver. The situation was so intolerable that Rousseau fled
to Italy and eventually ended up in the household of the Baroness de Warens, a
slightly disreputable but generous women. Under the protection of the baroness,
Rousseau was able to develop his intellectual gifts.
At the age of 27, Rousseau left Italy for France where he developed friendships
with the leading philosophers of the French Enlightenment such as Diderot and
Voltaire. The next ten years were spent working as a secretary in Italy and France
and writing articles for Diderot’s Encyclopedia—the premiere work of the
Enlightenment. Rousseau might well have continued working in a similar vein had
he not had what he later called his “illumination.” While walking to Vincennes to
visit Diderot, Rousseau saw a notice of an essay competition on the question “Has
the revival of the arts and sciences done more to corrupt or to purify morals?”
Contrary to the prevailing belief of the time—and the dominant view of his
Encyclopediacolleagues—Rousseau realized in a flash that far from saving
humankind, the arts and sciences were bringing ruin. The more sophisticated and
learned society became, the less happy, less virtuous, and more corrupt the people
became. In fact, the rationalism of his age was destroying the spontaneous feelingsJEAN-JAC Q U E S ROUSSEAU
1712–1778