Biography

Jean Jacques Rousseau was born at Geneva, on the 28th of June, 1712. Rousseau’s mother, Suzanne Bernard Rousseau, the daughter of a Calvinist preacher, died of birth complications nine days after his birth. His father, Isaac Rousseau, was a watchmaker who was well educated and a lover of music. Rousseau was descended from a Parisian family who had settled there since 1554. The family was obliged to leave Geneva because of the consequence of a quarrel between his father and the captain of a French army. In early days Rousseau and his older brother François were brought up by their father and a paternal aunt, also named Suzanne and his uncle Bernard.

Rousseau had no recollection of learning to read, but he remembered how when he was five or six his father encouraged his love of reading. He had mentioned this incident in his autobiography, the confession as:
Every night, after supper, we read some part of a small collection of romances [i.e., adventure stories], which had been my mother’s. My father’s design was only to improve me in reading, and he thought these entertaining works were calculated to give me a fondness for it; but we soon found ourselves so interested in the adventures they contained, that we alternately read whole nights together and could not bear to give over until at the conclusion of a volume. Sometimes, in the morning, on hearing the swallows at our window, my father, quite ashamed of this weakness, would cry, “Come, come, let us go to bed; I am more a child than thou art.”
Rousseau’s parents had a love marriage. His father loved his mother very much. But he was unable to get the love of his mother. This made him feel very unfortunate. Same happened to the father too. He had described the loss in the confession as:
“I was the unfortunate fruit of this return, being born ten months after, in a very weakly and infirm state; my birth cost my mother her life, and was the first of my misfortunes. I am ignorant how my father supported her loss at that time, but I know he was ever after inconsolable. In me he still thought he saw her he so tenderly lamented, but could never forget that I had been the innocent cause of his misfortune, nor did he over embrace me, but his sighs, the convulsive pressure of his arms, witnessed that a bitter regret mingled itself with his caresses, though, as may be supposed, they were not on this account less ardent. When he said to me, “Jean Jacques, let us talk of your mother,” my usual reply was, “Yes, father, but then, you know, we shall cry,” and immediately the tears started from his eyes. “Ah!” exclaimed he, with agitation, “Give me back my wife; at least console me for her loss; fill up, dear boy, the void she has left in my soul. Could I love thee thus wert thou only my son?” Forty years after this loss he expired in the arms of a second wife, but the name of the first still vibrated on his lips, still was her image engraved on his heart.”

When Rousseau was ten, his father got into a legal quarrel with a wealthy landowner on whose lands he had been caught trespassing. To avoid certain defeat in the courts, he moved away to Nyon in the territory of Bern, taking Rousseau’s aunt Suzanne with him. In Nyon his father remarried, and from that point Jean-Jacques saw little of him. He then remained under the care of his uncle Bernard, who was at the time employed upon the fortifications of Geneva. Rousseau was sent to by his uncle, together with his cousin Abraham, to be educated at the house of a Protestant minister named Lambercier in Bossey. Here the boys picked up the elements of mathematics and drawing. Rousseau, who was always deeply moved by religious services, for a time even dreamed of becoming a Protestant minister.

At the beginning everything was fine. Mademoiselle Lambercier had the affection of a mother for the two brothers. She also exercised the authority like that of a mother. Sometimes she used to punish the two brothers when they deserved it. This all was going on happily, but having been unjustly accused of breaking a comb, Rousseau became restless and dissatisfied. So at the age fifteen he ran away from Geneva (on 14 March 1728). But after returning to the city and he found the city gates locked due to the curfew. At that time he took shelter with a Roman Catholic priest, who introduced him to Françoise-Louise de Warens, age 29. She was a noblewoman of Protestant background who was separated from her husband. As professional lay proselytizer, she was paid by the King of Piedmont to help bring Protestants to Catholicism. They sent the boy to Turin, the capital of Savoy (now a place in Italy), to complete his conversion. This resulted in his having to give up his Genevan citizenship, although he would later revert to Calvinism in order to regain it.

In converting to Catholicism, both De Warens and Rousseau were likely reacting to the severity of Calvinism’s insistence on the total depravity of man. De Warens was attracted to Catholicism’s doctrine of forgiveness of sins. During this time, he lived on and off with De Warens, whom he idolized and called his “maman”. Flattered by his devotion, De Warens tried to get him started in a profession, and arranged formal music lessons for him. At one point, he briefly attended a seminary with the idea of becoming a priest. When Rousseau reached twenty De Warens took him as her lover, whilst intimate also with the steward of her house. The sexual aspect of their relationship confused Rousseau and made him uncomfortable, but he always considered De Warens the greatest love of his life. A rather profligate spender, she had a large library and loved to entertain and listen to music. She and her circle, comprising educated members of the Catholic clergy, introduced Rousseau to the world of letters and ideas. Rousseau had been an indifferent student, but during his twenties, which were marked by long bouts of hypochondria, he applied himself in earnest to the study of philosophy, mathematics, and music. At twenty-five, he came into a small inheritance from his mother and used a portion of it to repay De Warens for her financial support of him. At twenty-seven he took a job as a tutor in Lyon.

So far in his teenage days, he found himself on his own. He was far from his father and his uncle so he had to work hard for the living. Rousseau supported himself for a time as a servant, secretary, and tutor.
From 1743 to 1744 Rousseau had an honorable but ill-paying post as a secretary to the Comte de Montaigue, the French ambassador to Venice. This awoke in him a life-long love for Italian music, particularly opera. In this regard Rousseau in his Confession says:
“I had brought with me from Paris the prejudice of that city against Italian music; but I had also received from nature a sensibility and niceness of distinction which prejudice cannot withstand. I soon contracted that passion for Italian music with which it inspires all those who are capable of feeling its excellence. In listening to barcaroles, I found I had not yet known what singing was… “
After eleven months Rousseau quit from there, taking from the experience a profound distrust of government bureaucracy. His staffs conspired against him. He then moved to Paris.

After Returning to Paris, the penniless Rousseau befriended and became the lover of Thérèse Levasseur, a pretty seamstress who was the sole support of her termagant mother and numerous ne’er-do-well siblings. At first they did not live together, though later Rousseau took Thérèse and her mother in to live with him as his servants, and he assumed the burden of supporting her large family. According to his Confessions, before she moved in with him, Thérèse bore him a son and as many as four other children (there is no independent for this number). Rousseau wrote that he persuaded Thérèse to give each of the newborns up to a foundling hospital, for the sake of her “honor”. “Her mother, who feared the inconvenience of a brat, came to my aid, and she [Thérèse] allowed herself to be overcome” (Confessions). The foundling hospitals had been started as a reform to save the numerous infants who were being abandoned in the streets of Paris. Infant mortality at that date was extremely high — some fifty percent, in large part because families sent their infants to be wet nursed. The mortality rate in the foundling hospitals, which also sent the babies out to be wet nursed, proved worse, however, and most of the infants sent there likely perished. Ten years later Rousseau made inquiries about the fate of his son, but no record could be found. When Rousseau subsequently became celebrated as a theorist of education and child-rearing, his abandonment of his children was used by his critics, including Voltaire and Edmund Burke, as the basis for ad hominem attacks. In an irony of fate, Rousseau’s later injunction to women to breastfeed their own babies (as had previously been recommended by the French natural scientist Buffon), probably saved the lives of thousands of infants.

While in Paris, Rousseau became a close friend of French philosopher Diderot. Rousseau’s ideas were the result of an almost obsessive dialogue with writers of the past, filtered in many cases through conversations with Diderot. In 1749 Rousseau was paying daily visits to Diderot. He contributed numerous articles to Diderot and D’Alembert’s great Encyclopédie. Diderot’s articles brought a huge annoyance in France. He was sent into the prison for his opinions in his book “Lettre sur les aveugles”. Rousseau at the time thought that Diderot would be in prison for the rest of his life. He was so sad for Diderot’s imprisonment. In this regard, Rousseau in his Confession explains his emotions as:

“It is Impossible to describe the anguish which my friend’s misfortune caused me. My melancholy imagination, which always exaggerates misfortune, became alarmed. I thought that he would be imprisoned for the rest of his life; I nearly went mad at the idea. I wrote to Madame de Pompadour, entreating her to produce his release, or to get him imprisoned with him. But I received no answer to my letter, it was too unreasonable to produce any effect, and I cannot flatter myself that it contributed to the subsequent alleviation of the hardships of poor Diderot’s confinement. Had its severity continued without relaxation, I believe that I should have died of despair at the foot of this accursed donjon.”

In 1750, Rousseau read out an essay competition sponsored by the Académie de Dijon to be published in the Mercure de France on the theme of whether the development of the arts and sciences had been morally beneficial. He wrote that while walking to Vincennes (about three miles from Paris), he had a revelation that the arts and sciences were responsible for the moral degeneration of mankind, who were basically good by nature. Diderot helped him very much in his essay. Rousseau’s “Discourse on the Arts and Sciences”, in which he made that argument, was awarded the first prize and gained him significant fame.

Rousseau continued his interest in music, and his opera Le Devin du Village (The Village Soothsayer) was performed for King Louis XV in 1752. The king was so pleased by the work that he offered Rousseau a life-long pension. To the great expectation of his friends, Rousseau turned down the great honor, bringing him notoriety as “the man who had refused a king’s pension.” He also turned down several other advantageous offers, sometimes with a brusqueness bordering on truculence that gave offense and caused him problems.

On returning to Geneva in 1754, Rousseau reconverted to Calvinism and regained his official Genevan citizenship. In 1755, Rousseau completed his second major work, the Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality among Men (the Discourse on Inequality), which elaborated on the arguments of the Discourse on the Arts and Sciences.
Rousseau’s epistolary novel, Julie, ou la nouvelle Héloïse , which was based on memories of his relationship with Mme de Warens and his romantic attachment with the twenty-five-year old Sophie d’Houdeto was published in 1761. Sophie was the cousin and house guest of Rousseau’s patroness and landlady Madame d’Epinay. The epistolary novel gave rise to a bitter three-way quarrel between Rousseau and Madame d’Epinay; her lover, the philologist Grimm; and their mutual friend, Diderot. Diderot took the side against Rousseau.
Diderot later described Rousseau as being, “false, vain as Satan, ungrateful, cruel, hypocritical, and wicked … He sucked ideas from me, used them himself, and then affected to despise me”. (Wikipedia.“Jean-Jacques Rousseau”. 16 Nov. 2009.<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Jacques_Rousseau)

Rousseau's 800-page novel of sentiment, Julie, ou la nouvelle Héloïse, was published in 1761. The novel was a immense success. The book's rhapsodic descriptions of the natural beauty of the Swiss countryside struck a chord in the public and may have helped spark the subsequent nineteenth century craze for Alpine scenery. In 1762, Rousseau published Du Contrat Social, Principes du droit politique (in English, literally Of the Social Contract, Principles of Political Right) in April and then Emile: or, On Education in May. The final section of Émile, "The Profession of Faith of a Savoyard Vicar," was intended to be a defense of religious belief. Rousseau's choice of a Catholic vicar of humble peasant background (plausibly based on a kindly prelate he had met as a teenager) as a spokesman for the defense of religion was in itself a daring innovation for the time. It rejected original sin and divine revelation, so both Protestant and Catholic authorities took offense. Moreover, Rousseau advocated the opinion that, insofar as they lead people to virtue, all religions are equally worthy, and that people should therefore conform to the religion in which they have been brought up. This religious indifferentism caused Rousseau and his books to be banned from France and Geneva. He was condemned from the pulpit by the Archbishop of Paris, his books were burned, and warrants were issued for his arrest.

British philosopher David Hume who was very sympathetic to Rousseau wrote 'has not had the precaution to throw any veil over his sentiments; and, as he scorns to dissemble his contempt for established opinions, he could not wonder that all the zealots was in arms against him. The liberty of the press is not so secured in any country … as not to render such an open attack on popular prejudice somewhat dangerous.'
(Wikipedia.“Jean-Jacques Rousseau”. 16 Nov. 2009.<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Jacques_Rousseau)

Within a month Rousseau had to leave France for Switzerland – but was unable to go to Geneva after his citizenship was revoked as a result of the ban over the book. He ended up in Berne. In 1766 Jean-Jacques Rousseau went to England. He first went to Chiswick then Wootton Hall near Ashbourne in Derbyshire, and later to Hume's house in Buckingham Street, London. He was invited by David Hume. True to form he fell out with Hume, accusing him of disloyalty (not fairly!) and displaying all the symptoms of paranoia. In 1767 he returned to France under a false name (Renou), although he had to wait until to 1770 to return officially. A condition of his return was his agreement not to publish his work. He continued writing, completing his Confessions and beginning private readings of it in 1770. Jean-Jacques Rousseau was banned from doing this by the police in 1771 following complaints by former friends such as Diderot and Madame d'Epinay – who featured in the work. The book was eventually published after his death in 1782.

Although officially barred from entering France before 1770, Rousseau returned in 1767 under a false name. In 1768 he went through a marriage of sorts to whom he had always hitherto referred to as his "housekeeper". But actually she was a linen-maid. They had five children together, all of whom were left at the Paris orphanage. It was the marriages between Catholics and Protestants was illegal at that time. Such type of marriage was called Thérèse. Though she was illiterate, she had become a remarkably good cook, a hobby her husband shared.

In 1770 they were allowed to return to Paris. As a condition of his return he was not allowed to publish any books, but after completing his Confessions, Rousseau began private readings in 1771. At the request of Madame d'Epinay, who was anxious to protect her privacy, however, the police ordered him to stop. The Confessions was the only one which was partially published in 1782, four years after his death. All his subsequent works were to appear posthumously.

In 1772, Rousseau was invited to present recommendations for a new constitution for the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, resulting in the Considerations on the Government of Poland, which was to be his last major political work. In 1776 he completed Dialogues: Rousseau Judge of Jean-Jacques and began work on the Reveries of the Solitary Walker. In order to support himself, he returned to copying music, spending his leisure time in the study of botany.

Rousseau's mental health was a matter of some concern for the rest of his life. There were significant periods when he found it difficult to be in the company of others, when he believed himself to be the focus of hostility and duplicity .It is a feeling probably compounded by the fact that there was some truth in this. He frequently acted 'oddly' with sudden changes of mood. These 'oscillations' led to situations where he falsely accused others and behaved with scant respect for their humanity. There was something about what, and the way, he wrote and how he acted with others that contributed to his being on the receiving end of strong, and sometimes malicious, attacks by people like Voltaire. The 'oscillations' could also open up 'another universe' in which he could see the world in a different and illuminating way
(Doyle Michele Erina and Smith K Mark (2007) ‘Jean-Jacques Rousseau on education’, the encyclopaedia of informal education. 16 Nov.2009.<http://www.infed.org/thinkers/et-rous.htm. )

In 1778 he was in Ermenonville, just north of Paris, staying with the Marquis de Giradin. On July 2, following his usual early morning walk Jean-Jacques Rousseau died of apoplexy (a kind of hemorrhage). Some of his former friends claimed that he committed suicide Rousseau was initially buried at Ermenonville on the Ile des Peupliers, which became a place of pilgrimage for his many admirers. Later, in 1794, his remains were moved to the Panthéon in Paris (formerly the Church of Sainte Geneviève. The Pantheon was used to house the bodies of key figures of the French Revolution.) His remains were placed close by those of Voltaire, who had died in the same year as him. His tomb was in the shape of a rustic temple, on which, in bas relief an arm reaches out, bearing the torch of liberty, evokes Rousseau's deep love of nature and of classical antiquity. In 1834, the Genevan government somewhat reluctantly erected a statue in his honor in Lake Geneva.

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