[PDF] [PDF] La pensée de Jean-Jacques Rousseau dans les Discours - CORE

Life

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712 – 1778) was born in Geneva (June 28) but became famous as a ‘French’ political philosopher and educationalist. Rousseau was brought up first by his father (Issac) and an aunt (his mother died a few days after his birth), and later and by an uncle. He had happy memories of his childhood – although it had some odd features...

Nature, Wholeness and Romanticism

Rousseau argued that we are inherently good, but we become corrupted by the evils of society. We are born good – and that is our natural state. In later life he wished to live a simple life, to be close to nature and to enjoy what it gives us – a concern said to have been fostered by his father. Through attending to nature we are more likely to liv...

Social Contract and The General Will

Chapter 1 of his classic work on political theory The Social Contract(published in 1762) begins famously, ‘Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains’. It is an expression of his belief that we corrupted by society. The social contract he explores in the book involves people recognizing a collective ‘general will’. This general will is suppo...

on Education

The focus of Émile is upon the individual tuition of a boy/young man in line with the principles of ‘natural education’. This focus tends to be what is taken up by later commentators, yet Rousseau’s concern with the individual is balanced in some of his other writing with the need for public or national education. In A Discourse on Political Econom...

on The Development of The Person

Rousseau believed it was possible to preserve the original nature of the child by careful control of his education and environment based on an analysis of the different physical and psychological stages through which he passed from birth to maturity (Stewart and McCann 1967). As we have seen he thought that momentum for learning was provided by gro...

Conclusion

Rousseau’s gift to later generations is extraordinarily rich – and problematic. Émile was the most influential work on education after Plato’s Republic, The Confessions were the most important work of autobiography since that of St Augustine (Wokler 1995: 1); The Reveries played a significant role in the development of romantic naturalism; and The ...

Further Reading and References

Books by Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Here we have listed the main texts: Rousseau, J-J. (1750) A Discourse: Has the restoration of the arts and sciences had a purifying effect upon morals? Available in a single volume with The Social Contract, London: Dent Everyman. The essay that first established Rousseau. Rousseau, J-J (1755) A Discourse on Inequalit...

Other References

Barry, B. (1967) “The Public Interest”, in Quinton, A. (ed.) Political Philosophy, Oxford: Oxford University Press Bloom, A. (1991) ‘Introduction’ to Rousseau, J-J. (1762) Émile, London: Penguin. Darling, J. (1994) Child-Centred Education and its Critics, London: Paul Chapman. Dent, N.J.H. (1988) Rousseau: An Introduction to his Psychological, Soci...

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