Jean-Jacques Rousseau (28 June 1712 – 2 July 1778) was a Genevan philosopher, writer, and composer of 18th-century Romanticism of French expression. His political philosophy influenced the French Revolution as well as the overall development of modern political, sociological and educational thought.
His novel Émile: or, On Education is a treatise on the education of the whole person for citizenship. His sentimental novel Julie, or the New Heloise was of importance to the development of pre-romanticism and romanticism in fiction. Rousseau's autobiographical writings—his Confessions, which initiated the modern autobiography, and his Reveries of a Solitary Walker—exemplified the late 18th-century movement known as the Age of Sensibility, featuring an increasing focus on subjectivity and introspection that has characterized the modern age. His Discourse on the Origin of Inequality and his On the Social Contract are cornerstones in modern political and social thought.
Rousseau was a successful composer of music. He wrote seven operas as well as music in other forms, and he made contributions to music as a theorist.
During the period of the French Revolution, Rousseau was the most popular of the philosophes among members of the Jacobin Club. Rousseau, a Freemason, was interred as a national hero in the Panthéon in Paris, in 1794, 16 years after his death.
Read more about Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Religion, Legacy, Major Works, Editions in English, Online Texts
Famous quotes by jean-jacques rousseau:
“Men, in general, are not this or that, they are what they are made to be.”
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778)
“The only dance masters I could have were Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Walt Whitman and Nietzsche.”
—Isadora Duncan (1878–1927)
“There are two things to be considered with regard to any scheme. In the first place, ‘Is it good in itself?’ In the second, ‘Can it be easily put into practise?’”
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778)
“I have resolved on an enterprise that has no precedent and will have no imitator. I want to set before my fellow human beings a man in every way true to nature; and that man will be myself.”
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778)
“The members of a body-politic call it ‘the state’ when it is passive, ‘the sovereign’ when it is active, and a ‘power’ when they compare it with others of its kind. Collectively they use the title ‘people,’ and they refer to one another individually as ‘citizens’ when speaking of their participation in the authority of the sovereign, and as ‘subjects’ when speaking of their subordination to the laws of the state.”
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778)