Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778)

Pictures

• Jean-Jacques Rousseau

• Isaac Rousseau, Jean-Jacques's father

• Rousseau's Europe

• Bossey, where the young Rousseau lived with a Calvinist pastor

• Mme. Dupin

Outline of Today's Lecture

• Rousseau's life

• The State of Nature and the Origins of Inequality
  • The Noble Savage

  • Rousseau's Critique of Property Relations

  • alienation

• Rousseau on Education and Morality

• Foundations of Civil Society: The Social Contract

• Forcing People to be Free: The General Will

• Rousseau on the Best form of Government

• Rousseau as Critic and Captive of Enlightenment

Names, Terms and Concepts

• Huguenots

• Mme de Warens

• Denis Diderot and the Encyclopedia

• Thérèse Levasseur

Additional resources available on the Internet

• On-line text of the Confessions, Rousseau's autobiography.

• This (appropriately) Swiss server has on-line texts of Rousseau's first and second Discourses and the Social Contract, all in French.