Biography of Jean-Jacques Rousseau

(1712/06/28 - 1778/07/02)

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Philosopher and botanist franco-helvetico

"Everything is perfect out of the hands of the creator and everything degenerates in the hands of men"
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
He was born June 28, 1712 in Geneva (Switzerland).
It is baptized on 4 July of the same year. He was educated by his uncle after the death of his mother a few days after his birth.
He worked as an apprentice engraver at age 13. At 16 escape from his hometown in Savoy hosted by a priest. Very soon he became Secretary and assiduous companion of madame Louise de Warens, rich woman who had a profound influence on his life.
In the year 1742 he settled in Paris, where he works as a teacher, copyist and political Secretary. He befriended the French philosopher Denis Diderot, who commissioned him to write articles on music to the French encyclopedia. In 1750 won the prize of the Academy of Dijon by his Discours sur les sciences et les arts (discourse on the arts and Sciences, 1750), and in 1752 his opera Le devin du village (the Sage of the people) was performed for the first time. In the former, and in his discourse on the origin of inequality among men (1755), exhibited its view that science, art and social institutions have been corrupted to mankind and that the natural state, or primitive, is superior, in moral terms, the civilized State.
Voltaire He attacked the views of Rousseau and why the two philosophers were bitter enemies. In 1756 withdrew to Montmorency, where he wrote the novel Julie, or the new Eloisa (1760). In his famous political treatise the social contract (1762) arguments for civil freedom and helped prepare the ideological Revolution base to defend the will of the people against the divine law. Emilio (1762) study highlighted the importance of the expression before the repression so that a child is balanced and freethinking.
In 1762, he escapes to Prussia and then to England, where he was protected by the Scottish philosopher David Hume. However, soon they quarrelled in public letters and polemizaron between the two. During his stay in England he prepared the manuscript of his treatise on botany published posthumously, La Botanique (The Botany, 1802).
He returned to France in 1768 under the false name of Renou. In 1770, he completed the manuscript of his most notable work, the autobiographical confessions (1782), which reveals the moral and emotional conflicts of his life. It influenced romanticism in literature and philosophy from the beginning of the 19th century. It also had to do with the evolution of psychological literature, psychoanalytic theory, and the Existentialism of the 20th century, particularly in his insistence on free will.
Rousseau died July 2, 1778, at Ermenonville, France.